Producing "Results"

Teaching the youth and future adults of tomorrow would seem to be a stressful enough task without interference of outside sources with regulations, but the No Child Left Behind program has certainly put yet another stress factor into the mix. The No Child Left Behind program puts excessive and unnecessary stress on teachers to simply produce “results.”
According to John Stortz, a 4th grade teacher in the Gwinnett County School System (a source with much experience in this area), the No Child Left Behind Act is one of the worst programs that could be placed into the field of education – something that he considers to be “absolutely horrible.” Stortz stresses that the teachers are given time to only teach what is on the test, therefore, preparing the students for that test and that test alone. Stortz states that the “premise behind it all is false,” believing that the government as well as the people of the United States find that our beloved country is somehow “falling behind.”
Furthermore, the classes placed in schools to “culture” their students are also being taken out. Classes such as art, music, and sometimes physical education are being replaced with tutoring sessions for students who are “lagging behind.” But this replacement also poses the question - is too much of an emphasis being placed on these classes anyway? How important are they to the wellbeing of a student? They are EXTREMELY important. With the attention span of a child being roughly 15 minutes and when a student is required to sit for hours on end reciting mindless information, this tends to be frustrating and that student looks for a creative outlet. This creative outlet is in the form of a picture with bright colors or possible a simple game of dodge ball. The program is once again causing more stress to be placed on, not only the teacher, but the student as well, disrupting the basic nature of a child.
BUT with Georgia being 40th for the 2006-2007 school year, according to the Morgan Quintno’s Press Rankings, there is much on the contrary to say about the “No Child Left Behind” program also. Is it that the schools need the improvement that this plan is aiming to provide? Is this pressure necessary to create better teachers as well as better student? The pendulum has swung too far to one side and we have taken the extreme measure of placing the young generation in an atmosphere of extreme pressure. One program that suggests a middle ground would be the Aspen Institute Commission, proposing action to be taken ONLY when “students fail to show improvement for several years in a row.” This seems to be a good plan proving that there may one day be a medium after all. J