Essay on "Federal State Relations Past Present and Future"

Essay 5 pages (1562 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

The Failures of No Child Left Behind: Federal Imposition on Local Needs

American education is designed, in intent, to accommodate the varied

needs of students of all social, racial, economic and intellectual

backgrounds by using practical instructing approaches that cultivate

individual strengths. Particularly, educational theory has very gradually

shifted from steadfast implementation of standard text to more Socratic

means of class participation and individual contribution to larger group

goals.

Essentially, this is a response to valid concerns that standard text

and examination approaches have been biased to certain cultures and

ideologies not necessarily familiar to or espoused by members of a student

body. This is not to say that such political necessities have eliminated

the use of text. Rather, the perspective presented by these sources is, in

the more progressive atmosphere of today's high school, intended to be

supplemented by study and test materials composed from non-traditional

perspectives. Moreover, texts are supplemented by activities, discussions,

debates and outside research assignments, all of which give students the

opportunity to step away from conventional classroom fare and employ their

unique talents to understand more intimately the topics in question. This

progressive approach to education, though more widely accepted by those in

the educational profession all the time, is directly obstructed by the

conditions promoted by No Child Left Behind. As with the vast majority of

policies by the current administration of President George W. Bush, this is

an approach to a subject which directly eschews prevailing professional

opinion, popular sentiment and rationality on how best to confront

America's failing schools. The program, which is centered on the premise

of imposed standardized testing dictated by categorizing score assessments,

is rife with the kind of material homogeneity and evaluative uniformity

that are directly counterintuitive to the increasingly diverse needs of a

student body. Here, we consider the educational implications of No Child

Left Behind (NCLB), which leaves our schools deeply compromised by the

impractical commitment to federalized testing standards.

The overlapping authorities of federal, state and local governments

are directly implicated by the legislation, which requires that the latter

two dedicate their resources to meeting the demands of the former. This is

an approach to education which directly contradicts tradition Republican

philosophy on the entitlements which are to be allowed states and local

governments in shaping policy affairs with relative autonomy. NCLB is, to

the contrary, a federal program which gives the national government a broad

and sweeping degree of mandatory oversight over performance metrics and

content approach in education. For states and localities which must

contend with their own unique sets of challenges pertaining to learning

capabilities, cultural variances and economic restraints (to name just a

few), the diminished level of control means a diminished ability to respond

to individual learning needs and assessment demands.

In particular, the incursion of a greater emphasis on standardized

testing has tied the hands of many school districts which have more

traditionally approached teaching and assessment standards based on the

opportunities availed by local public governance. The importance of

community leaders, parents, local agencies and even local businesses in

pushing forward the needs of students through an allied strategy has been

largely undermined by a the less nuanced interests of standardized

equivalency testing. Indeed, public governance is a deeply complex and

layered undertaking, especially in the context of local officiating. Where

local government agencies are concerned, the responsibilities of civil

administration, legislative oversight, public service and commercial

regulation are collectively made all the more challenging by the

relationship necessarily shared between local government structures and

their counterparts at the state and federal level. This dynamic plays in

to the responsibilities and power-broking of all public agencies, which

must balance the pressures placed upon it by policy, public interest and

popular demand with resource availability, organizational reach and

geographical relevance. This condition requires a strategic pursuit of

effective partnerships within which public agencies of shared interest and

goal can help one another further common or overlapping causes. This is

particularly in public education, where issues of economy and priority have

consistently diminished the quality and opportunity available in our

schools. However, the interests of NCLB seem less interested in allowing

districts to navigate their distinct challenges than in distributing

desperately needed resources only in the forms which remote federal

standards dictate.

Indeed, NCLB is largely a program underscored by a focus on testing

and student profiling. Therefore, the above noted method, comprised of

parameters for evaluation testing, is coupled with a promise to pay lesser

levels of individual focus to students in need. Once individuals,

demographics and minorities have been identified as being in particular

need, individual classroom performances should draw the attention of

instructors and administrators, who should be seeking to ensure that all

students are able to perform at the most basic level. Where such is

absent, a testing regimen would be underscored by close administrative

scrutiny. However, the emphasis on the meaning of testing evaluation as

opposed to interactive performance has helped to further degrade America's

lagging public schools.

To this extent, it is asserted in Darling-Hammond's (2004) text that

"over the last decade, the achievement gap has widened, and graduation

rates have also begun to decline for the first time in this century" (p.

3). Darling-Hammond also states that due to negative legislative changes in

the last few years, the distribution of quality in education has been

widely uneven from state to state. While overall academic performance in

some parts of the country presents a positive outlook, other parts of the

country lag behind in terms of literacy, graduation rates, and rates of

students ascending to higher education. Yet, the need to adhere to

standardized-testing centered strategic orientation, such as that

legislated by the federal No Child Left Behind program seems to enforce an

unrealistic equivalency standard across these settings. Schools are now

required to achieve certain grades and standardized test scores, even as

cultural, social, and individual distinctions create a variance of levels

of individual suitability for this type of academic diagnostic. As a

result, many students have been inappropriately relegated to special

education settings, where they are allowed to languish without the

individual attention they require to achieve at acceptable standards.

Unfortunately, the majority of students impacted by such scenarios are

those from minority cultures, underscoring one of the core failures in the

nature of the current legislation. The inherent inequality of NCLB is

underscored by this increasingly more unbridgeable chasm between hegemonic

and minority ethnicities in the United States. The negative condition is

reinforced however by a set of practices within the educational training

structure which favor the courtship of non-minority instructors both to

Masters programs and to suburban schools. As part of a cyclical pattern

which institutionally prevents our minority populations from being loosed

of such a negative spiral, students beholden thereto are either locked into

curricula which are given a financial short-shrift and are thus, armed with

fewer qualified teachers, or are committed to districts where their

cultural and ethnic perspectives are not being accounted for.

This is a circumstance which regrettably continues today, with the

current presidential administration's No Child Left Behind initiative

imposing further dependence upon the diagnostic testing and grade-

evaluation policies which have long been an appendage of established

educational patterns. The new education standards are given over to a

"fundamentally punitive law that uses flawed standardized tests to label

schools as failures and punish them with counterproductive sanctions."

(Neill, 1) Sadly, this is a system which appears to be intensifying an

imbalance which is already devastating to the future interests of minority

communities by diverting funds to those schools whose teaching populations

tend to reflect the limited diversity within higher socioeconomic classes.

Just as this is a deeply ingrained extension of some of the most negative

root impulses of American culture, it is likewise… READ MORE

How to Reference "Federal State Relations Past Present and Future" Essay in a Bibliography

Related Essays:

Past Present and Future of Eurasian Organized Crime in the United States Term Paper

Future of Eurasian Organized Crime in the United States

As the world's economic and information infrastructure becomes globalized, a new organized elite criminal group is being shaped. Organized crime groups… read more

Term Paper 25 pages (7401 words) Sources: 1+ Style: MLA Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

Future Implications of Improving Health Term Paper

Future Implications of Improving Health

In the past few decades, technological progress and economic growth have led to improvements in human health, causing a rise in the average age of… read more

Term Paper 15 pages (4236 words) Sources: 10 Style: APA Topic: Healthcare / Health / Obamacare

---

Current and Future Legislation How Will This Effect the Future of Managed Care Thesis

Future Legislation: The Impact on the Future of Managed Care

The focus of the research proposed in this study is to ascertain what the advantages and disadvantages exist relating to… read more

Thesis 14 pages (3829 words) Sources: 10 Style: APA Topic: Healthcare / Health / Obamacare

---

Future of Outsourcing Information Technology Term Paper

Future of Outsourcing Information Technology From the United States

Information technology jobs are amongst those most frequently being outsourced to other countries, especially to third world nations. There is a… read more

Term Paper 16 pages (4450 words) Sources: 10 Style: APA Topic: Business / Corporations / E-commerce

---

U.S. Constitution the United States of America Term Paper

U.S. Constitution

The United States of America is the land of the free spirit, a land where the brave and the worthy can lead lives of their choice, free and… read more

Term Paper 10 pages (4248 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: American History / United States

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>