Is the No Child Left Behind Act Working?
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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 7/19/2006
The pressures of No Child Left Behind has forced some states, like California, Oklahoma, and Texas, to lower the achievement standard that students need to be proficient in reading and math, says Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy and coauthor of the recent report "Is the No Child Left Behind Act Working?"
Why should we care? Because lowering the bar on what it means to be proficient distorts the true extent to which kids are learning, so we really have no clear knowledge of how kids are progressing. SLJ spoke to Fuller about his report, which is available by clicking here.
Were you surprised by the results of your study—that the pace of improvement in the reading abilities of elementary school students appears to have slowed in a number of states since enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Act?
Washington policymakers—on both sides of the aisle—are eager to claim that their "No Child" reformers are helping to raise test scores.
But this ambitious reform package came in January of 2002, at the tail end of the states' own efforts to clarify learning aims, test students more often, and recognize effective schools. So the slowing of progress in math and reading scores reaching a flat plateau, post-NCLB, is disappointing, but not surprising.
Why hasn't No Child Left Behind led to gains in math or reading or reduced the gaps in achievement among racial and economic groups?
State-led efforts encouraged teachers to address a clearer set of learning objectives, as well as spur more test prep and drilling children on items that appear on standardized tests. The strategy worked in several states during the 1990s, but we now see that once these instructional reforms play out inside classrooms—not without controversy—the additional punch from Washington's "No Child" reforms seems to be small, perhaps petering out.
How are state officials exaggerating progress in children's reading skills and how are they able to get away with it?
Governors and state school chiefs are under enormous pressure to show progress in student achievement. They succeeded in several cases during the 1990s, but now they have resorted to setting the definition of "proficiency"—such as, the share of children deemed proficient in reading and math—at very low levels.
In several states, the percentage of fourth graders said to be proficient in reading is 40 or 50 points higher when gauged by state testing standards compared with the more rigorous national standard.
Does the same apply to math scores?
Yes, but we have seen real progress on the share of students who became proficient in basic math inside elementary schools, since the late 1980s. Post-NCLB, this progress has leveled off in many states.
So is NCLB a failure?
No, it just suffers from being enacted at the tail end of a successful policy cycle that many states had succeeded in raising achievement in the elementary grades. But after these remarkable gains, the tools of top-down accountability became less effective.
What's your response to the DOE reaction that your report is flawed and misleading?
As review of NCLB begins next year by the new congress, the Bush administration is hard-pressed to show that their policies are working. Like any national administration, they don't like empirically based criticism. Our aim is to improve federal investment in public schools, not to bring it down.
