You have a lot of misconceptions about what NCLB is and what it mandates.
To begin with NCLB is NOT a law that says you can’t hold children back. That idea is called “Social Promotion”. Proponents of “Social Promotion” state that when you hold a child back they feel badly about themselves and then their self esteem lowers. This in turn leads to a higher dropout rate and drug abuse. In light of this, its proponents believe that it is than better to pass children, no matter how poorly they are doing, and no matter what the reason, so that they feel good about themselves. Some proponents state that they will naturally catch up with their peers, others state that academics aren't that important any how, while others believe that the new teacher will give the lower performing children more help so that they catch up. Sadly these people never take into consideration how badly the children feel when they realize that they can’t do the work that their peers can.
No Child Left Behind is a law that President Bush put into effect in 2001 that states that all states have to make standards and then test their children to make sure that they are learning those standards. The law also states that each year, more and more children have to pass the tests, until in 2014 when ALL children will be passing INCLUDING ALL THOSE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS. Every year that schools don’t raise the number of students who pass the tests, the school will be greatly penalized.
As far as how it affects students... There are many, many ways. Part of the law is mandatory help for children who are not on grade level. That is a good point. Sadly, the law doesn’t allow for the funds and time to do this, so many schools are now taking time out of their day to have the teachers teach the tutoring classes. This means that there is now less time for the teachers to teach the core curriculum. Moreover subjects like history, science, social studies and geography, which aren’t tested, no longer exist in many schools. This greatly affects our students because history, science, social studies and geography are often the very things that fuel their interests to learn. I know many learning disabled children who were ready to quit attempting to learn to read, who became avid learners and readers once their reading instruction was applied to something they were interested in like science. Additionally, knowledge of science, social studies, history, and geography IN ADDITION TO being able to read, write and do basic math, is what makes the difference between an “educated person” and a “literate person”. The purpose of an EDUCATION system is to produce EDUCATED people, not just “literate” people.
Another problem with the law is that it allows each state to choose their own standards. That means some states have chosen very low standards, while others have chosen impossibly high ones. Neither is good for the children. One doesn't challenge the average child while the other overwhelms them. Literally, a failing kindergarten in California could be on the third grade honor roll in New Mexico!
As far as the labeling and funding goes … throughout the country, there are two main failing subgroups; English learners and learning disabled children. Are we really surprised? How can we expect someone who is learning something to be as proficient as someone who already has some mastery of it? The whole situation screams of injustice when we realize that to be labeled as an English learner a child is tested; their low score earns them the label. As soon as a child becomes proficient he is “redesignated” as “English proficient” and his scores don’t count in the English learner subgroup any longer. When the number of English learners who are proficient does not increase does this really show that our English learners aren’t learning, or does it indicate that as a country we have more and more English learners?
Similarly, to be labeled as “learning disabled”, at least here in my state of California, children must score so poorly on certain standardized tests that there is a three year discrepancy between their chronological age and their academic proficiency. Is there any wonder why six months after being labeled learning disabled these very children don’t have the same scores as their counterparts who aren’t “disabled”? Is this truly a statement about a teacher, school, or district and their ability to teach the children in their jurisdiction?
Then we come to the funding. The way NCLB works is that when a school doesn’t make ENOUGH growth in ALL of its subgroups it is labeled “failing”. Failing schools receive lots of “mandates” from loss of funds to mandatory scripted curriculums that use a
“one size fits all approach” don’t take into consideration the needs of all children.
So how is all of this is is all of this helping our students? Simple, it isn’t. The advanced ones are bored to tears, the low ones are floundering, and the average ones are learning to sit quietly and regurgitate what is given to them. Science, social studies, history and geography the very subjects that can spark a child's interest in learning, and are vital to understanding the world in which we live, have been swept under the carpet.