Does No Child Left Behind mean that my child can't be held back?
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 so their self esteem lowers. This in turn leads to a higher dropout rate and drug abuse. In light of this, the proponents of social promotion believe that it is better to pass children on to the next grade, no matter how poorly they are doing. Some proponents state that the children 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.
Another reason for not retaining (holding back) students is the fact that people don't want older children, especially boys who have hit puberty, to be in school with younger more impressionable children.
Public Law 107 -110, which is more commonly known as "No Child Left Behind" or "NCLB", 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 2014 when ALL children will be passing. Every year that schools don't raise the number of students who pass the tests, the school will be greatly penalized.
For most people the name of the law, and the idea that all children are expected to pass the tests, sounds like a wonderful idea, but in actuality there are many problems with the law and it has ended up hurting children's academic achievement..
