Education of our young people has long been a priority in the United States. Under the administration of President George W. Bush it was evident that something had to be done to improve the education system in our country. The policy that the Bush administration came up with was called the “No Child Left Behind” policy commonly abbreviated as NCLB. The main goal of the policy was to set standardized goals for the entire country. These goals were set high in the hopes that these goals would make every teacher accountable for their students. If certain criterion was not met then the school would not receive the federal funding. This is a very controversial issue among many people in the education field, especially in the states where many Native American students fill the halls. The Native American students have been strongly affected by the NCLB policy. While the policy may work for many of the students around the country it does have its problems.
The No Child Left Behind Policy was one of the first policies that the Bush administration introduced after he was elected to office in the year 2000. There were a lot of mixed views as to whether the policy was a good idea or not. The main purpose of the policy was to make sure that every child in the United States had the same educational opportunities. National standards were not set but each state was responsible for setting goals for the students in their state to achieve. Standardized tests were made to be given to every student of a particular state. Periodically students would be tested and the state could see how each school measured up against the other school districts in the state.
The tests were also used to see how much improvement that students made from one year to the next in each district. If each state was able to have a greater percentage of schools reach the goals that they had set, then federal funding would increase. The schools that did not measure up would be put on an “at risk” list and those schools would be closely monitored by the state until improvements were made. Under the policy, students in the schools that are shown to need improvement are given the option to transfer to another school in the district if one exists. The idea behind the policy was that if high goals where set than individual performance in the classroom would increase. Even if the goals were set too high, the students would still improve their performance trying to reach these goals.
Since the implementation of the policy in 2002, the NCLB policy has become increasingly controversial. The proponents of the policy say that in most cases it is working and that more time is needed to establish if changes need to be made. Many people believe that setting high goals on standardized tests will improve the overall education of most of the students in the United States. Some positive results have been seen since the policy was created in 2002. In the year 2004 researchers found that steady improvements were being made nationwide especially among minority groups. At a series of hearing held by Native American education leaders they all shared the same sentiments that holding schools accountable was the best thing about the policy. Most of the schools had seen some improvement over the years.
It has been shown that math scores of American Indian and Alaskan Native students rose a significant three points over the last three years. It has also been found that reading scores have increased more in the last five years than they had in the previous thirty. In 2004 to ensure that Native Americans were susceptible to the same gains that the rest of the students in the United States were making President Bush signed an executive order recognizing the unique educational and culturally related academic needs of American Indian and Alaska Native students. A lot of research is showing that some of the American Indian students are being helped by the No Child Left Behind policy, but is it coming with a price?
The majority of American Indian education leaders think that the NCLB policy is hurting the Native American students of this country. The following quote echoes the sentiments of hundreds of people who are involved in the education of Native Americans. One Native American once said “We don’t want to leave any of our children behind, Indians or non-Indian. But we have to realize that these children have these different needs. They learn in a different way. We teach them in a different way. Our teachers need to know that each child has a way of learning and needs to address that. And here in Oklahoma since most of our children are in public schools we need to have our administration take another look at this. This idea is good, but the process’ for taking care of this isn’t going to work. We’re going to find out that we’re going to be leaving too many children behind and that’s not what we want here in Indian Country”. They believe that some minority populations need to be held to different standards than the rest of the students. The results have shown that while Native Americans have been helped somewhat by the policy many children across the country are being left behind. The remote Alaskan Native students are being labeled with a learning disability due to the fact that they speak English as a second language. So many students are being left behind just due to the fact that they are Native American. Changes have to be made to provide equal opportunity to all students.
When the education leaders came to a national hearing to discuss Native American education they devised a series of changes that should be made to the NCLB policy. An important issue to the leaders is that Native Americans maintain a culturally based education and they are not fully assimilated into the Caucasian population. The schools that are labeled at risk need to have teachers move in who are more comfortable with teaching students who are Native American, without removing their culture from the classroom. The leaders believe that more funding needs to be toward the Native American students who are starting to fall behind the rest of the country. Other implementations are to make sure and make that all resources in the classroom are not culturally biased. They want to make sure that in schools where there are a high percentage of Native Americans that they have learning tools and strategies that would appeal to Native American students. One person criticized by saying while “some schools have demonstrated compliance with the NCLB Act and have shown increases in their standardized test scores, this success has clearly been at the cost of Native language and culture.”
The No Child Left Behind Policy obviously needs to have changes made to it. While it is apparent that it is helping in some areas of the country, it is also evident that some children are being left behind. The Native American students in remote areas are losing their culture in some aspects just to make a test score and to be deemed adequate. This policy needs to be changed to make sure that whites and non-whites are being provided the same education without diminishing their culture in one way or another. If these changes to the policy are implemented, the policy can work for all students.