Not every student is the same. People learn in different styles and at different paces. Nevertheless, educational standards are still needed to ensure that students are learning certain vital skills and concepts. The debate in educational law is over this form of standardization that seems to inherently contradict the notion that all students learn differently. Is it fair to ask that all students be able to complete the same test successfully? Does a standardized test accurately show the abilities of every student? Legislators are still trying to find the balance between individualization and standardization in education. Both are needed, yet they contradict each other to some degree.

Standardization is controversial, yet standards regarding educational atmosphere are necessary to ensure equal opportunity and success for all students. The United States has a history of implementing educational laws regulating schools since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Most of these laws are federal and are administered by the Department of Education, but the federal government has a limited role in educational law. The majority of discretion is given to states, so they are able to determine the academic standards and requirements for graduation. Historically, federal education law has focused on ensuring a proper and equal learning environment for all students. For example, the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause has been applied to education in Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, where racially segregated schools were made illegal under the basis that separate is inherently unequal. Furthermore, the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act of 1946 offers a program of reduced cost lunches for low income families because nutrition is directly linked to educational success. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 also aimed to level the playing field for students of different backgrounds, specifically setting up services for students who speak English as a second language to succeed in the public education system in the United States. The common thread among these federal laws is that they strive to set up services to level the playing field for all students to succeed, no matter their personal background under the baseline belief that a student’s education should not be hindered by their race or socioeconomic status.

The history of federal law in protecting equality in education has begun to change in more recent times with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This is one of the first federal acts that flirted with the idea of regulating academic requirements. The goal behind instituting this law, according to the Bush administration, was to ensure that schools nationwide were proficient enough to be competitive on an international level. The law was created out of fear that the schools in the United States were falling behind on the international scale. To counteract this trend, the NCLB enacted a set of broad standards that all schools were required to meet. The states were to be left up to their own to decide the specific way that “proficiency” was to be measured. The federal guidelines that the states were to follow included standardized testing in both reading and math in grades 3-8 and at least one test in high school. By law, states were to be held responsible for reporting whether each school overall met their proficiency standard in addition to reporting proficiency levels for specific subgroups of students. Overall, the guidelines of NCLB posed several inherent problems that took several years to receive any attention.

One such problem of NCLB is the notion of a standardized test. Each state was left to decide what material and skills were to be covered in these reading and math standardized tests, which ultimately defeats the purpose of standardization. The legislators and educators in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia would naturally have different ideas of what is “proficient” in reading and math. Additionally, the emphasis in meeting standards in reading and math led schools to decrease the amount of time spent on learning other valuable subjects, like social studies and foreign languages, thus ultimately creating a sacrifice in a well-rounded education to meet these somewhat arbitrary standards in select subject areas.

Logistically, the law had several other issues from the start. Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is a measure of the “proficiency” of each school based on standardized test scores. NCLB states that if AYP is not met for two years at a school, the students must have an option to transfer to schools in the school district that do meet AYP, and if AYP is not met for three years in a row, the school must offer tutoring. After that, if AYP is not met, it is up to the state’s discretion to possibly take over the school or to shut it down. The notion that a school should suffer some sort of consequence if it is not properly teaching their students is valid, but do these standardized tests really measure a school’s level of education? Are these consequences constructive in improving the education at that school? Additionally, the measure of AYP inherently targets the “subgroups” of students that tend to fall behind their peers, such as students who speak English as a second language and students with special needs. Furthermore, schools with less funding are at a disadvantage for preparing their students for standardized tests, but will lose their federal funding should they fail to meet the standards. It is a cycle of punishing those that do not ‘succeed’ in terms of meeting standards on standardized tests, but is this going to fix the actual problems at hand of unequal education? How can students of such a wide array of backgrounds be compared against each other in such a way? If a boy who is six feet tall and a boy who is five feet tall are told to jump, how can they be expected to reach the same height? Rather than comparing students, who are naturally going to have different levels of ability due to circumstances often beyond the school’s control, laws should perhaps focus on the ways to educate students of different backgrounds as individuals by better educating and preparing their teachers and administrators to address the situation of each student.

The Obama administration made some changes to NCLB to alter the consequences of not meeting proficiency standards. Changes were also made to the method of teacher evaluation that NCLB called for. These changes overall aimed to shift the focus from meeting standards in the subjects that were specifically tested, to preparing students for higher education and entering the workforce, which involves more than just reading and math. However, the future of NCLB is uncertain in the current administration, as President Trump intends to cut down on the Department of Education and has made little to no headway in further alterations to improve NLCB.

What NCLB has taught us is another lesson the the balance between standardization and individualization in education. The law was meant to bring all students up to the same standards, but this is not a feasible goal given all students come from different backgrounds and schools across the nation are not equipped with the same resources, so the quality of the education is evidently not the same. Federal laws should refrain from tampering with the states pre existing academic standards and focus on leveling the playing field in our schools based on outside factors, such as monetary funds and resources. The federal laws preceding NCLB aimed to provide every student no matter their background the chance to receive quality education in a safe and healthy environment. NCLB failed because it effectively punished schools and students for not meeting arbitrary standards rather than finding the root of the below average education in certain schools. In the future, the law need not punish schools but rather allocate money and resources to address the varying issues that are causing American schools to fall behind compared to international education.