Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation's Children
America today faces a stark choice: do we take bold steps to accelerate progress in education and fulfill our promise to our nation’s children? Or do we risk jeopardizing the future of our nation’s children and our competitiveness in the global economy by maintaining the status quo?
Unacceptable achievement gaps pervade our schools. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment reveals a troubling truth—that African American 17-year-olds read at the same level as white 13-year-olds. The results for mathematics are just as disconcerting—only 13 percent of African American and 19 percent of Hispanic 4th graders scored at or above the proficient level on NAEP mathematics tests, compared to 47 percent of their white peers (NCES 2005).
The picture for students with disabilities and English language learners1 is also alarming—only 6 percent of 8th graders with disabilities scored at or above proficiency on NAEP reading assessments, compared with 33 percent of students without disabilities. Only 4 percent of English language learners in the 8th grade scored at or above proficiency on NAEP reading tests (NCES 2005).We are also failing to ensure that our children are academically prepared to compete with their international peers. Students in other nations consistently outperform even our top students on international tests. In international comparisons of 15-year-olds’ performance in mathematics, American students scored significantly lower than their peers in 20 of the other 28 industrialized countries participating (Lemke et al. 2004).
Contributing to this urgent picture is the fact that many students do not even finish high school. Students drop out of school at distressing rates—7,000 students every school day (Alliance for Excellent Education 2007). Worse yet, those who do make it to graduation are often left unprepared for life in an increasingly rigorous global economy.
These are significant education challenges facing the nation today. Over the past five years, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has laid the groundwork for closing those achievement gaps and improving public schools. The law, which was passed by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, had strong support from Republicans and Democrats, who agreed that standards, accountability, teacher quality and options for students were vital for improving student achievement, and that collaboration among the federal government, states and school districts—based on results rather than simple compliance—could bring about those improvements.
More than any other federal education law in history, NCLB has affected families, classrooms and school districts throughout the country. Virtually every aspect of schooling—from what is taught in elementary, middle and high school classes, to how teachers are hired, to how money is allocated—has been affected by the statute. These changes appear deeply embedded. Regardless of their opinions about the law, many agree that if the law were to disappear tomorrow, American schools would remain fundamentally transformed.
While these changes are substantial, they have not been enough. The problems that NCLB was intended to address remain. Achievement gaps between white students and racial and ethnic minorities and students with disabilities are still unconscionably large. Many schools with reputations for high quality are not educating all students, in all subject areas, to high standards. Expectations for too many students are not high enough to ensure that America can succeed and remain competitive in a global economy.
All of this has spurred both strident opposition to and hardened support for the law. Numerous bills have been introduced in Congress to address difficulties in the law’s implementation, as well as to make changes to its requirements and focus. NCLB, and the controversy and support it has generated, has sparked heated conversations around dinner tables, at school board meetings, in state legislatures and in courtrooms.
Fortunately, the consensus that produced the impetus to pass NCLB remains—a widespread commitment to closing achievement gaps and raising the academic achievement of all students. Although the extremes in the debate—those who believe the law is nearly perfect and those who believe it is fatally flawed—attract nearly all of the attention, most Americans continue to believe that the law’s principles are moving us in the right direction.
While our work has uncovered shortcomings in both implementation of the statute and some tenets of the law itself, we have concluded that this nation cannot back away from carrying on with this effort to ensure that all children achieve to high expectations. The challenge for the nation is to learn from NCLB and prior efforts and create a high-achieving education system that succeeds for every student, in every school. This system must ensure that children are academically proficient, are able to meet the demands of good citizenship and have a sense of self-worth and accomplishment that comes from a high-quality education and the opportunities it affords. We must close achievement gaps and raise achievement for all so that each child can be prepared to succeed in the future and the nation can remain preeminent in the world economy.
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