No Child Left Behind policy and educational outcomes

Education - NCLB Views

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND VIEWS and CONTROVERSIES Introduction:

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) singed into law by President Bush was intended to ensure proficiency in reading and in mathematics among American primary and secondary students by the year 2014 (DOE, 2001). Renewal of the NCLB program is up for a vote on its reauthorization in 2008 and nearly 100 national education, civil rights, and religious organizations have signed a "joint organizational statement on NCLB" (Olson & Hoff, 2007) against renewal of NCLB without fundamental changes.

According to many critics, major aspects of the NCLB program focus and defined goals were poorly designed and not capable of being evaluated in a meaningful way, in addition to being responsible for undermining the quality and effectiveness of the public school curricula in several states in particular. Olson and Hoff (2007) suggest that there is some evidence that NCLB may have increased the quality of teachers, but NCLB critics consider it to have wasted considerable effort and public education funds with very little benefit to the actual quality of American public education (Murray, 2006).

Perspectives on the NCLB Approach to Public Education: The NCLB approach was adopted based primarily on the basis of analysis within the Bush administration of data purportedly documenting the closure of an educational gap between white and black students and sufficient academic improvement in the President's home state of Texas. Murray suggests that the absence of any empirical studies establishing the academic effectiveness of the program and the concept and methodology of the data used to justify its proposal for Title I federal funds may be closer to a deliberate deception than to genuine mistake (Murray, 2006). In principle, the mechanism of NCLB compliance may actually reduce the quality of public education, especially for students whose satisfactory performance in the targeted subjects is already above the level of requiring remedial attention (Olson & Huff, 2007). That is largely a direct function of the fact that the principle mechanism by which NCLB programs are evaluated relates to student performance on achievement tests administered periodically by education administrators in each state. This direct link between achievement test scores and eligibility for Title I federal funds creates a natural incentive for inspiring major adjustments in the school curricula designed to provide intense focus on reading and mathematics to the relative exclusion of all other subjects (Darling-Hammond, 2004).

Even worse, instead of merely promoting extra attention to reading and mathematics - in and of itself, not necessarily such a bad goal - the NCLB program employs methods of evaluation that are readily capable of manipulation by academic emphasis on achievement test scores instead of on genuine academic learning, even in reading and mathematics. Already, this has resulted in numerous documented instances of educators in several states cheating the system by drilling their students in the actual questions from their scheduled tests beforehand and even manually changing students' answers on achievement test questions to improve their scores (Sonnenblick, 2008).

In addition to reducing attention to developing the academic potential of students with the greatest academic potential (Olson & Huff, 2007), the NCLB program (in effect) redirects education funds to a much narrower focus, usually at the expense of the entire range of academic areas outside of those covered by Title I funding determinants.

Furthermore, whereas previously, commercial enterprises furnishing academic texts and materials for profit provided a wide range of beneficial materials on different academic subject matter, the NCLB criteria have inspired a corresponding narrowing of education products, driven by demand (Murray, 2006)..

Unfortunately, to whatever extent the NCLB approach accomplishes its objectives, any benefit is likely to relate to primary school students rather than to either middle school or high school students, simply because Title I funds are distributed disproportionately, with 85% directed to primary school programs (Olson & Huff, 2007).

Likewise, the NCLB prescribes no real consequences for failing to meet its standards beyond Title I eligibility, the publication of failure, and the rights of parents of students in poorly performing institutions to apply for transfers to other schools (Olson & Huff, 2007). The objectives themselves are poorly conceived by virtue of the ambiguities inherent in the criteria of proficiency (Murray, 2006), and most importantly, reflect a complete lack of uniformity in the specific methodology of demonstrating progress with respect to federal objectives of improved student performance. Specifically, the Separation of Powers doctrine prohibits the federal government from establishing the particular academic standards used to gauge student progress and "proficiency." On the other hand, nothing in the Constitution or the fundamental structure of the U.S. government prohibits a federal requirement of uniformity pursuant to the collective decisions of a nationally representative board of educators from every state. Olson and Huff (2007) acknowledge some evidence of teacher improvement claimed by NCLB proponents, but suggest that many educators point out that the criteria used to establish that improvement relate primarily to initial licensing rather than to meaningful performance as would be readily measurable within the NCLB framework. In fact, some NCLB critics consider that a viable opportunity to improve the quality of public education that has been essentially "squandered" for its lack of inclusion within the NCLB concept in any meaningful way (Olson & Huff, 2007).

The Impact of the NCLB Program on P-12 Curricula:

Because the NCLB concept reduces education to a narrowed focus on reading and mathematics, it has a detrimental effect on American education. In the most general sense, contemporary educators have promoted the importance of expanding the scope of traditional education from its (already) narrow focus on a relatively limited range of human intellectual ability. The NCLB approach conflicts with myriad examples of academic improvement associated with various teaching methods that do not rely on rote memorization and drilling for test performance. Many educators have embraced the suggestions of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, in particular, for its ability to motivate improved academic performance through lessons presented outside the traditional lecture-based methods.

The NCLB program focus is a complete reversal of the attempt to stimulate student interest through presentation of a broader academic subject matter, it likely undermines actual learning even in the academic subjects it emphasizes because it provides an incentive for greater reliance, rather than less, on rote drilling instead of on a deeper understanding and retention of the material. In so doing, it also neglects the needs of both superior students as well as English as a second language (ESL) students (Crawford, 2004).