No Child Left Behind

From The New York Times website, Diane Ravitch speaks about what she believes to be some of the flaws of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 developed by the Bush administration. The basic goal of the law is to have all the children in the United States to be proficient in both reading and mathematics by 2014. Similar to Diane Ravitch’s view I don’t believe that a goal such as that is reasonable. If realistic goals were set to satisfy the public then they would feel as if the Act was making progress instead of failing miserably. Ravitch also mentions that Congressional leaders plan to renew the law with minor changes when they should make major changes to improve the chances on making the No Child Left Behind Act successful. I think that the Act has good intentions but lacks something to allow it a fighting chance to improve the academic minds of the youth. It seems to me that the federal government has severe punishments for the schools and states if the target they have set for the students is not met. But they allow the states to develop their own tests to challenge the student, which makes me think that the states wouldn’t make the tests too difficult. They also give the student the chance to change schools to hopefully improve the chances of passing the test, but it seems that the students are either unaware of that option or uninterested. I feel that if the federal government believes in this goal that they should be the ones to create and administer the tests so the results would be unbiased. Also, standardized tests are important in gauging the academic knowledge of the youth but I feel that there is too much pressure put on the student to perform well on the standardized tests. If there was some way to still tests the child but not place an unhealthy stress on them I believe that there is a possibility to improve the overall performance of the No Child Left Behind Act.