[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Teacher's Perception of the no
Child left Behind Act
According to government statistics, the federal government has spent nearly “200 billion dollars since 1965” (Web 1) in an attempt to improve the nation’s public schools. Faced with the failure of those reforms to meet the needs of the nation’s neediest children, President Bush has proposed the expenditure of another 50 billion dollars to ensure that no child is left behind.
No Child left behind education plan makes it clear that higher standards are seen as a key factor in that effort. It’s time to set high standards for what children should know and be able to do, to give our schools the tools they need to help children reach those high standards, and to demand that they reach them. How we can raise expectations for our children and reach those expectations in classrooms everywhere.
Expectations arise from an individual teacher’s beliefs and values internal processes that are typically ignored by reformers. It’s relatively simple to impose a set of standards on students in an attempt to "force teachers to prepare them for the assessments on those standards". (Ruenzel, 2001) It’s much more challenging to create a program that encourages individual teachers to examine the beliefs and values that result in low expectations and to accept the responsibility for the influence they have over the learning of our young people.
There’s no doubt that a teacher’s knowledge of subject matter, of theories of learning and effective pedagogy is important. Yet most of us are familiar with people who are experts in their field, but have little ability to teach that field to help others share their understanding..............
