No Artist Left Behind

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Joseph M. Calahan, Director of Cooperate Communications of Xerox Corporation states, “Arts education aids students in skills needed in the workplace: flexibility, the ability to solve problems and communicate, the ability to learn new skills, to be creative and innovative, and to strive for excellence” (National Performing Arts Convention). On January 8th 2002, President George W. Bush signed The No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB, into legislation, since then the nation's schools have overrun teachers and students with yearly-standardized test. School funding is determined by these yearly-standardized tests. Because of NCLB art programs in schools have taken blows in funding, teachers, and curriculum. Since the legislation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, flaws in NCLB such as, high-stake standardized testing and lack of funding are consequentially denying young artists to lose the opportunity to flourish in creativity, self-expression, and imagination, because of this NCLB is unsuitable to be upheld in our nation’s education system.
Since the signing of the No Child Left Behind, schools have relied on the standardized test to determine whether a student is academically on track, however this method of standardized testing is flawed and contains several defects. In a survey funded by National Art Education Foundation and conducted by F. Robert Sabol, Ph. D., 3,000 art educators from all states including the District of Columbia were surveyed to observe the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on the nation's art education system (Sabol). In this survey it was found that, 67% of participants believe that NCLB has not aided students to become better learners (Sabol). These statistics reveal that the majority of our nat...

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