March 30, 2007 | Volume 4, Issue 1
No Child Left Behind: A Review
The No Child Left Behind Act represents a dramatic shift in education policy, but not all of its changes have proven successful. This review highlights where we stand, and where we need to go, focusing on the ‘good’, the ‘tepid’, and the ‘ugly’ truths of NCLB.
Strong, world-class education is a fundamental component of America’s future, and securing quality education must be considered our national priority. After several earlier education bills failed to instigate sweeping change, George W. Bush seized legislative reform via his No Child Left Behind Act—a wide-ranging educational reform bill that promised increased accountability, higher standards and greater student proficiency in reading and mathematics.
Education policy reform has a robust contemporary history. Since the early 80s, when America became concerned with the ‘rising tide of mediocrity,’ reform has been a hot-button issue. Despite the constant ballyhooing by Presidents, Governors and legislators, there has been little improvement. The lack of improvement is especially pronounced across racial lines—the achievement gap is still significant (and by some standards, growing). On math and reading metrics, black 17 year-old teenagers scored at the same level as white 13 year-olds.1
Yet, reform measures are starting to yield results. The 2005–2006 school year educational assessment tests indicate that 9-year-olds have the highest reading scores in 30 years. For the first time, all 50 states are making systematic and standardized evaluations of their students.2
NCLB represented a fundamental departure in both methodology and expectations, exemplified by its goal of 100% reading and math proficiency by 2014. Yet the NCLB Act is far from being fully successful, is far from being fully implemented and is far from perfect. To highlight where we stand, while also addressing where we need to go, this review will focus on the truths—the good, the tepid and the ugly truths of NCLB.
The Good
The NCLB is truly remarkable in that it represents a dramatic shift in education policy: setting deadlines, creating benchmarks and having national standards are no longer considered non-traditional or wrong.3 NCLB‘s focus on data driven decision making is commendable because it has brought about institutional changes where softer, less rigid reform did not. NCLB has fundamentally shifted the way educational achievement is evaluated by breaking down school data into as many as 36 distinct subgroups. Schools are no longer defined by ‘meta-measures,’ but by student population groups—whites, blacks, students with disability, free/reduced lunch students, etc. Schools are now evaluated in a comprehensive manner, ensuring that all students—not just the majority—are being adequately served by our public education institutions.
The NCLB‘s holistic, quantitative approach has been able to uncover inadequacies within schools that were traditionally considered “successful.” According to Mike Petrilli, former top Bush Administration official and current Fordham Foundation analyst, the NCLB accomplished something that was “really revolutionary in most suburbsâ¦it has prompted many suburban districts to form co-ops that share ways to help previously neglected minority students.”4 No one approach to education is considered sacrosanct—especially approaches that are beneficial to the white majority, while harmful to ethnic, disabled and non-native English speaking minorities. Non-traditional students stand to benefit tremendously from the legislation and its focus on the underserved.
The Tepid
To many, NCLB has had mixed effects. It’s considered incredibly costly by nearly all sides of the debate—critiques have called the Act bloated and excessive as well as underfunded and woefully inadequate. Some estimates place the cost of NCLB‘s testing requirements at more than $7 billion per year; it requires almost 200 additional tests for the average student per state, and the federal government has not supplied a complimentary increase in funding for testing.5
NCLB is also plagued by its inconsistent data collection standards. While the NCLB act has created a wealth of social sciences data, inconsistent or non-existent guidelines for data collection limits usefulness. Varying methods for measuring student progress under NCLB makes comparison inconsistent.6
These problems have been augmented by the Department of Education, which has been (paradoxically) both heavy-handed with and unsupportive of NCLB—it has been firm and resolute with holding all states to the minimums specified by NCLB, but critics contend that the level of support offered to states to create realistic and constructive programs is unworkably low.7
The Ugly
Empirical evidence is beginning to show that the fundamental assumption—that achievement-focused education systems incentivize improvement—is flawed. A recent four-part Harvard Education study found that test-driven systems don’t incentivize improvement and that they hurt minority and high-poverty schools—often leaving these schools dramatically worse off.8 NCLB has also been criticized for its draconian accountability standards. If less than 95% of students take the test, a school fails. If just one sub-group shows lackluster improvement, the school fails—even if 35 out of 36 sub-groups of that school have made considerable improvement, the school fails.9
NCLB has also suffered from funding shortfalls since its adoption. Bush’s 2008 proposed budget underfunded NCLB by $14.8 billion, and the Act has an overall cumulative shortfall of $70.9 billion.10 Furthermore, Congress has failed every year since its passage to negotiate greater appropriations to meet the minimum level of funding dictated by NCLB.11 Funding of the NCLB is considered so controversial that several states have threatened to pull out of the program; Connecticut’s Attorney General has launched a formal lawsuit against the Department of Education. States, as well as Connecticut’s lawsuit, argue that such an increased level of testing and accountability without a complimentary increase in funds amounts to an unfunded mandate that’s an unfair burden on state coffers.12
What Should Stay
The NCLB Act is not a lost cause. It has had some very positive effects on America’s educational system. As a result of its emphasis on established, researched teaching methods, NCLB has trained over 103,000 teachers in phonics and reading strategies documented to improve student performance.13 Furthermore, NCLB‘s increased emphasis on data-driven decision making with a concurrent rise in the amount of data sharing available among teachers has been largely beneficial. Giving teachers full and easy access to their students’ academic and testing information allows them to spot each child’s and class’ shortcomings and help tailor new lesson plans to target subjects in which students are struggling. Data sharing fosters collaboration across school departments to improve the welfare of students.14
What Should Change
Change the Culture of NCLB
A lot of NCLB‘s successes are considered its weaknesses. The cultural emphasis on established, researched materials needs to be removed; teachers should be given toolkits, not mandates. Teachers should still be encouraged to experiment and such successful experimentation should be awarded.15
The emphasis on achievement-driven environments needs to be reduced as well. An Arizona State University study studied the effect of environments where rigorous testing decides students’ graduations, teachers’ bonuses and school closings and found that they offer little to improve achievement and may actually worsen academic performance and dropout rates.16
Redefine improvement metrics
District-wide Evaluations
Harsh standards applied to individual schools encourages districts to shuttle around low-performers and inhibits greater community progress. A renewed NCLB should make evaluative measures district (or sub-district) dependent—schools should be targeted once an entire school district (or sub-district) is identified as failing. Additionally, the larger sample sizes afforded by a district-wide approach would prevent substantially sized sub-groups from being excluded due to poor performance at individual schools. While this approach would make it make it harder to find black sheep in strong flocks, it would also reward districts that achieve holistic improvements.
Aggregating NCLB‘s 36 sub-groups by school district would allow districts to leverage their cumulative resources to combat ailing schools; when an entire district is in jeopardy, an entire district will rise to find a solution. Focusing on individual schools encourages communities to scapegoat problem schools, instead of diligently engaging the larger community towards improved educational solutions.
Growth-model Testing
Currently, NCLB‘s testing model does not allow comparison of each student’s progress, but rather a school’s progress. A test administered in 4th grade does not tell you how a class improved over their 3rd grade performance, but how they compare to last year’s 4th grade class. Students are not being compared to their own history, but a school’s history when measuring progress. While this can be a useful metric, it does not adequately measure what NCLB purports to improve: individual student improvement. In order to more successfully measure student improvement, states should be mandated to adopt growth-model testing.
Growth-models test students at the beginning, end and throughout the school year. This method allows students’ abilities and strengths to be measured at the start of a school year and then reevaluated at the end of the school year. The school’s education impact is measured. With growth-model testing educators can evaluate their programs based on students’ performances, not year-to-year comparisons. Growth-model testing has been experimented with in Massachusetts—it has been able to match previously used measures in efficacy and is an affordable solution—an average program is approximately $13 per student, per year.17
Improved Testing for Students with Disabilities
Under the current NCLB sub-group structure, students with disabilities are tested using the same measures as all other students. This causes a distortion when evaluating whether or not a school is making academic progress. The State of Georgia reevaluated schools that failed to meet NCLB standards since 2003. They found that half of the 18 schools in Columbia County that failed did so because they didn’t improve the scores of students with disabilities, and four of 17 failing schools in Richmond County failed for the same reason.18
Testing students with disabilities with the same measures used for all other students does an injustice to both the student and their school. Students and schools are left at a disservice when students with disabilities are tested using an evaluative tool that has not been designed for them, distorting testing results.
Implement new data polices
Data collection should be seen as a boost to teacher creativity, not a hindrance. New, more elaborate student data centers and systems will allow teachers to create more flexible lesson plans and then have those lesson plans quantitatively reviewed. Allow our nation’s schools to become academic labs—each trying to cook up the best solution to educational problems. Data lets you reward teachers with bonuses, discover new teaching methods and quantitatively define what makes a good teacher. Data should be used to inform a system, not define it.
Focus on poverty distribution
Schools with a larger distribution of poor students perform poorly. Of schools that are considered consistently high-performing, 1% are high-poverty schools; 24% are low-poverty schools.19 High-poverty schools are unacceptable—we need more economically diverse schools. Including poverty in the metrics for how a school’s health is assessed and limiting maximum poverty levels means that low-income students will be removed from harmful school environments and placed in more beneficial middle-class schools.
Studies have shown that low-income students perform better in middle-class environments than middle-class students do in low-income environments—showing that it’s the social environment that really matters—we need to get students into middle-income areas.20 This is highlighted by the spending discrepancy between low-income and middle-income areas. In 2003, affluent districts spent a cost-adjusted $7,510 per pupil compared to $6,254 in high-poverty districts—such inequality should be the target of NCLB.21
Review
NCLB set an idealistic goal of total proficiency by 2014. While commendable, the goal is probably short-sighted, especially considering the ugly and tepid truths of the policy.22 In the end, the NCLB doesn’t represent a dramatic shift, but just a first step in educational reform: encouraging data driven decision making, greater education equality and increased accountability. The truths—the good, the tepid and the ugly truths—demonstrate that the NCLB cannot be seen as a mission accomplished; it has proven to be woefully inadequate and embarrassingly underfunded. But the NCLB has laid the ground for continued, expansive reform. With thoughtful retooling, the No Child Left Behind Act can be made to serve its original goal: to assure improved quality and equality in America’s educational system.
References:
1 Moe, Terry and Bracey, Gerald. “Put to the Test” Stanford Magazine. July/August 2006
2 Peterson, Kavan. “No letup in unrest over Bush school law” Stateline.org, a project of the Pew Research Center. July 7, 2005.
3 Shaul, Marnie. “No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements needed in Education’s Process for Tracking
States’ Implementation of Key Provisions.” Report to Congress. Government Accountability Office. September 2004. Washington DC.
4 Toppo, Greg. “How Bush Education Law Has Changed Our Schools” USA Today. Jan 8, 2007. Pg. A1
5 Karp, Stan. “Critique of No Child Left Behind”. Rethinking Schools. Spring 2003.
6 Shaul, Marnie. “No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements needed in Education’s Process for Tracking States’ Implementation of Key Provisions.” Report to Congress. Government Accountability Office. September 2004. Washington DC.
7 The Nation. “Few States Meet School Equity Roles; An analysis finds little adherence to the No Child Left Behind Act five years after passage” Los Angeles Times. August 11, 2006. pg. A.29
8 Goldstein, Lisa. “Harvard Analysis is Critical of ‘No Child’ Law” Education Week. Feb 18, 2004
9 Moe, Terry and Bracey, Gerald. “Put to the Test” Stanford Magazine. July/August 2006
10 Harkin, Senator Tom. “Chairman Harkin Comments on ‘Federal Funding for the No Child Left Behind Act.” US Fed News Service. Washington, D.C.: Mar 14, 2007. pg. n/a
11 Kahlenberg, Richard. “Can Separate Be Equal? The Overlooked Flaw at the Center of No Child Left Behind” Reality Check. A Century Foundation
12 NPR:Morning Edition “Analysis: Margaret Spellings announces several changes to the No Child Left Behind Act under mounting opposistion from educators and state legislatures” Morning Edition. Washington, D.C.: Apr 8, 2005. pg. 1
13 Toppo, Greg. “How Bush Education Law Has Changed Our Schools” USA Today. Jan 8, 2007. Pg. A1
14 Walsh, James. “Rx for test scores may be just what the doctor ordered; Schools are applying hardnosed data analysis to help improve learning” StarTribune. Minneapolis, Minn.: Sep 19, 2005. pg. 1.A
15 Toppo, Greg. “How Bush Education Law Has Changed Our Schools” USA Today. Jan 8, 2007. Pg. A1
16 Karp, Stan. “Critique of No Child Left Behind”. Rethinking Schools. Spring 2003.
17 Denison, Dave. “Gimme Data; Why Some Massachusetts Educators Want More Testing, Not Less.” The Boston Globe. November 20, 2005. IDEAS; Pg. E1.
18 Greg Gelpi, Donnie Fetter, Julia Sellers. “Some Educators Still See Problems with Act” The Augusta Chronicle. Augusta, Ga.: Jan 8, 2007. pg. A.01
19 Kahlenberg, Richard. “Can Separate Be Equal? The Overlooked Flaw at the Center of No Child Left Behind” Reality Check. A Century Foundation
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Hoff, David. “Researchers ask whether NCLB‘s Goals for Proficiency Are Realistic” Education Week; Nov 29, 2006; Volume 26, Edition 13