Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps
Foreword
The No Child Left Behind Act has hundreds of pages of complex provisions but simple and unambiguous goals. It embodies President Bush’s promise to end the “soft racism of low expectations” by closing racial achievement gaps and bringing all students to proficiency within the next eight years. It creates unprecedented measurement of academic progress in two subjects (with science being added later) through mandated yearly tests in elementary and middle school and requires that all children from all racial and ethnic groups attain 100% proficiency. Schools are required, under threat of strict sanctions, to raise achievement each year in math and reading and to eliminate the achievement gap by race, ethnicity, language, and special education status.
The bipartisan bargain that led to the enactment of the law was designed around hope of dramatic educational progress spurred by large increases in federal aid and strict accountability. Many of the high poverty schools the law aimed to change had limited resources, poorly trained teachers, and instability of both student enrollment and staffing, making it very difficult to accomplish large educational breakthroughs without large increases in funds and major reforms. Unfortunately, after the first year, the promised resources were not provided but the very demanding standards remained in place. As it stands, the act can best be understood to represent the theory that large gains in achievement and equity can be quickly coerced out of the existing public school system without additional resources or long-term systemic reforms that take years to accomplish.
Given the bitter controversy over the wisdom and fairness of the basic structure of the law, which mandates reaching these 100% goals and only sanctions when they are not met, it is extremely important to determine whether or not the law is working on its own terms. With four years having passed since the law was first enacted, we must now ask whether the policies that have already labeled more than a fourth of all American schools as failures and initiated sanctions against them have succeeded.
This report concludes that neither a significant rise in achievement, nor closure of the racial achievement gap is being achieved. Small early gains in math have reverted to the preexisting pattern. If that is true, all the pressure and sanctions have, so far, been in vain or even counterproductive. The federal government is providing $412 million a year to help pay for part of the additional testing required by the law and many states claim that they are being forced to divert state funds to testing and other provisions they believe are unnecessary.
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