No Child Left Behind Flawed

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The controversy with No Child Left (NCLB) Act of 2011 can be debated in different ways. Debate rages over whether the act is effective at improving America’s education system or has it flawed. The former advocate in favor of NCLB, Diane Ravitch has turned into a major critic against the law. Ravitch has even written a book pointing why the NCLB has failed. In The Death and Life of the American School System Ravitch criticized how the movement to reform education standards has turned into the movement of test taking. She has also advocated her concerns toward NCLB and how it has done more harm to America’s education system than improvement through television and radio interviews.

Throughout her book The Death and Life of the American School System and her interview on the Daily Show with John Stewart Ravitch took a strong stance on the failure of the NCLB. For this paper I am going to be analyzing the different rhetorical strategies used in each source to make Ravitch’s argument on NCLB more persuasive to the audience. The book and interview both used different yet similar techniques to make the argument strong; however the reasons and evidence in each case can help to build a sturdier foundation for the other source. I am going mainly focus the different aspects of the two sources that create trust and credibility and how through this reliability build up enhance the logical argument. These two methods work together to make the audience convinced of Ravitch’s claim.

The interview done on Diane Ravitch by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, focused on the book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Stewart questioned Ravitch the reasons why she believe that “standardized testing and choice are undermining education”. I found this source through Google search engine using “No Child Left Behind” and Diane Ravitch” as my search terms. In addition, I did not have to search very far for the second source since I already had the book at home. Since my primary source was an interview done on Diane Ravitch and her book, I thought it was a good idea to incorporate it in support of her argument in the interview. Given Ravitch’s historical background as an Assistant Secretary of Education and an award-winning author of several books, it is safe to say that these sources are credible.

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