Studies have been conducted by the Department of Education and Development to assess the level of knowledge achieved by students by the time they reached the senior year of high school. The results indicated that there needed to be improvements in education made because some students considered eligible to receive a high school diploma were unable to read past the reading level expected of a fifth grader. Children were being left behind in knowledge while being pushed through the education system to make room for others coming up behind them.



Since every State receive Federal monies to finance the education costs of constituents in the State, the Federal Government determined that the low education levels obtained by students were not a good return on the monies spent. The No Child Left Behind program put stricter guidelines into place, and for six years, the program was monitored and was considered to be a success by many States, although Federal viewpoints did not agree with the assessment. Funding for that program was put on hold and improvements in Education were returned to the States responsibility.

Many States responded enthusiastically to the challenges of making improvements in education on many levels. Some school systems instituted after school training programs that helped children with homework, and assisted them in learning basic mathematical calculations that would help them later in life when they reached adulthood. The students with the greatest financial needs of obtaining a quality education were the focus of the No Child Left Behind program, but other students benefited from it too, although those successes were not recorded.

All States reviewed the education programs in place and made improvements when funds were available. Public schools had degenerated on many levels and some monies were spent on making the classroom habitable and more conducive to making a child want to learn. Public school teachers often bear the cost of providing learning materials for the classroom, and funding was provided by the States to give students more aids to learn by. Interactive computer games were purchased and children had the option of using these programs as part of a learning rewards program.

As school learning environments improved, many States turned their interest to making other improvements in education. Volunteer programs were organized to use valuable resources that were free for the asking. Schools incorporated the wisdom of the elderly with the educational curriculums and children began to learn from the relationships formed through mentoring programs. Volunteers began to take school classes to places of interest about town, and children learned to combine what they learned in biology and science labs to the conditions found in local aquariums, zoos, and farms in some cases.

Other improvements in education will take time, because classes are overcrowded and new buildings are planned but not yet built. Students are learning to work around obstacles in the school system and absorb the information that is taught in the classroom. Reading programs have increased reading scores tremendously in many States, and children are no longer left behind when learning the high school curriculums.