The No Child Left Behind Act, originally enacted in 2002, promised many educational improvements for the youth of America. Underprivileged children had the hope of being educated as well as wealthier kids.

Public schools all over America were curious as to how the bill would improve the education students received. Five years later, it appears that few of the original goals have been met. Congress has finally begun to rewrite the bill. Big mistake. The act needs to be cancelled to repair some of the troubles it has caused over the past five years.

The bill’s failings include but are not limited to:
Impossible goals for student testing scores that have resulted in states setting low standards in order to achieve the required result.
Failure to regulate how money allotted to states is used; much of the money expected to go into education has been used for other purposes by states.
Falsified statistics such as graduation rate are a direct result of administrator’s fear that they will be unable to comply with the government’s sky high standards for graduating high school in the United States.
This is worrisome not only because of the ignorance displayed by the government, but also because the states have chosen to falsify information about their schools instead of attempting to help them. The bill, intended to help bring states and the schooling system together, has instead fractured the shaky foundations further with the concealment of low graduation rates.
To prevent further damage, Congress should end the bill completely because problems it created cannot be solved by altering the legislation. The Bush administration’s supposedly “farsighted” plan has failed in nearly all of its endeavors and rather than helping American children, it has resulted in more of them being left behind.