No Child Left Behind?

Former president George Bush put in place a law called No Child Left Behind. This had the intention of increasing students’ scores on tests by making schools test their teachers and students abilities by issuing standardized testing. This has been a controversy for a long time, and many people Democrat and Republican are have strong views against this law.

Though this law had good intentions there are some parts that need to be edited or changed. Obama recently began offering a waiver for certain states that adopt more vigorous teacher evaluation standards. The biggest problem with this seems the be the fact that the government can pick and choose which states receive the waiver based on how they think they working to transform their lowest-preforming schools and states that have a written plan to increase performance.

Although, the Idea behind the waiver has a good intention just like the No Child Left Behind law it seems as if it could still cause controversy. The fact of the matter is, you can get the best teachers in the state and put them in a low preforming school, and put in a perfect plan to increase performance, but there is only so much the government and the school systems can do. Many times in low preforming school districts, the families are lower class and many parents don’t have the time or the ambition to help the children succeed.

Although, Obama has every intention of increasing performance in schools and is trying to edit the No child Left Behind Law, repealing the law seems as if it may be a better choice for him. It seems the idea of the waiver can be controversial and the waiver doesn’t seem to be enough of a change from the original No Child Left Behind Law.

However, the view on the No Child Left Behind Law of the GOP candidates surprises me. They seem to be blaming Obama for this plan and saying that it has to go. Need we remind them that this plan was put in place by a republican. Mitt Romney who has gotten a lot of criticism from Rick Perry on his flip flopping of views, defended the No Child Left  Behind Law in 2008 and now says “we need to get the federal government out of education”. If he changing his views to appeal to voters more?

Trying to appeal to voters is important, but flip flopping views in my opinion, will severely hurt his campaign, because he doesn’t seem to be outspoken enough. He seems to want to please people too much. Pleasing people is important but changing you views all the time to please everyone is not what we need. We need a president who can take charge.

Will the waiver help Obama? Will Mitt Romney’s changing viewpoints hurt his campaign?