Looking through the eyes of an educator

When one is trying to develop a plan that will affect all children and educators alike one would think that the ones doing the educating would be the best to formulate such a plan. Sadly, all the educators I know are not happy with the plan and never were happy with it. My father, a principal, and I have had really good conversation about this topic and he found the plan ridiculous from the begining. When the no child left behind legislation was put into place he told me that a few years down the road the plan would really begin to show its negative effects. When he told me this I asked why, and he said that I probably wouldn't understand, but that the legislation asked for something that was impossible.
To begin with, it is impossible for all students to be on grade level. Next, it is not always the schools and or teachers fault if a student is not on grade level. Third, how could someone accuratly tell whether a student is on grade level just by a test. These are just a few of the problems that educators have with the no child left behind legislation. These are things that are near impossible to get around, yet legislators feel that they can ignore them and make generalizations. To those who are not affected by these generalizations, including legislators, this may not be a big deal, but when your job depends on it this is a very big deal. Many good teachers have lost jobs because of this very plan. Many good principals have been fired because they were not about to keep up with the improvement precentages required of them. This legislation was designed to support teachers, but it has done more harm than good. I hope that the government will learn from the mistakes of this plan and make the next one much more educator and student friendly, as we ll as having resonable goals. Otherwise it will fail just like no child left behind has.