An ideal form of No Child Left Behind would be beneficial to the welfare of the United States

Thank you for responding to this debate. "Realistic- interested in, concerned with, or based on what is real or practical" This definition is irrelevant to this debate, as we are discussing an IDEAL form of NCLB. "Yes, we do need accountability but not the way it is set presently. That's there are some flaws in the law. The main one is that, by 2014, 100 PERCENT of students need to be proficient in reading. I will get more into this with my own contentions later on." These flaws only appear because the law in its form now is not ideal. "That's all true but you fail to recognize all the problems with NCLB. You simply mention the good points of the law, but fail to mention its flaws." Again, we're talking about an ideal form of the law. "Just because something is effective temporarily doesn't mean it will be effective in the long-run. As more and more schools fail to reach the ever raising proficiency rate they will lose funding, the top people will lose their jobs, and the students will suffer. This means that gradually students across the country will suffer in the education department." Not if the schools are able to improve based on the information they have gotten from the tests, as they would in an ideal form of the law. "The problem is that everybody, even immigrant students who have lived in the country for barely a year, are required to past these tests. It is impossible for 100% of students to become reading proficient. Schools who fail to meet the requirements have money diverted away from tutors, and a restructuring of leadership at the schools. People will lose their jobs because of this law and have to find somewhere else to work. The states will realize this and, not wanting to lose funding for their schools, will make a change with what they consider "proficiency". That's because the law lets the States decide what is acceptable proficiency. This means that the states will simply lower the standard of proficiency so low that they can get 100%. This will hurt the students and deny them the education they truly deserve." The goal of NCLB is not to raise reading proficiency to 100%. If that were true, the passing standard would have lowered. They have not, in fact, standards for proficiency has raised. "School time is precious and teachers often don't have enough of it. These tests take a very significant portion of the school year away from teachers. These teachers then can't always teach everything their students need to know. That means that even though students are getting ahead in one area they are still falling behind in the other 2 or 3. Since only Math and Reading tests are required in Texas (using my state as an example) and the Science and Social Studies tests don't come until 8th grade, many students aren't prepared for the latter tests. They do fine and pass the Math and Reading, but the Science and Social Studies catches them completely unawares because they've been catching up since 4th grade. Often teachers will have to skip sections to save time and thus steal a good part of education from all the students in his/her class." Saying that in many schools, students switch classes based on subject, equal time is given, and students learn all subjects equally. Using the info they have gotten from tests, teachers can know how to better improve in teaching their students. "In the future we need this law to keep working. By setting impossibly high goals with too sever of punishments, the law will hurt the education system in the long run. This means that overall students WILL get worse educations and the very thing the law was suppose to help will be severely damaged." With an ideal form of the law, the standards will not be too high, nor will the punishments be.