In 2001, the George W. Bush administration created the No Child Left Behind act, immediately after Bush took office. NCLB was established with the best interest of American schools and students in mind. The goal: to adequately prepare students for a college education. Bush intended to execute this plan with yearly progression tests in English and math and providing more funding for tutoring and special learning assistance in schools. Bush also introduced a system that, based on the student body’s overall success, determined whether a school was passing or failing the system.

Consequently, as a means to meet the goals of NCLB, schools actually lowered their standards to make success more achievable for students.
I see this approach as a fault in the NCLB law. American schools shouldn’t lessen their work load, or make their lesson plans less demanding in hopes of more student success. That reverses the law’s intent. By making preliminary schooling easier, we are doing the opposite of preparing students for the continuation of their educations, in fact, we’re no longer preparing them enough. Not only are students going to enter college with the emotional and psychological challenges of leaving home, forming new friendships, gaining independence, and growing/developing as an individual. Now they will also struggle academically, after being coddled in their high school academics.

Recently, President Obama urged that we reform Bush’s original NCLB law. He proposed that we no longer focus exclusively on students’ performances in English and math, but that we also look at subjects such as history, civics, foreign languages, and the arts. I think this is an excellent adjustment to the original law, considering the wide range of majors that students focus on in college.

It’s important to notice the other areas where students excel as opposed to being narrow-minded and focusing strictly on math and reading. President Obama intends to focus more on solutions to help schools succeed, as opposed to the original law which, he felt, merely highlighted the failing schools, labeled them as failing, and didn’t arrange for any alternatives or resolutions. Obama hopes, with the new renovations to the law, that by the year 2020, students will be graduating high school fully prepared to continue to the college level.

If you have read my opinion column before, you will realize that it is the very uncommon that I say positive things about President Obama. However, I feel that if a writer only ever protests and illustrate the negative, their readers will consider them to be thickheaded and bias.

I feel it is important to address the issues but also to commend progress. It’s seems to me that the alterations President Obama is proposing to make to NCLB would be incredibly beneficial and will hopefully help to better educate American students. However, it seems that American schools cut all the corners with the original version of NCLB and that is not the American way. Our country does not pride itself on cutting corners, doing a mediocre job, or doing a partial job. We pride ourselves on hard work, commitment, and hard-earned achievement and success. And it is my sincere hope that Obama’s NCLB changes ensure all of those things to each and every American classroom. If the children of America are “our future,” let’s not cheat them out of their entitlement to education.

aachambe@mesastate.edu