Republicans Forced to Drop Revote on Updating the No Child Left Behind Act

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JADE LIEU
Staff Writer
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was placed by President George W. Bush in 2002 as a reauthorized form of the Elementary and Second Elementary Act (ESEA). The NCLB had the ultimate goal of improving educational opportunities for low-income families. According to Politico Magazine, Republicans were forced to drop their re-vote on updating the NCLB Act on March 5 due to the struggle of gaining support on the NCLB Rewrite bill.

“I don’t really see any difference in [revoting] as they never really upheld the act from before anyway. There are hundreds of children, if not thousands, left behind even though there’s the ‘No Child Left Behind Act,’ which is ironic,” junior Gary Jia said.

NCLB’s academic standards, which require students to be proficient in math and reading, became too problematic and left the House of Republicans discontent, according to Politico Magazine. In 2012, the Obama administration began to accept waivers to allow schools to get around meeting the requirement as long as they agreed to certain conditions, such as using college and career readiness standards, like Common Core. According to the White House website, the current progress of updating the NCLB Act is interrupted by the most current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

“Though perhaps well-intended, NCLB is a highly politicized law and [the] most recent vote reflects this. Common Core was intended to address the shortcomings of NCLB, with a greater emphasis on skills. Opposition to Common Core tends to come from folks that want more local control over what gets taught in schools; while this sounds appealing, local control also has its shortcomings. Public education is vital to democracy, and it is unfortunate when political agendas drive the debate. What’s also tragic is that the opinions of students, parents, caregivers and classroom teachers are missing from this national discussion,” social science teacher David Jauregui said.