No Child Left Behind -

No Child Left Behind - Problems Need to be Resolved

Why was No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation needed? Was it just to improve education? Was it to hold schools and teachers accountable? Some important background information is very appropriate at this point in the paper. The Public Broadcast Service (PBS) report on August 21, 2005 reviews the legislation that led up to NCLB. During the Lyndon Johnson presidency, there was a big financial push to help schools that were serving low-income students. This was part of Johnson's "War on Poverty" campaign, and due to the president's persistence, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) was passed, which provided "significant funding to schools," the PBS Background Report explains (www.pbs.org).

The ESEA legislation resulted in $1 billion a year to start with; ESEA funded Head Start that helped low income children get ready for their school experience in first grade. A bit later, ESEA allocated $11 billion to $13 billion annually to help schools in poor communities - specifically grades kindergarten through 12th grades. These funds were designed for "professional development for teachers" and for programs that brought families and parents more closely into the educational environment. And so for about thirty years, ESEA served as "...the foundation for federal funding of public schools for almost 30 years," PBS reports. The most "far-reaching program" was Title I: Aid to Disadvantaged Children, that provided about $8 billion a year to special education and homeless, poverty-stricken children.

All this money was given out in grants but the responsibility of "managing public education" was left to individual states," PBS reports. The ESEA legislation did require that the states establish academic standards and that they carefully assess student progress - but the federal government did not mandate that results match any national standards. "Prior to No Child Left Behind [states] were required to report student performance but they were not being required to hold their schools accountable based on subgroup performance," said Darla Marburger, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Education (DOE). And Marburger added that while the states did have accountability plans, those plans "did not necessarily have a focus on having all students proficient."

While President Johnson's intentions were laudable, and the Congress believed this legislation would lead to great improvements in learning for low-income children - and bring their knowledge and abilities up to par (or close to par) with more affluent students - the results were disappointing. Indeed, there were "major disparities between the reading and math scores of students in economically disadvantaged school districts" when compared with scores of students "in more affluent communities," Kristina Nwazota of PBS reports.

The Clinton Administration saw these gaps in learning between the two socioeconomic groups and in 1994 passed the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA). This money increased funding for "disadvantaged students" the PBS report continues, and required greater accountability through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

A report written by Gene Bottoms of the Southern Regional Education Board in 1997 about the 260 schools that are part of the "High Schools That Work" (HSTW) program in the Atlanta area indicates that the gap between black and white students was not closing as had been anticipated. "Mathematics achievement of African-American youth at HSTW sites did not improve between 1994 and 1996," Bottoms, editor of the Research Brief explains. Additionally, "more than half of career-bound students at HSTW sites fell short of the HSTW performance goals in reading, math, and science," Bottoms continues. These students will be severely handicapped in terms of securing a good job and advancing in that job, he added.

Meantime, the PBS reports that nationally, by 1998, only "60% of fourth graders performed at or above" the bottom line basic level that NAEP had set as a standard. Just 40% of 12th graders scored at or above the "proficient" standard of NAEP, as well. Moreover, there continued to be "major performance gaps between white students who scored higher on the tests and black, Hispanic and American Indian students," according to Nwazota's report.

Question TWO: What was the goal of NCLB? Was the goal guided by a search for the public good? The goal was in part to take action 19 years after the report called "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," authorized by the Ronald Reagan Administration, and not acted on with any degree of intensity. The report concluded, "...Declines in educational performance are in large part the result of disturbing inadequacies in the way the educational process itself is often conducted."

The "Nation at Risk" blue ribbon report stated that "Secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose," and in many schools, "...time spent learning how to cook and drive counts as much toward a high school diploma as the time spent studying mathematics, English, chemistry, U.S. history, or biology..."

And for his part, presidential candidate George W. Bush stated the goal was to make sure "children learn" by demanding that in return for receiving federal money, schools must show the federal government, and "the nation," and "the people in your area whether or not children can read, and add and subtract" (Nwazota 2006). Moreover, Bush said that if testing proves that the federal money is working, "there will be rewards." But if children can't read, write, add and subtract" then "there must be a final moment of consequence in order for the accountability systems to mean anything." Basically, he went on, quoted in the PBS report, that "instead of continuing to subsidize mediocrity after a reasonable amount of time," the money will be cut off.

In a campaign television commercial (Marks, 2000) funded by the Republican National Committee Bush is seen mingling with students in classrooms and in other school functions. Bush says, "If we really want to make sure no child gets left behind in America, we need the courage to raise standards in our schools. We need more accountability and more discipline." Yes, the answer to the second part of the question is, the goal of NCLB was to enhance the public good through better education.

Question THREE: What public input was received and which members of the public were not heard? Congressional hearings were held in Washington and there were town hall meetings held by Senators and Members of the House of Representatives throughout the states prior to the finalizing of the legislation. It is difficult to know six years after the fact if any members of the public were left out of the chance to speak to the legislation. But in 2007, NCLB is up for "reauthorization" (which means the bill runs out unless Congress and the president renew it), and as a result teachers' groups, community groups, elected officials and school organizations are holding public hearings to get input as to how - or if - NCLB should be renewed.

Question FOUR: What tools of policymaking were used in the policy formation process? In Washington D.C. In order to get legislation passed a president has to get enough votes from both parties to achieve majority support. There has to be a lot of wheeling and dealing and trading of votes. Education was high on George W. Bush's political policy agenda as he entered office in January 2001. In his book, John Kingdon emphasizes that when it comes to policymaking, "nobody dominates" (p. 47) but the president and his appointees normally have a tremendous amount of influence over the agenda. In fact, the president has the most influence, and next is Congress (which also is effective in the selection of alternatives from which choices can be made that are compromises) followed by interest groups, academics, researchers and consultants. The NCLB legislation was a result of Bush setting the agenda during his campaign for president, and following up when the Supreme Court handed him a victory over Al Gore, 5-4 and he became president.

In fact, things can get pretty wild in Washington when a president is pushing all the right buttons to try and get his legislation passed, and Congress is pushing and pulling strings here and there to make the right impression on their constituencies. In Chapter 4, Kingdon calls the action in the federal government "organized anarchy" (p. 89) and he breaks down the three major "process streams" that he identifies with federal policymaking. His process streams can be clearly linked to how Bush got his education proposal off the ground. The "problem recognition" for Bush was to note, while a candidate, that educational reforms had pretty much failed, and that also, the Republican Party had not been noted in the past for being involved in education. If he, the GOP candidate, could use a theme and an issue that had always been seen as a Democrat issue, he might be able to get votes from independents and others who care about education. And so, the "problem recognition" phase for Bush was how to get elected, how to dovetail his campaign with a real need in America (reform school funding), and how to actually get the proposal on the agenda.

For Bush, the "formation and refining of policy proposals" (Kingdon's second process stream in policymaking) came to fruition when he got elected, and began talking to legislators about making educators and schools accountable. Bush gave a little, and pushed a little, and the Congress make its own changes and revisions, and the policy began to take shape. The third part of Kingdon's process stream for Bush (politics) was getting the necessary votes; Bush had his handlers buttonhole certain conservative politicians, and united them with Democrats, to get enough votes to pass the NCLB.

Meantime, it was truly "organized anarchy" as the debate in the House and Senate lasted seven weeks, and some members of Congress rejected the idea of having the NAEP double check state statistics that show whether test scores have gone up or not. Civil rights groups attacked the bill, saying it would be unfair to minorities.

There was a lot of give and take, and much debate, according to the journal Education Next, published by the Hoover Institute (www.hoover.org),a conservative think-tank organization. "The Bush Administration's shrewd brand of alliance politics enabled it to..." put together a coalition of conservative Republicans, New Democrats, and the Democratic regulars, according to Andrew Rudalevige, author of the article in Education Next. The compromises reached by Democrats and Republicans - both parties wanted the public to see that they were trying hard to improve education, so this fact helped move the legislation along through the system - ended up being acceptable to the majority. In fact, the House of Representatives passed the bill 384-45, and the Senate passed the bill 91-8.

Question FIVE: What constraints did policymakers face? As mentioned in the above answer to question FOUR, there was a need for compromises because not all Republicans could go along with spending billions of dollars on education when it was clear that many schools were failing or at least not living up to standards. And not all Democrats wanted to hold schools and teachers accountable in the way the bill demanded; that is, if you don't increase test scores by a certain percentage during a certain time, federal money would be cut off. And many governors and mayors from states and cities with large numbers of urban poor, and with schools that were badly run down and had outdated equipment and textbooks, were worried that their schools could not meet the new strict requirements; they lobbied their Congressional legislators and senators to cut part of the legislation out. Policymakers, in short, faced a difficult task because while no one was against fixing education and making schools more effective, how to do that was not a simple issue to resolve.

Question SIX: What was the outcome of the policy process, and what did it mandate?

Back in 2002, when it was signed into law NCLB was called the most significant educational legislation in many years. Indeed, NCLB brought together, with much fanfare, educational leaders and key people in both political parties, seemingly united in a reachable goal to promote success in learning for all students. Under the law's most "visible stipulation," an article in Time magazine reports (Wallis, et al. 2007), states must test public school students "in reading and math every year from third through eighth grade," plus high schools must test their students in reading and math every year. Those test results for blacks, Hispanics, English-language learners and learning-disabled students, must be published and made available to the public, which is a bit embarrassing for schools that don't live up to the accountability standards.

Question SEVEN: Did the policy attain the intended goals and/or address the issue that motivated the process in the first place? Unfortunately (NCLB) has not been the panacea that it was touted to be in 2002. In fact, there are serious problems in many aspects of the legislation and how it affects students, teachers, and communities. This paper takes the position that there is need for a change in NCLB strategies; and to make those points several reviews of reliable publications will be reviewed and analyzed.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers asserts, "flaws in the law are undercutting its original promise" (www.aft.org),and federal guidance for states, "Has been unclear, untimely and unhelpful." Moreover, the AFT statement on their Web site indicates serious concerns about the "pervasive problem" of under funding; the cornerstone for NCLB is Title 1, and the authorization for Title 1 in 2006 was scheduled to be $22.75 billion (according to the legislation). But President George W. Bush only put $13.3 billion in his budget request. "This continues a pattern of underfunding for NCLB," AFT explains, adding that the $9 billion left out of Bush's request is "crucial" to more than 1,700 secondary schools.

Those 1,700 schools - along with 7,000 elementary schools - are "struggling the most to meet high standards" by lowering class size, hiring reading and math specialists, and improving technology equipment for teachers and students. As to one of the key components of the NCLB legislation, the "adequate yearly progress" (AYP), the teachers' organization says it is "a highly inaccurate and arbitrary yardstick for measuring progress." The testing of students with disabilities and English language learners - using AYP guidelines - "is neither valid nor reliable," AFT contends. Also, the "highly qualified" requirements for teachers "...are unworkable for some teachers and do not apply to all individuals..."

In addition, according to a study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the NCLB accountability rules - "adequate yearly progress" - fall "especially hard on urban schools while asking for much less progress from affluent suburban systems." And more than that, the Harvard study - published in the AFT publication American Teacher - claims, "the reality for too many public educators is confusion and frustration..."

Another group, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) - an independent, nonprofit educational advocacy and research group - has been closely monitoring NCLB for the past four years, and their report was published in October 2006. The CEP lists ten "big effects" of NCLB; the first concern ("effect") that many teachers (along with CEP) have raised is the fact that in order to meet NCLB standards, teachers are obligated to "teach to the test." In other words, instead of teaching students problem-solving and instilling creative, investigate strategies for their future, students are taught the materials that will appear on tests, to raise test scores and make it look like progress is being made.

The second "affect" that CEP has observed is that schools are spending far more time on math and reading, "sometimes at the expense of subjects not tested" (Jennings, et al., 2006). The discipline that is most affected / neglected due to the extra emphasis on math and reading is social studies; and CEP reports that "ninety-seven percent of high-poverty districts" have strict requirements for the amount of time spent on reading, but only 55% to 59% of districts reflecting middle income families has those requirements. This suggests an uneven approach, designed to make it appear that low income and minorities are making huge gains in learning, when in fact they are apparently just being drilled on subjects that will beef up test scores. It also echoes the issue brought up by the Harvard research, mentioned earlier in this paper.

The third "effect" involves the "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) part of NCLB; because of the requirement that schools show AYP, many schools realign curriculum and instruction simply to avoid being cut off from federal funding. The fourth effect is that schools known as "low-performing" are "undergoing makeovers rather than the most radical kinds of restructuring." Fifth on the list of effects, CEP mentions that although schools and teachers have made "considerable progress" in demonstrating that teachers do indeed meet the academic qualifications that NCLB puts forward, many educators are "skeptical" that this part of the law "will really improve the quality of teaching."

There is far too much testing being asked of students as a result of NCLB, the CEP mentions as its 6th effect; even more tests will be given students in 2007-08 (many in science), but of course testing, not necessarily learning, is how politicians in Washington justify the spending of billions on NCLB. Number seven is seen as a positive effect resulting from NCLB, according to CEP, as schools are paying "much more attention" to achievement gaps between ethnic minorities and mainstream Caucasians. The downside of number seven though is that the states testing for students with "cognitive impairments" is inappropriate and serves "no instructional purpose." In other words, some disable students are indeed being "left behind."

The eighth effect of NCLB is that about 20% of eligible students each year have used the "supplemental educational services" tutoring that is available to students of low-income families whose schools have not made "AYP" for three consecutive years. That tutoring, in more than half the cases, is provided by "for profit" companies; and regarding tutoring, the CEP states that school districts are "skeptical" that such tutoring will lead to "increases in academic achievement."

Number nine in the CEP list of effects: many states view the Education Department's enforcement of many key NCLB features as "being strict or very strict," which in the case of some schools - albeit not all schools - is a good thing. And tenth, while the impact of NCLB has caused state governments and school districts to play "expanded roles" in the operation of schools, "often" those expanded roles are carried out "without adequate federal funds." As a final thought, the CEP report asks the question, as Congress prepares for reauthorization of NCLB in 2007, will the strengths of this legislation be retained while the glaring weaknesses are addressed?

Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, writing in Time magazine, explain that researchers at Thomas B. Fordham Foundation found that the quality of "educational standards...detailed, grade-by-grade, subject-by-subject learning goals...declined in 30 states from 2000 to 2006." Also, the Time article points out that with NCLB, if a school fails to make the grade three years in a row, the school must offer students tutoring services. but, in the 2003-04 school year, "only 17% of the 1.4 million students who were eligible for tutoring got assistance."

Part of the NCLB approach is to indeed make certain that children of all backgrounds and ethnicities, along with those with mental health challenges, are not left out of the learning process. In an article in Journal of School Health (Daly, et al., 2006), the authors write that "unfortunately, the complexities of the provisions of the No Child Left Behind have made it difficult for educators, stakeholders, and mental health professionals" to relate to the practical and legal ramifications and interface between the Education Department (ED) and the school mental health movement.

Put more bluntly, the writers explain that the National Institute of Mental Health reports that between 5 and 9% of children (2.5 to 5 million children) are "not learning and achieving in school because of emotional and behavioral barriers." Indeed, linked to that data is the fact that over half of the adolescents in America who do not receive a high school diploma have a "diagnosable psychiatric disorder." And meanwhile, the article continues, NCLB is not helping "integrated efforts" designed to "reduce academic and non-academic barriers" for students with special mental health needs.

Moreover, NCLB, the authors contend, "does not provide clear guidelines to assist families, schools, and organizations in determining how best to utilize the designated funds for issues related to school mental health needs." Another aspect of NCLB that could be improved, the article explains, is teacher training in mental health awareness. Even though teachers are often among the first persons outside the family to detect mental health issues with students, there is not nearly the degree of reporting by teachers as there should be because there is a "lack of training" for teachers in matters of child / adolescent mental health issues.

Teachers are not staying on the job as long as they once did, according to Daly, et al.; about 10% of new teachers quit prior to the end of the first year, the article asserts, about 35% of teachers leave by the end of their third year of full time employment in schools. Moreover, some 50% quit within the first five years, an alarming statistic, that does not bode well for the needs of school mental health programs.

Another author, Harold Wenglinsky weighs in on NCLB, expressing the view (Wenglinsky, 82) that the NCLB legislation is taking the wrong road when it comes to closing the gap between white and minority students, the so-called "achievement gap." He writes that "current policy leans toward using didactic practices to close the gap," and he seems to have built much of his book around the concept of "constructivist practices" (i.e., using technology) as the way to raise achievement levels for all students, not just minorities.

By giving minority students "more exposure to constructivist uses, not less," the gap for achievement can be closed, he insists; and the policies that the federal government (NCLB) is pushing focuses on "teaching phonics and providing grants to cities that emphasize basic skills approaches in math, science and reading" rather than helping students develop complex thinking skills.

No Child Left Behind is designed to change the culture of America's schools by closing the achievement gap, offering more flexibility, giving parents more options, and teaching students based on what works. Under the act's accountability provisions, states must describe how they will close the achievement gap..." (http://www.ed.gov).

Moreover, while authors earlier in this paper were concerned about the lack of training in mental health issues, Wenglinsky worries that too many current teachers are not trained in constructivist teaching methods, and in fact many teachers do not have the training to pass technology knowledge on to students. Many schools, he writes on page 26, do not have teachers who are properly prepared: "One out of 4 teachers cannot browse the Web or use email... [and] 4 out of 10 teachers do not know how to integrate technology into their curricula."

What one discovers when researching NCLB is that not only are teachers unprepared in many cases to help students use technology correctly (and not just do drills but learn problem-solving), but teachers are not living up to the standards set by NCLB.

To wit, in a recent column in the online version of the newspaper Courier-Post in New Jersey (www.courierpostonline.com)- written by Linda Chavez - the writer points out that both Maine and Nebraska may soon loose federal funding under NCLB because "their teacher testing program flunked the government's standards." In fact, some 34 states have been notified by NCLB officials that "their teacher testing had major problems and would be subject to mandatory oversight."

So, while Wenglinsky is upset at the teachers whose lack of technology savvy hinders constructivist learning in the classroom, the bigger picture is that some teachers according to published accounts, are not up to the basic standards set by NCLB. The Chavez column in the Courier-Post goes on to assert "Teacher certification in most states has been a joke for years." In many states teachers are certified, "so long as they score above the bottom third of all test takers," the column continues.