No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)
Posted by benarmstrong on 1/30/2009 9:49:59 AM.
This policy was first proposed by U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of Education.
Level of Government: National
Status: Implemented

Abstract
Background:
Each year, Congress reorients the federal bounds for and regulations of the education system via amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Historically, federalism has relegated the specifics of education policy to the states. While the federal government offers funding through block education grants to the states, it refused to attach burdensome strings to these allotments. That is, before Congress and the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 as an amendment to the initial Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
                         
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a bipartisan creation that brought George W. Bush together with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) behind the goal of implementing tougher, national standards to improve educational performance among low-income students.  NCLB carves out an unprecedentedly large role for the federal government in determining education policy.
Purpose:
To ensure that all children have “fair” and “equal” opportunity to meet a minimum achievement standard, to close the achievement gap by: 1) instituting new measures of student assessment and state accountability; 2) Ensuring high teacher quality; and 3) Identifying failing schools so that states can redress their poor academic environments.
Plans:
 Assessments and Accountability
The key to understanding NCLB’s policy innovation rests in its mandate for federally-approved state plans. In its plan, each state must set federally-approved academic standards and deliver assessments to students within the state that gauge their progress in relation to these standards. States are held to account according to a state-defined standard of “adequate yearly progress” (AYP). According to the federal government, each state’s notion of AYP must be quantitative and grounded in the assessments that each state chooses to deliver. AYP in each state must pay particular heed to the status and progress of economically-disadvantaged students. Schools that do not meet the state standards are deemed “failing.” The metric by which failing schools are determined is set at the state level and must depend upon standardized tests. Persistently failing schools may incur funding cuts.
NCLB also includes provisions for school choice. Specifically, students attending schools that are deemed to need improvement will have the option of transferring to another local public school or a charter school.
Teacher Quality
NCLB claims to give teachers more flexibility in determining their own processes and curricula for helping students succeed. However, it also confers on teachers a new responsibility for their students’ test scores.  Certain provisions in NCLB 
Turning Around Failing Schools
The purpose of mandating that states set and enforce standards that gauge students’ progress is to offer a pathway by which those who do not meet the standard can improve. NCLB mandates that failing “local educational agencies” take one of the following “corrective actions.” State agencies can defer funding from the locality, prompt the local educational agency to reform their curricula, replace lagging personnel, restructure the district administration or provide students with transportation to another local public or charter school.
Resources:
NCLB proposes a series of grant programs to state and local educational agencies that it believes will help achieve its goals. It begins programs and continues others that focus on leveling opportunity in early childhood education, promoting technology in disadvantaged locales and promoting instruction in science and math among other programs. For the six fiscal years (2002-2007), NCLB allots $116.25 Billion in local educational agency grants.

Policy Details

Specific grants are offered for early childhood programs like Reading First, Early Reading First, Even Start and Improving Literacy through School Libraries.  Tens of billions of dollars are offered for each of the first five fiscal years succeeding the bill's passage.  However, the focus of the many grant programs that NCLB continues and creates is to turn around failing schools, particularly those that serve minority and low-income populations. 

 

The bill seeks to promote math and science educations as well as rigorous academic standards.  The Star Schools Program, for example, is a project focused on improving instruction in math, science and foreign language through the use of technological communication.  NCLB allots the Star Schools Program $10 Million per year in grant funding to be used locally for the stated mission of the project.  Grants are offered in order to improve quality in terms of quantitative (test-based) academic achievement.

 

It proposes two programs – Troops-to-teachers and Transition to teaching – that encourage those in the armed forces to become primary or secondary school teachers and set more flexible certification standards for those “mid-career professionals” who are interested in teaching, but did not choose it as a career.

The Enhancing Education through Technology program offers up to $1 Billion in grants directed towards increasing educational achievement with the help of technological tools.  The program seeks to increase technological literacy for students preparing to enter secondary school.

NCLB promotes the expansion of charter and magnet schools.  It allots federal grant money to state agencies authorizing them to help fund public charter and magnet schools.  It argues that charter schools are crucial to increasing educational quality and magnet schools help facilitate desegregation within our nation’s public school system.

Related Links
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 Full Text: The whopping 670-page full-text of the No Child Left Behind Act offers unique insight into funding provisions and the breadth of coverage that the bill seeks to initiate.
Cato Institute Critique: The Cato Institute indicates a key contradiction in the purpose of the Act: it claims to increasse the flexibility for states in setting education policy while concomitantly mandating more rigid boundaries within which states must operate their educational systems. Instead of mandating annual testing procedures to gauge progress, Cato argues, states should implement school choice progams that allow parents to determine the quality and progress of local schoools by deciding which institution their children will attend.
Reading First has Questionable Success: Reading First, a NCLB program, does not seem to be instigating demonstrable improvements in early childhood literacy, reports indicate. Here is a journalistic account of the new program's success.
"The Nation" NCLB Analysis: Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, provides a sweeping analysis of the main NCLB reforms five years after their passage. Though she believes in tough federal education standards to increase equity and quality in American schools, she feels that a system reliant in testing is limiting.

Related Articles on Pi
No Child Left Behind's Twin Failures : by on 3/17/2009 8:14:44 PM
Abstract:
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was intended to improve educational performance and accountability with new testing standards and better teachers.  The bottom-line: it purported to be a NATIONAL policy centered on TESTING.  However, states still set educational standards and local districts direct policy.  NCLB delimits how these standards can be set and the consequences of not meeting them.  Its intense focus on standardized tests handcuffs teachers, incentivizing test-based instruction over creative, engaging curricula.  
Coming Soon
Re-imagining Community Colleges (CAP) in Education by Center for American Progress



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