Ending the Department of Education: The Bad

Ending the Department of Education: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (full series)
Background | The Good
The Bad | The Ugly

The Bad: No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, marking a significant expansion of the federal government’s role in public education. When people complain about the Department of Education, it’s acts like NCLB that often fuel this criticism. Imagine a toddler trying to “help” clean up, only to make the task more difficult and create an even bigger mess—that’s how critics view the ED’s interventions in public education.

With strong backing from the ED, NCLB reforms required schools to administer annual standardized tests in reading and math for students in grades 3–8 and once in high school. However, these tests weren’t just about reporting how students were performing; they came with major consequences for schools that failed to meet certain benchmarks. Consequences included loss of funding, forced restructuring, and, in severe cases, conversion into a charter school.

This created a high-pressure environment for both teachers and students. Instead of focusing on ensuring students had a strong grasp of the year’s math and English concepts or tailoring lessons to meet individual needs, teachers felt intense pressure to “teach to the test.” Students were inundated with packets of practice tests for math and English, spending weeks drilling for the exams. As a result, other subjects—such as history, physical education, and art—were often neglected, particularly in elementary schools.

With the unrealistic goal of achieving 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014, schools were set up for failure, and fail they did. NCLB was disastrous, but that was just the beginning.

In the next installment, Common Core centralized educational standards, precipitating a national educational catastrophe.