New Studies Analyze 'No Child Left Behind'
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 4/12/2005
New studies of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) provide useful information on progress made and problems left under the law. The Center for Education Policy (CEP), the Public Education Network (PEN), and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation all released their reports this year.CEP's study, its third annual survey of NCLB, relies on extensive surveys of states and school district case studies.
"After three years of No Child Left Behind, state and district officials have made it clear: student performance is up and achievement gaps are closing," said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of CEP.
But Jennings and his colleagues have concerns about the capacity of states to provide effective help to schools that have failed to make adequate progress and that are listed as "in need of improvement" under the law.
Currently some 6,000 Title I schools in the nation (13 percent of all such schools) have been identified as in need of improvement. Many states are worried about whether they have the staff or expertise to meet the needs of these schools. Districts also report particular problems in meeting the needs of English language learners and students with disabilities.
On another much-debated question, the report says that many districts have "increased the mandatory time spent on reading and math though not radically."
Diane Stark Rentner, CEP deputy director, notes that "the law is having some impact on nearly all of the 12,000 school districts that receive Title I funds. For some districts, especially smaller, rural districts, it is the highly qualified teacher provisions that are having the greatest impact; for other districts, such as those with diverse student populations, nearly all aspects of NCLB are affecting the way they educate students."
A second study was conducted by PEN, a national organization that works to improve public schools and build citizen support for quality education in low income communities.
PEN's methodology differed from CEP's, and included holding hearings on NCLB in eight states and synthesizing the opinions of hundreds who testified and the more than 12,000 people who took part in an online survey.
A core finding of the report, "Open to the Public: Speaking Out on No Child Left Behind," was that "the American Public strongly supports the goals of NCLB," with "particularly strong support for the notion of holding schools accountable for improving student performance."
At the same time, the report stressed the need for effective enforcement of NCLB, particularly the law's parent involvement provisions, including requirements that parents and the community be informed about key matters such as school performance and teacher quality. The report identified a widespread concern among parents that school administrators were reluctant to provide needed information.
The report also highlighted several needs, including having strong standards for teacher quality; having more work done to develop better assessments; conducting monitoring to ensure that standards are not diluted; and working to bolster resources.
In addition, new reports by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation have sparked a debate about whether state standards are high enough for NCLB to accomplish its ambitious goal of ensuring a quality education for all students by the year 2014.
Under NCLB, states must measure the English and math performance of all students and ensure that every subgroup of students - regardless of race, gender, English learning level, or disability - in all public schools make progress every year toward universal proficiency. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years can be required to offer supplemental services and give students the option of transferring to better performing schools. If problems persist, schools can be subject to state takeover, reorganization as charter schools, or closure.
The Fordham Foundation's reports, "The State of State Math Standards 2005" and "The State of State English Standards 2005," appraised the condition of state curriculum standards. The studies noted that since the passage of NCLB three years ago, every state has revised its academic standards in the subjects of math and English language arts. While some improvements have been made, especially in English, state standards are still unsatisfactory, according to the reports. The Fordham Foundation claims that these weak state curriculum standards make it difficult for the reforms put into place by NCLB to succeed.
Fordham evaluated state standards based on the extent to which they clearly spell out suitable goals for the skills and knowledge that children should have by the end of each grade. The studies gave only California, Indiana, and Massachusetts "A" grades in both math and English.
Researchers gave the majority of states low approval grades due to several consistent problems. Chief among them were vague requirements that lack specific content guidelines, over-emphasis on questionable teaching methods of basic skills (including the excessive use of calculators), and failure to build in an incremental or coherent way on skills and knowledge learned in previous grades. The math standards in 29 states were deemed so poor as to rate a "D" or "F" grade.
Critics of NCLB have suggested that states have lowered their requirements in order to meet adequate yearly progress demands. According to Bob Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, "No Child Left Behind encourages states to manipulate test scores to look good, instead of really meeting the needs of the children who are left behind." To support their arguments, some NCLB detractors point to the fact that, in every state, more students passed their state tests than achieved proficiency on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).
NAEP, which is often called the "Nation's Report Card" and is widely considered to set a high performance standard, is a set of mandatory reading and math tests administered to a sample of 4th and 8th grade students every two years. NCLB made these tests mandatory for states that take federal Title I funds (NAEP also offers tests in other subject areas, but those remain voluntary).
Direct comparisons are difficult because NAEP is administered to a random sample state-wide and cannot be used to evaluate individual schools or students. NAEP is also administered in the spring and may reflect an extra year of learning relative to state test that are usually given in the fall.
Despite these differences, Congress intended that NAEP be used as an indicator of the integrity of state standards. In states where there is a wide gap between state standard results and NAEP results, the Department of Education may undertake further investigation.
The idea that states are deliberately lowering their standards is not a universally held position. The Fordham Foundation reports recognized that state standards have made progress, albeit minimal, since the passage of NCLB, particularly in English.
Proponents of NCLB point out that, exactly as it was intended to do, the law's strict accountability measures have caused some districts to reach out to students and their families in order to help them raise their test scores. In testimony before the House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus and the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, Krista Kafer of the Heritage Foundation testified that "spurred by the NCLB, schools are reaching out to Latino families in order to improve achievement."
State standards are expected to improve even more due to a recent announcement that thirteen states are committed to making high school classes and tests more rigorous.
"This is the biggest step states can take to restore the value of the high school diploma," said Republican Governor Bob Taft of Ohio.
By raising high school standards, states are hoping to prepare every stude
