The No Child Left Behind Act is based on standard based reform of the education system in America. There are numerous reasons why the standard based reform approach is flawed. For starters, this system has been around for more than two decades and has not significantly contributed to the quality of overall education in America.
Supporters of this approach have pointed out that standards had become outdated and the No Child Left Behind Act provides with new and updated standards that will help boost quality of education. Well, technology has expanded geometrically ever since industrial evolution took place in the 19th century. Presuming that mankind started forming civilizations a few thousand years ago, we spent bulk of our history living without technology.
Electricity, motor engine, railways, and discovery of petrol-all these technological advancements took place in the past 300 to 400 years. In such a scenario, the idea of updating standards in a gradual and faced manner does not make sense. A child with an eye pad connected to a wireless network has virtually all the knowledge in the world at his or her fingertips.
Trying to assess this child on the basis of standards that were set up 20 years ago or even five years ago, for that matter, will not work. Despite these criticisms, the standard based approach is the right way to proceed because no approach is flawless. If educational standards are ignored and if a holistic and inclusive approach is adopted, there would be many flaws in that process as well.
Hence, it is important to remember that identifying the right education system is more important than identifying the perfect system. There is no such thing as a perfect system because there is no such thing as a perfect human being.
As long as human beings defer and as long as variable factors like social support, family support and economic support affect the performance of children, trying to find a single system that will act as a universal standard for educational achievement is a waste of time.