High Stakes Curriulum and Teasting - Essay Example

High Stakes Curriculum and Testing s 15th November The No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Race to the Top (RTTT) and the Common Core Standards The NCLB is a law while the RTTT and the Common Core Standards are policies and all of them are mainly designed towards improving the quality of education in the United States, whilst ensuring that America’s future is protected by nurturing well-educated and bright children who will lead the nation to great prosperity. In this present era, Oakes and Lipton (2007) argued that there are high stakes underlined in the schools’ curriculum and students testing because of the dire need to improve the quality of education.

The NCLB act has and it is still contributing to the high stakes curriculum and testing since it greatly supports standard-based education reforms by ensuring schools institute high standards and setting measurable to improve the quality of education in American schools. The RTTT contributes to high stakes curriculum and testing since it promotes innovation and reforms with local and state district K-12 education. The Common Core Standards contribution is pegged on the fact that it clearly denotes what students should learn and the basic skills they should acquire in each grade.

Pros and Cons of the NCLB, the RTTT, and the Common Core Standards According to Oakes and Lipton (2007), the main advantage of these initiatives is that they mainly seek to improve the quality of education and ensure American children gain quality and relevant education in order to sustain the future growth of the Nation. Secondly, Sowell (2010 stated that the initiatives aim at ensuring public schools offer quality education unlike the usually norm whereby it is perceived that only private schools offer quality education.

Thirdly, Sowell (2010) wrote that the initiatives aim at creating a just society whereby every child is able to gain quality education that will make him or her competitive in the future. Sowell (2010) lamented that the main disadvantages of these initiatives is that they create confusion within the education sector because of varying requirements imposed on schools and the insistence of uniformity among schools, hinders some schools from customizing their education program in order to address their individual or state challenges that is impairing their education sector.

ReferencesOakes, J. and Lipton, M. (2007). Teaching to change the world (3rd Edition). Boston, MA: McGraw-HillSowell, T. (2010). Inside American Education. New York, U.S: Simon and Schuster