No Child Left Behind: 10 Years Later

RAND Education experts recently discussed the state of education in our nation, as early 2012 marked the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001, or "No Child Left Behind."

These experts included:

• Brian Stecher, associate director, RAND Education and co-author, "How Federal Education Policy Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Can Support States in School Improvement"
• Daniel McCaffrey, senior statistician and co-author, "A Big Apple for Educators: New York City's Experiment with Schoolwide Performance Bonuses: Final Evaluation Report"
• Laura Hamilton, senior behavioral scientist and co-author, "Expanding Measures of School Performance Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act"
• Georges Vernez, senior social scientist and co-author, "Reauthorizing No Child Left Behind: Facts and Recommendations"

EducationWorld gathered some highlights from the discussion. The general consensus was that as a nation, we are far from confident that we’ve found the “right” way to assess students’ and schools’ progress.

Adequate Yearly Progress: A Continual Struggle

The past 10 years have seen a steady increase in the number of schools not making adequate yearly progress (AYP). As of 2010, nearly half of schools were not making AYP, and in 24 states, more than half of schools failed to meet this criterion. Because schools have a hard time exiting from a status of “not making AYP,” and because states’ goals have become more stringent over time, these dramatic statistics represent a kind of snowball effect.

This widespread missing of the mark exists despite variation from one state to the next in terms of how schools identify schools that are not making AYP. One commonality, however, is that urban schools with high-poverty and predominately minority student populations tend to fail to make AYP.

Corrective actions have included modifying “cut scores” that determine whether students are proficient, as well as allowing students to re-take tests.

Interestingly, schools report that they are receiving all the help they need in terms of improving their curricula and instruction. This help has not, however, increased student achievement.

Good News, Bad News

Some of the positive effects of NCLB have included improvements to schools’ curricula and increasing attention paid to underserved subgroups within the student population.

Some of the law’s negative effects have included (1) a reduction in time spent on subjects not assessed by standardized tests, (2) a narrowing of content within tested subjects (for example, assigning shorter reading passages, as opposed to novels), and (3) a reduction in staff morale.

Hamilton noted that the unforgiving way in which NCLB assesses student achievement is part of the challenge. Students are either proficient or not. No matter how many students who are below proficiency actually improve, if they still fail to make the cut score, this progress will not be captured. This has led to schools putting all their focus on so-called “bubble kids” – those who can be moved most easily from the below-proficient category to the proficient category.

Despite these challenges, some schools actually exceeded their student-achievement goals. These schools tended to succeed through intense, multifaceted interventions such as professional development, increasing instructional time and changing curriculum.

School Choice

One of the main innovations of NCLB, the school choice option, allows parents to transfer their children within district from an underperforming school to one that is making AYP. School choice was meant to raise student performance by introducing school-to-school competition.

Less than 2% of eligible students have transferred to a better school using the school choice option, however. Reasons include the fact that in many districts, there are no options for a better-performing school, due to district-wide failure to make AYP. In addition, there is a discrepancy between the number of schools that say they have notified parents of this option, and the number of parents who are aware of the option.

It is also likely that parents are wary of making the big transition of having their child change schools, even if his/her current school is underperforming.

What Next?

Experts agreed that assessing student progress is a complex issue. To complicate matters, state achievement targets in many cases were set in an aggressive manner without regard for how quickly change can feasibly occur.

Experts want to begin measuring the contributions of schools to student test scores, as opposed simply to what students bring to the table. Likewise, there is a call to move beyond student-level measurement to include teacher-level measurement. It’s not clear, however, exactly how this should be done, since research has led to different conclusions based on different measurement models. The concept of “value-added modeling” continues to generate controversy.

In the wake of the state waiver process, whereby schools essentially opt out of NCLB, proposed modifications to the law have included:

• Replacing the fixed target (proficient or not proficient) with a more sensitive measure of student growth;
• Comparing schools on multiple data points, as opposed to simply making a judgment of “yes or “no” regarding AYP;
• Having schools track fewer subgroups, and/or collapse all “disadvantaged” students into a single category (the original law had required tracking of upwards of 40 separate subgroups);
• Eliminating costly and underutilized Supplemental Educational Services (SES) and the ineffective school choice option and instead re-directing resources to improving school-wide instruction; and
• Tweaking standardized tests so that they measure a wider range of student skills.

Article by Celine Provini, EducationWorld Editor
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