In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law in an effort to reform US public schools’ academic standards and ensure every student receives a solid education. According to the US Department of Education website, the act aims to “strengthen schools’ accountability [to their students’ learning]” by ranking them based on government-mandated benchmark tests. These tests are of great importance to each school, since doing well on them means a larger federal grant. Doing poorly, however, sets a series of new reforms into action, sometimes limiting the amount of government money a school can receive (ed.gov).

While the ideas behind the NCLB Act are of the best intentions, the law itself has proven to be ineffective, burdening schools with a rigid curriculum and forcing them to “teach by the test.”

Good schools should expose their students to a wide array of topics. However, by relying completely on English and Math test scores, the NCLB Act disregards many traditional subjects. In some cases, this decreases their importance in school administrators’ eyes.  According to the Common Core 2011 teacher survey, “66 percent of teachers said NCLB’s focus on math and reading has meant reduced time for art, science, and social studies” (fairtest.org).

In addition to ignoring certain subjects, the NCLB Act unintentionally promotes “teaching to the test”, a form of teaching that not only narrows the curriculum to a few subjects, but to specific aspects of single topics, according to the Huffington Post. This confines students’ learning to a group of pre-specified facts and routines, rather than opening their minds to broad, conceptual ideas (huffingtonpost.com). “I think schools should focus on bringing out individual specialties, while also fostering a well-rounded student,” said Senior Daniel Stigall. “They definitely shouldn’t teach to the test.” Narrowing the curriculum and “teaching to the test” accomplishes the exact opposite of what the NCLB Act intends to do – graduate students with an adequate, balanced education.

Even if a multiple-choice test was an acceptable method of determining a schools’ quality, the NCLB Act’s expectations are too high for many schools, financially. If a schools’ budget is already so low that it is causing both a strain on resources and subpar teaching, the NCLB Act’s solution is to limit government funding (ed.gov).  This is in spite of the fact that one of the law’s primary goals is to make sure students of all economic backgrounds are well educated. Apparently logic has no place in the schoolyard.

More important than any of these concerns, however, is whether or not the act is working. Had the NCLB Act made any sizable improvements in US public education, it may have been worth keeping despite its flaws. Unfortunately, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, since its institution ten years ago, “NCLB-style reforms have only raised an additional 3 percent of students nationwide to ‘proficiency’ in reading and 10 percent in math, [… and] more than 85 percent of both poor and minority students are still below proficiency, as are about 70 percent of all public school students” (citizenseffectiveschools.org). When paired with the NCLB Act’s other negative impacts, these unimpressive results do not support its continuation.

According to the MSNBC website, this February, ten states were given waivers allowing them to opt out of the NCLB program (msnbc.com). As the ineffectiveness of this law grows clearer, hopefully the other 40 states, California included, will be granted the same right.