No Child Left Behind means no Civics courses?

[jackofallgeeks]

OK, so... I've heard a lot that "No Child Left Behind" is dumb and has
probably hurt schools a whole lot more than helped them. I've always
figured that it pretty much revolved around the SOLs and school "teaching to
the test" because they'd lose government funds otherwise. But I just read a
comment on teh webs here that Civics courses have been removed from school
curriculums because of "No Child Left Behind." That seems not just dumb but
actively counter-productive.

Does anyone other there know what NCLB is, what it does and how in
the world we ended up with it? (That last is probably answered by this
post, reprisentative of our general lack of information on a national policy
that's several years old now.)

Comments

[metis2be.livejournal.com]

Another problem with NCLB is that it revolves around the bottom students in each class. The program is based on how many children fail the test in each school, so the school focuses on getting the children who are doing poorly up to the marginal level. Children who pass with flying colors don't matter, because they're already passing, so schools are cutting advanced programing since there's no reason to support it other than helping out the children who should potentially become the brightest minds later in life. So it is good for the remedial students to help encourage them to catch up and find their true potential, but it also ignores advanced students of any kind to the point where schools aren't letting students skip grades anymore in case they don't do quite as well while being challenged which would hurt the school's score. But yes, teaching to the test is the main problem of NCLB and I've actually heard of some schools teaching children how to properly take tests, rather than trying to teach them the material. I remember my teachers and principal getting as angry as I'd ever seen them while talking about the program.