No Child Left Behind Law Faces Its Own Reckoning

President Obama talks to students at Viers Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md. In 2005, the school was selected as a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon School.No Child Left Behind Whittled Down Under Obama JULY 6, 2012 As almost all schools began to fall into the failing category and a partisan logjam kept Congress from reauthorizing the law when it expired eight years ago the Obama administration began granting states waivers from its requirements.Over the past three years, schools in all but a few states have been given waivers, allowing them to show success through measures other than test scores and eliminating the 2014 deadline for universal proficiency. The worry is that if you leave it to the states, they will drop the ball, as they did in the past, said Martin West, who studies the politics of kindergarten through high school education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before No Child Left Behind, 17 states had no accountability systems for their schools, and only two states looked specifically at how well their low-income or minority students were doing. And even after the law went into effect, some states wrote easier exams or lowered their passing scores to inflate the number of students deemed proficient. The Philadelphia School District which has cut 5,000 jobs and closed 31 schools in two years and faces an $80 million deficit for the next fiscal year stood to lose $78 million in federal money under the House bill, according to administration figures.
The achievement gap has been an issue that this country has dealt with since segregation times. Having equality for all students is imperative, yet this has not occurred. With programs like No Child Left Behind  parents, teachers, and students all expect to see a change. But will this change ever come? Even worse, what holds for the future? For the sake of our country the blame needs to be placed evenly so we can find a solution.

Rich, Motoko, and Tamar Lewin. "No Child Left Behind Law Faces Its Own Reckoning." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Mar. 2015. Web. 21 Mar. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/us/politics/schools-wait-to-see-what-becomes-of-no-child-left-behind-law.html?ref=politics&_r=0>.