Citizens Vote-No Child Left Behind

Barbara Pytel, Paulline Larson Photography

Posted by
Barbara Pytel
Jul 20, 2007

Negative View

Teachers and administrators do not hold a positive view of the No Child Left Behind Act. A New Jersey Educational Testing Service found:

63% of administration hold a negative view
77% of teachers hold a negative view

Changes?

These are the individuals in the schools that have hands-on experience teaching children. However, when the general public was asked if it would want to totally scrap NCLB, the vote was surprising.

16% want it scrapped
41% want minor changes
35% want major changes

What about parents? How do they feel about the No Child Left Behind Act?

13% want it scrapped
45% want minor changes
36% want major changes

And teachers, the people who best know the effects of NCLB, how do they vote?

25% want it scrapped
17% want minor changes
58% want major changes

Finally, how do administrators vote on NCLB?

22% want it scrapped
26% want minor changes
52% want major changes

Conclusions

While NCLB is controversial and causing much concern in schools with the replacement of teachers and administrators, the overwhelming majority of parents, teachers and administrators would not toss it out. The vote is for either making minor or major changes.

While the groups polled did not agree on everything, they did agree on two things. The two main problems of failing schools is

a lack of parental involvement
classroom discipline.

The groups also agreed on two improvement strategies:

smaller class sizes
administrators should be required to develop plans for real change.

Survey

The survey included

1000 individuals from the general public
626 parents
251 teachers
101 administrators

For more details, go to http://ets.org/americansspeak.html.

[Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, latimes.com, June 20, 2007]

Read previous articles on Educational Issues.