No Child Left Behind Act
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The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), commonly known as NCLB is a United States federal law that reauthorizes a number of federal programs that aim to improve the performance of America's primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, school districts and schools, as well as providing parents more flexibility in choosing which schools their children will attend. Additionally, it promotes an increased focus on reading and re-authorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).
The effectiveness and desirability of the Act's measures continue to be a matter of vigorous debate. On May 3, 2005, Utah governor Jon Huntsman signed a measure into state law that allows that state's districts to ignore provisions of the law that conflict with that state's programs, making it the first state to enact such a law. The Department of Education has threatened to withhold federal education funding as a result.
Background
This act is the latest of a number of federal laws implementing education reform. The best known law previously was Goals 2000, which was essentially federal codification of the principles of Outcomes Based Education, and which helped prompt many states to adopt Performance Based Tests such as WASL and CLAS, along with other controversial methods of teaching reading, mathematics, and science. Key to OBE was the concept taken from TQM of measuring quality and implementing processes which would result in continual improvement. One of the key architects of NCLB was Sandy Kress, who was also instrumental in the Texas version of OBE, the TAAS test.The act is the result of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind proposals Bush campaigned on during the 2000 presidential campaign. Several of the proposals were based on the reform strategies instituted by President Bush during his tenure as governor of Texas.
The act began as House Resolution 1 in March 2001 during the 107th Congress. The 670 page act was eventually passed by the House of Representatives on December 13, 2001 by a vote of 381-41. It passed in the Senate by a vote of 87-10 on December 18, 2001. It was signed into law by President Bush on January 8, 2002 at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio. On hand for the signing ceremony were Democratic Rep. George Miller of California, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Secretary of Education Rod Paige, Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, and Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.
Teachers' unions such as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have opposed NCLB reforms almost from inception, and have worked to both weaken the law's provisions and to turn around public perception of the law and its necessity. The unions question NCLB's effectiveness as presently written and funded, and note a number of difficulties school districts face in implementing its provisions. Supporters of NCLB's reforms on the other hand claim that union opposition has more to do with the fact that key provisions of the law will have the effect of reducing union income as unionized school districts with failing schools are forced to reconstitute and teachers are in some cases no longer required to join unions. In inner city school districts where public school students consistently under-perform, this union resistance to NCLB has often pitted the teachers' unions against parents who see their children's low performance as indicative of poor instruction. The teachers' counter-argument often stresses research suggesting that a student's home environment plays a larger part in determining his or her test scores than does the school environment.
In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education entered into a contract with Ketchum Inc. to promote the law. A $240,000 subcontract was provided to the Graham Williams Group which included political commentator Armstrong Williams promoting the act via his television show and additionally television and radio advertisements. [Department of Education press release], dated January 13, 2005 USA Today reported that his contract included the stipulation that he "regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts." Rep. Miller, a member of the House Education Committee, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal". Armstrong said that he "wanted to do it because it's something I believe in", but later said "my judgment was not the best. I wouldn't do it again, and I learned from it." [link] [link] The same public relations firm that arranged Williams' contract also produced a video promoting the No Child Left Behind Act designed to come across as a news story. The advertisements were pulled after a similar ad for the new Medicare ad was challenged by the Government Accountability Office for being 'covert propaganda', which is against federal law. The firm also provided the Department of Education with monthly rankings of reporters based on how they cover the law. [link]
Despite the fierce controversy about the law among educators, a Gallup survey found as many as seven in 10 Americans say they don't know enough to have an opinion about No Child Left Behind. [link] The same is true for parents, where 55 percent say they don't know enough to say whether the law is improving local public education or not. Broadly speaking, opinion surveys have shown strong public support for the concept of setting and enforcing standards in public schools, including the use of testing. But a recent survey by the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that parents now view other issues, like school funding and discipline, as more pressing. [link]
Major Provisions
Adequate Yearly Progress
No Child Left Behind requires States to create an accountability system of assessments, graduation rates, and other indicators. Schools have to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), as determined by the state, by raising the achievement levels of subgroups of students such as African Americans, Latinos, low-income students, and special education students to a state-determined level of proficiency. All students must be proficient by the 2013-2014 school year. An escalating set of assistance is provided to students who are in schools that repeatedly do not improve.Schools receiving Title I funds that do not meet AYP requirements for two consecutive years will be identified "in need of improvement" and required to offer parents the option of sending their children to another public school within the district. Upon being identified as "in need of improvement" the school is also required to develop or revise an existing school improvement plan which must be approved by the district. If the school does not meet targets the next year, supplemental educational services such as tutoring and after school programs must also be offered in addition to the option to transfer. If the school continues in "in need of improvement" status the following year it will be required to take corrective action such as removing relevant staff, implementing new curriculum, decreasing management authority, appointing outside experts to advise the school, extending the length of the school day or year or restructuring the school's internal organization. Only schools receiving Title I funds are subject to these sanctions.[34 CFR Part 200 Title I Final Regulations]
Teacher Quality
The No Child Left Behind act requires that by the end of the 2005-2006 school year all teachers will be "highly qualified" as defined in the law. A highly qualified teacher is one who has fulfilled the state's certification and licensure requirements. New teachers must meet the following requirements:
- Possess at least a bachelor's degree
- At the elementary level they must pass a state test demonstrating their subject knowledge and teaching skills in reading/language arts, writing, mathematics and other areas of basic elementary school curriculum.
- At the middle and high school levels they must pass a state test in each academic subject area they teach, plus have either an undergraduate major, a graduate degree, coursework equivalent to an undergraduate major or an advanced certification or credentialing.
For further information see the [Teacher Quality Guidance] from the U.S. Department of Education.
Student Testing
The progress of all students will be measured annually in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and at least once during high school. By the end of the 2007-2008 school year, testing will also be conducted in science once during grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12.Parent Involvement
In order to better inform parents, states are required to issue detailed report cards on the status of schools and districts. Under the law, parents must also be informed when their child is being taught by a teacher who does not meet "highly qualified" status. Schools are also required to include and involve parents in the school improvement planning process.Scientifically Based Research
The phrase ["scientifically based research"] is found 111 times in the text of the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools are required to use "scientifically based research" strategies in the classroom and for professional development of staff. Research meeting this label, which includes only a small portion of the total research conducted in the field of education and related fields, must involve large quantitative studies using control groups as opposed to partially or entirely qualitative or ethnographic studies, research methodologies which may suggest different teaching and professional development strategies.Public School Choice
Schools identified as needing improvement are required to provide students with the opportunity to take advantage of public school choice no later than the beginning of the school year following their identification for school improvement. NCLB authorized – and Congress has subsequently appropriated – a substantial increase in funding for Title I aid, in part to provide funding for school districts to implement the law’s parental choice requirements. -- From NCLB FAQs in External Links.Claims made in favor of the Act
- Introduces an element of accountability into public school education and the expenditure of public funds for education.
- Links State academic content standards with student outcomes.
- Requires schools and districts to focus their attention on the academic achievement of traditionally under-served groups of children, such as low-income students, students with disabilities, and Blacks and Latinos. Many previous state-created systems of accountability only measured average school performance, allowing schools to be highly rated even if they had large achievement gaps between affluent and disadvantaged students.
- Supports early literacy through the Early Reading First initiative.
- Increases the quality of education. Schools are required to improve their performance under NCLB by implementing "scientifically based research" practices in the classroom, parent involvement programs, and professional development activities.
- Establishes the foundation for schools and school districts to significantly enhance parental involvement and improved administration through the use of the assessment data to drive decisions on instruction, curriculum and business practices.
- Measures student performance: a student's progress in reading and math must be measured annually in grades 3 through 8 and at least once during high school via standardized tests.
- Emphasizes reading, writing, math and science achievement through a number of "core academic subjects" that include subjects as diverse as algebra and art.
- Provides information for parents by requiring states and school districts to give parents detailed report cards on schools and districts explaining the school's AYP performance. Schools must also inform parents when their child is being taught by a teacher or para-professional who does not meet "highly qualified" requirements.
- Gives options to students enrolled in schools failing to meet AYP. If a school fails to meet AYP targets two or more years running, the school must offer eligible children the chance to transfer to higher-performing local schools, receive free tutoring, or attend after-school programs.
- Gives school districts the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency, even for subgroups that do not meet State minimum achievement (AYP) standards, through a process called "safe harbor," a precursor to growth-based or value-added assessments.
- Increases flexibility to state and local agencies in the use of federal education money.
- Provides more resources to schools. Federal funding for education has increased 59.8% from 2000 to 2003.
- Seeks to narrow class and racial gaps in school performance by creating common expectations for all.
- Addresses widespread perceptions that public education results fall short of expectations.
Claims made in opposition to the Act
- Supports early learning, an approach criticized in Better Late Than Early by Raymond and Dorothy Moore.
- Requires public secondary schools to provide military recruiters the same access to facilities as a school provides to higher education institution recruiters. Schools are also required to provide contact information for every student to the military if requested, but students or parents can opt out of having their information shared. [link]
- Organizations such as ACORN have criticized the unwillingness of the federal government to "fully fund" the act. While promoted by President Bush and applauded by both parties, neither the Senate nor the White House has requested funding up to the authorized levels for several programs such as Title I. Republicans in Congress have viewed these authorized levels as spending caps, not spending promises, and have pointed out that President Clinton never requested the full amount of funding authorized under the previous ESEA law. [link]
- Testing is not coupled with plans and funding to remedy problems that might be detected by the testing. Instead, a system of increasing punishments is provided to take away resources from schools (i.e. from the students and employees of schools) which exhibit failing threshold scores.
- Some school districts object to the limitation created by the "scientifically based research standard."
- Because schools, districts, and states are punished if they fail to make adequate progress according to the goals they themselves establish, the incentives are to set expectations lower rather than higher [link] and to increase segregation by class and race and push low-performing students out of school altogether [link]. The schools, districts, and states are also potentially set to game the system by manipulating which students are included or excluded from test-taking (to enhance apparent school performance) and by creative reclassification of drop-outs (to reduce unfavorable statistics) [link].
- States and school districts should be granted greater freedom to target assistance to schools with the most extensive academic difficulties.
- Proponents of a strong public education system believe NCLB will potentially pave the way for a system of Federally funded vouchers, significantly weakening public education.
- NCLB violates conservative principles by federalizing education and setting a precedent for further erosion of state and local control. Libertarians and some conservatives believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority in education.
- Students with learning disabilities do not receive extra help when taking the standardized tests, and can jeopardize the assigned rating the entire school is given. While the Federal Department of Education has taken steps to try to resolve the issue, many still believe they have not done enough.
- Students who are learning English have a 3 year window to take assessments in their native language, after which they must demonstrate proficiency on an English language assessment. In practice, however, only 10 states test any students in their native language (almost entirely Spanish speakers).[link] The vast majority of English language learners are given English language assessments, which are neither valid nor reliable in measuring what they know.[link]
- Focus on improving the average student's education may ignore individual differences between students, and potentially harm both special and gifted education programs.
- Surveys of public school principals indicate that since the implementation of NCLB, instructional time has increased for reading, writing, and math (subjects tested under the law), and decreased for the arts, elementary social studies, and foreign languages.[link] Some critics of the law suggest it is also responsible for the elimination of certain extracurricular activities.
- NCLB places a focus on the standardized testing mandatory for each student, therefore forcing the educators to focus on points covered in testing rather than what they think is important for children to learn. Standardized tests can be irrelevant to students' developmental learning.
- While addressing the issue of "achievement gaps" (such as that between affluent and disadvantaged students) NCLB fails to address how possible "effort gaps" between the same groups affect the achievement gap. An effort gap can be attributed to such factors as hours of quality study time per week, diligence in completing homework assignments, attitude, discipline, and parental support.
- Standardized testing, the measure by which the Act evaluates competency, has been historically accused of cultural bias, and the practice of determining educational quality by testing students has been called into question.
- NCLB is not longitudinal, in that it looks at students in certain grades from year to year. Thus, the same group of students are not tested to measure the difference in performance between years, and differences between classes from year to year is ignored. Rather it compares one group in a particular grade level to a totally different group the next year in that grade level.
- NCLB places the focus on how the school is progressing toward AYP not the individual student
Section 9528
No Child Left Behind Act has been criticized, especially for section 9528 [link], requiring schools to provide names, addresses and other personal information for military recruiters.
- [...] each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings.
Name
The name's most likely origin is the motto of the liberal advocacy group The Children's Defense Fund, "Leave No Child Behind", but which may also stem from Atticus Finch's speech in To Kill a Mockingbird, in which he chastises the government for working so hard to not let one child be left behind the other, more advanced children. The more advanced children are being pulled back to the government's idea of a normal level instead of being further pushed ahead of the other students.External links
- [School Ranking Data based on NCLB] (subscription required)
- [NCLB Desktop Reference] (147 pages)
- [NCLB Desktop Reference] (online version, includes microsoft documents and PDF links)
- [Text of No Child Left Behind Act]
- [No Child Left Behind: Testing, Reporting, and Accountability]
- [Remarks by President Bush at signing ceremony]
- [No Child Left Behind FAQs] (PDF)
- [Facts About NCLB Funding]
- [Implications of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 for Teacher Education]
- [Read Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding the No Child Left Behind Act]
- [National Institute for Literacy]
- [Analysis of NCLB]
- [Comments by Secretary of Education]
- [No Child Left Behind: Misguided Accountability System for English Language Learners]
- [Linda Perlstein, The Nation 21 October 2004, "The Issue Left Behind"]
- "[White House paid commentator to promote law]", 7 January 2005, Greg Toppo, USA Today
- [President Discusses No Child Left Behind and High School Initiatives], Speech text and video, 12 January 2005
- ["The ABCs of AYP"] Explanation of the NCLB accountability system from The Education Trust
- ["No Child Left Behind"] NCLB: Education Reform, but Not Without Controversy
- [No Child Left Behind] at Wikia
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