No Child Left Behind Act
Step One: Recognizing the problem/ Setting the agenda
The No Child Left Behind Act was created to fix flaws that President Bush saw in our education system. George Bush worked to passed legislation in the state of Texas while he served as Governor.This policy was a key part to George Bush's campaign when he ran for president in 2000. He didn't think that children were being put in an environment where everyone hand an equal opportunity to succeed no matter where they lived or what school they attended. Bush also felt that teachers needed to be more qualified to teach their subject of choice to ensure that every student was being taught in a way that was fair and correct. The final thing Bush wanted to change was the safety of schools. He Felt that if the students had a safer environment to learn they would be able to focus more on their school work.
Step Two: Formulating The Policy
One of the first things President Bush did as president was ask congress to create a bill that both houses and parties could agree on. Schools already received funding from the government so the bill was easily passed through both houses of congress. Congress wanted to set regulation for schools and make sure that they met specific proficiency requirements. If the requirements were not met there would be consequences for that school.
Step Three: Adopting The Policy
The bill had passed through congress with a two thirds majority so the President could not veto It if he did not approve of the bill. Bush would never had done since he proposed the bill him self to congress. It was signed into effect by President Bush and co singer George Miller on January 8th 2002. There was a lot of support for this new law in all branches of the government.
Step Four: Implementing the Polciy
The government did not want to intrude to much on the states but if the schools were not meeting the requirements set by the No Child Left Behind Act the government would have to step in. If schools did not meet the minimum requirements they could be subject corrective actions such as the firing and the hiring of staff, possibly even a change of curriculum. The Act also created new standardized test. The tests would be changed every year based of the overall scores of students in the previous year.
Step Five: Evaluating the Policy
The pros of this policy are that the gap between students that were struggling and other students was reduced greatly. Also if a school was struggling and not meeting requirements it was made sure that things were changed so that they could. The Act also increased school security. But the policy also has some cons, it can be argued that the standards of the policy are set to high and are tough to achieve. Also it focused on core subjects but didn't really do much for other subjects that schools offered so it could be consider and ineffective law.
Citations:
Source:"No Child Left Behind Act." American Government. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2014
Antle, James. "Leaving No Child Left Behind." The American Conservative 1 Aug. 2005. Web. 17 Nov. 2014
"No Child Left Behind Act (2002)." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.