No Child Left Behind Act turns five years old
As the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) turns five years old and Congress prepares to reauthorize it, it faces a tough future. A group of 100 education, religion, and civil rights leaders has announced an effort calling for "major changes." A cornerstone of President Bush’s domestic agenda and one of his few truly bipartisan successes, NCLB took what was once a fairly low-key funding vehicle, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and turned it into a vast and contentious book of federal mandates. It’s too early to tell whether NCLB is improving education nationwide-many schools did not get around to enacting most of its more than 1,000 pages of regulations until two or three years ago. But one thing is certain: NCLB has had a major influence on the daily experience of school for millions of kids. As a rule of thumb, the further you travel up the education food chain, the more you’ll find people like the law; ask people what they think, and the assessment gets rosier as the suit gets more expensive.
Many people express frustration over test stress. Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy (CEP) acknowledges some of the testing actually helps drive better instructional strategies. But he says teachers tell him they're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of testing, which can last six weeks in some schools. Teachers unions are among NCLB’s loudest critics. Even the law’s ardent supporters are complaining, but for a very different reason: They say states and school districts game the system by lowering their standards, because the law allows each state to set its own pass/fail bar on skills tests. The testing requirements have led schools to pump up the time they spend teaching math and reading at the expense of other subjects. But researcher Jan Hannaway of the Urban Institute theorizes that improved reading skills may help children understand other topics, even if they’re spending less time on them. And even NCLB opponents concede the law has revolutionized how schools look at poor, minority, and disabled students. If even one group fails to make "Adequate Yearly Progress," the whole school is labeled as "in need of improvement." Perhaps most significant, the law has given a handful of urban superintendents the leverage to make radical changes-they can now make the case that "federal requirements" make them necessary. The law also has forced schools to provide students in failing schools with the options of tutoring services or transfers to higher performing schools and introduced new methods for teaching reading.
Democratic Congressional leaders have signaled their stance in negotiations over the law’s renewal by calling NCLB too punitive in its sanctions on schools and pledging to increase educational spending. While NCLB’s tenets enjoy strong bipartisan support, Democrats accuse Republicans of underfinancing it by $56 billion. "We’ve learned a lot from the past five years, and we know changes are needed to help improve and strengthen the law," says Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He has proposed incentives for states to work toward common academic standards and expanding social programs for low-income children. He is also proposing a new federal role in school construction and renovation. Representative George Miller (D-CA), the new chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, is urging the President and Education Secretary Spellings to make sharp increases in spending on the impoverished schools singled out by NCLB. He says the act "has brought important changes to our public education system, for example, by shining a spotlight on the persistent achievement gap," but "if we are going to fulfill our original commitment to children and parents, then the law, its implementation and its funding must be improved." While the president has not indicated whether he will seek additional financing, Secretary Spellings indicates the administration is amenable to changes in a number of areas the Democrats suggest, including the incentives to make state standards more rigorous and uniform. She also says areas of common concern include how to test special education students and those with limited English.
USA TODAY
By Greg Toppo
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New York Times
By Diana Jean Schemo
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[Editor’s Note: The joint statement by the 100 organizations, which dub themselves the Forum on Education Accountability (FEA) and include NSBA, is posted below. For another evaluation of NCLB’s impact, see the article by CEP on "The Ten Big Effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on Public Schools." The third link is to a January 2005 resource outlining NSBA’s specific proposals for improving NCLB. While there have been some developments since then, and although the legislation that had been introduced in both houses reflecting these principles lapsed with the end of the 109th Congress, this document still reflects NSBA’s general positions.]
[FEA joint organizational statement]
[CEP "Ten Big Effects" article]
[NSBA Action Alert on basic principles of NCLB improvement]