Welcome to the forum thread for "No Child Left Behind: A Mid-Term Exam." This is the Justice Talking show for the week of May 7-May 13.

Congressional reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law in 2007 raises a number of questions about whether this controversial federal law has improved education or unfairly tagged poor urban schools as failures. Does vigorous testing make teachers more accountable and ensure adoption of good curricula or has “teaching to the test” replaced reliable programs that encourage critical thinking? Has limited funding for education coupled with new requirements only exacerbated the difficulties teachers and administrators face? On this edition of Justice Talking we ask whether No Child Left Behind has passed the test.

Please post your comments on this Justice Talking issue using this thread.

Thanks for your participation!

Laura Sider
Outreach Coordinator

I just finished listening to the Justice Talking show about No Child Left Behind. I was chagrined to hear that, as usual, there was no mention of the effects of NCLB on gifted children. As the parent of a gifted child, I have experienced firsthand just how shortchanged gifted children are in today's schools. While making sure that all children receive an adequate education is certainly an admirable goal, I fail to understand why it is necessary to give disabled and low IQ children priority over gifted ones. All of the focus in schools now is on making sure everyone passes the test, which translates to all the time spent on basic material with extra help and tutoring for the children that have the most difficulty. In most states, advanced programs for elementary school have been discontinued. With all due respect to disabled and low IQ children, these children are not the ones that will grow up to be tomorrow's scientists, writers and leaders. The brightest of the children will, and right now their education is being sacrificed to make sure that the least bright children can pass a meaningless test. I have chosen to homeschool my daughter, because I have yet to find a school that will challenge her sufficiently to keep her interest. I find NCLB to be yet another piece of the increasing body of evidence that the U.S. is determined to destroy itself with political correctness.

My mother is a 4th grade teacher in New York State, so I get to hear quite a bit about No Child Left Behind, most of which are issues that are echoed throughout her school. One of the main issues is this: in New York State, there are other teaching requirements that were in place before NCLB was instituted, and many teachers found it hard enough as was to be able to successfully educate all their students for thse requirements. This past summer, they held a meeting for all the 4th grade teachers in her school to get together to discuss how best to incorporate the new curriculum into their lesson plans, and most came up with the same thing: If they were to squeeze all the required material in for NCLB, they would be VERY hard pressed to be able to finish their other curriculum requirements, for NYS standardized testing. Making matters even worse is that the NYS standardized testing is at intervals, and some students may slip through previous grades without competent knowledge to build onto for not only the NYS standards, but the NCLB standards as well! How are teachers supposed to be able to teach more curriculum than is realistic for a school year? I don't know, and I'm sure my mother doesn't, either!