From a perspective of an educator, what were the long term effects of "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001"?

[SpellforceFan]

I'm asking because 20 or so years ago my country had adopted a similar policy, and in two decades since it ended up eroding what little trust was there in educators from the perspective of students, increased the overall literacy and education levels so to speak, but decreased the overall number of "gifted" students, caused schools to gamify the system by "creatively" pushing hopeless cases through grades just to get rid of them (since expulsions would negatively affect school's administration and funding, while producing retards with undeserved degrees hadn't), and promoted sending actually gifted children to learn abroad, provided they had rich parents, effectively making sure they end up enriching countries other than their birth one.

NCLB is the only other act like that I could find info on on the Internet, but it's all sanitized of criticism, since it's either governmental docs, or wikipedia articles written by usual suspects.

 

[Absolutego]

It did lead to all of those problems (except the gifted rich kids learning abroad, they already go to elite private schools domestically and it's not like Mexico or, *pukes* Canada are going to have better private education), but also caused an incredibly stupid problem involving standardized testing. Since, in many states, that test was how they collected stats for reporting to the federal Department of Education, school districts of a certain persuasion would essentially turn class into a seven month drill of memorizing the test objectives, then fucking off for April/May. We dubbed it "teaching to the test", and it was probably parents' first sign that something had gone horribly wrong, since their children would not know basic things that seemed like they were essential to whatever subject they were studying, but weren't on the test.
Also it was directly responsible for the size of school bureaucracies ballooning out of control. Many districts spent more money hiring non-educating staff to "ensure we were in federal compliance" than they received in federal funding. This led to the phenomenon where school districts were taking more money than ever, delivering worse results, and every election cycle would trot out the impoverished teachers (real problem) who couldn't afford basic supplies to cry for another levy to raise the school budget, that inevitably went to pay a special consultant on NCLB or similar legislation compliance a six figure salary, who would recoil in horror if they ever had to be in the same room as a student.

 

[SpellforceFan]

school districts of a certain persuasion would essentially turn class into a seven month drill of memorizing the test objectives

Yep, the exact same thing happened in my country, to the point where teachers would explicitly say TO STUDENTS that they're preparing them for standardized exams, not teaching them anything valuable in the long run. To me it's the worst perversion of the idea of general education that could be. I even can justify the merits of biased education, since country needs niggercattle that obeys the chain of command and is willing to die for its interests, it's just pragmatism, but this exam focused education produces drones that are not only completely worthless in workforce, but also hate the country too much to defend it.

This led to the phenomenon where school districts were taking more money than ever, delivering worse results

My experience was that if we hadn't expended all of the allocated budget, it would get slashed by the "saved" amount the next annum, so administration had to find ways to waste money (thankfully not by hiring compliance staff or other wastes of oxygen - they'd instead buy shit like table football for students, which would get vandalized in a week or two by nigger-like students, with no reprisal of course), and ideally ask for more funding. That's not unique to education though, since an acquaintance working at city hall confirmed that they have to do the same thing to maintain a budget.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

No Child Left Behind is the educational equivalent of an Indian Run. If you've ever seen/done that, it's where everyone has to stay grouped together on a run so that the fat slow kids don't get left behind, while the fast kids are bored out of their minds being forced to go at a slow pace.

 

[Nicholas Gur]

I think it worked because they made me take spanish 1 twice. Failed both times. Now as a grown adult I still can't speak to any of the worthless ingrate invaders.