In the United States the federal government makes the final decision when it comes to the major political problems of our day. Their word is the law, and most of the time it has the desired effect of extinguishing the problems on a nationwide scale. While this has worked many times in the past, it has never worked and continues to fail when dealing with the national education. Students and their educational needs simply span too broad of a spectrum for the federal government to satisfy each individual 's needs with one blanket statement. As Andrew Smarick, a former official of the education department, said, "The department is essential admitting that the federal government doesn’t know what 's best for the vast majority of the nation 's schools."(1)
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Over that decade NCBL became outdated and now many teachers believe it sets the expectation of student and teacher success too low, and focuses too much on subjects like English and math while leaving behind subjects like science, art, and history.(1) Along with this one of the main problems with "No Child Left Behind" has proven to be the fact that the plan is too restrictive and does not allow states the freedom necessary in order to properly accommodate their students ' individual needs. The teachers that were held under its legislation said that its laws were "too punitive and too prescriptive."(1) This sort of environment is not conducive to productive education and has to be changed in order to allow for teachers to reach their maximum potential. Terrell Bell, a past United States Secretary of Education, issued a report in 1983 saying, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." (4) While this diagnosis of the educational system came almost 35 years ago and many changes have been made, education still lacks the specificity that would be brought about by increased state …show more content…
During a senate debate on the reform of state testing and No Child Left Behind, Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, acknowledged that the involvement of the federal government can yield immediate "short term gains", but that it cannot provide lasting educational prosperity. He also mentions that enforcing the broad standards of Common Core teaching is in fact making it more difficult for states to set high standards for their teachers and students.(citation needed (#4)) When the federal government provides regulations, similar to those found in the Common Core standards, they are un-able to reach the level of specificity needed to cater to each state 's individual needs. Instead they create guidelines that are just specific enough to hold each state accountable for providing adequate teaching, but they are not specific enough to provide the optimum learning experience in each state. If the federal government does attempt to employ this level of specificity it can create much bigger problems than if each individual state were allowed to create its own individual system. In his address to the senate, Alexander also said, "Bad ideas in the small do damage in the small and are easily corrected. Bad ideas at the federal level result in massive
Over that decade NCBL became outdated and now many teachers believe it sets the expectation of student and teacher success too low, and focuses too much on subjects like English and math while leaving behind subjects like science, art, and history.(1) Along with this one of the main problems with "No Child Left Behind" has proven to be the fact that the plan is too restrictive and does not allow states the freedom necessary in order to properly accommodate their students ' individual needs. The teachers that were held under its legislation said that its laws were "too punitive and too prescriptive."(1) This sort of environment is not conducive to productive education and has to be changed in order to allow for teachers to reach their maximum potential. Terrell Bell, a past United States Secretary of Education, issued a report in 1983 saying, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." (4) While this diagnosis of the educational system came almost 35 years ago and many changes have been made, education still lacks the specificity that would be brought about by increased state …show more content…
During a senate debate on the reform of state testing and No Child Left Behind, Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, acknowledged that the involvement of the federal government can yield immediate "short term gains", but that it cannot provide lasting educational prosperity. He also mentions that enforcing the broad standards of Common Core teaching is in fact making it more difficult for states to set high standards for their teachers and students.(citation needed (#4)) When the federal government provides regulations, similar to those found in the Common Core standards, they are un-able to reach the level of specificity needed to cater to each state 's individual needs. Instead they create guidelines that are just specific enough to hold each state accountable for providing adequate teaching, but they are not specific enough to provide the optimum learning experience in each state. If the federal government does attempt to employ this level of specificity it can create much bigger problems than if each individual state were allowed to create its own individual system. In his address to the senate, Alexander also said, "Bad ideas in the small do damage in the small and are easily corrected. Bad ideas at the federal level result in massive