Reflection #4

I found this article for one of my methods classes and I was shocked by what I read.
A school district in LA has found that the middle school students can't read! "Our school is saying, 'Stop. Get off the train. We are going back to the beginning from the ABCs.'"
Their reading scores were terrible, "forty students bottomed out in the 1st percentile; 14 others failed to even register on the scale."
Now the middle school teachers must take time out of their classes to teach phonics! The math and science teachers can't teach from the textbook because the student can't read it.
The district has added another period to the middle school called "language," where they just learn how to read.
The article said nothing about preventing this in the future. I think something should be done in the elementary schools so the students are learning to read before they get to middle school. This is unfair to the students and teachers. What will happen when the students graduate high school and they have a 6th grade, or less, reading level? They have already suffered a great loss in their other subjects as well because of their lack of ability to read.
This is a very extreme case of how the "No Child Left Behind" Act is working to help our student. I have been told by teachers that because of this act it is very hard to hold children back a grade. If they can't read oh well, hopefully they will catch on later. Is this really what they had in mind when creating this act?