NCLB No Child Left Behind:

NCLB

No Child Left Behind: The History, Status, and Implications of an Impossible Educational Plan

This paper provides an overview of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which was enacted as an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The No Child Left Behind Act received strong support for its focus on equalizing achievements between all students in the country, and by improving educational achievements in certain core subjects deemed to be especially necessary to continued success. A history of the No Child Left Behind Act is provided, tracing the roots of its purported philosophy from Brown v Board of Educations through findings of a 1983 Department of Education report detailing school inequalities. The current impacts of the legislation, however, are found to be a matter of debate amongst scholars, and results are highly inconclusive. There is certainly no concrete evidence that the desired goals of the legislation have been achieved, however, and in fact there might be negative academic effects of this legislation. In addition, there are negative ramifications for teachers including a decreased ability to develop and implement effective curricula and increased bureaucratic intervention. This has been especially harmful to schools in rural areas, and the author also demonstrates personal misgivings regarding the legislation's effects on special education. Ultimately, it is conluded that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective and harmful.

Introduction

Education is a highly important issue in politics and society at large, and -- until recent economic events eclipsed almost everything else -- has been a prominent feature in most national, state, and local elections for decades. As much as people clamor for improved education, however, and despite the amount that politicians claim they will focus on the issue, it is often the case that very little actually gets done in regards to improving or even simply reforming education. The United States consistently ranks below many other nations in its state of development in many areas of education despite all the promises that have been made by successive rounds of politicians and various representatives of political parties large and small. This has dire implications for the future productivity and economic progress and competitiveness for the country as well as failing U.S. citizens intrinsically -- cultural stagnancy and degradation are the necessary results of a failed education system.

This is not to suggest that there haven't been real and direct attempts to affect education at the national level through legislation and executive action, however. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed that set certain national standards for education and tied federal funding for state school systems and individuals schools to compliance with the curricula and standard regulations included in the legislation. While heralded by some as a strong initiative that would lead to more effective education and improved schools, which would in turn lead to a better-educated populous that would be more competitive in the years to come, others see No Child Left Behind as a burden that makes education less efficient and federal funding little more than a dream.

In this paper, I will be detailing my own personal view of No Child Left Behind as a policy that does, in fact, leave some children behind, and leaves many schools behind as well due to the impossibility of certain standards it has created in order to receive maximum federal funds. Before presenting this personal view, however, the history and current status of No Child Left Behind will be presented to provide adequate background knowledge for my assessment. In addition, the direct and empirically observable implications of No Child Left Behind on the teaching profession will be assessed and detailed, as these implications have had direct effects on my own personal assessment and valuation of the legislation. Objectivity will be attempted in the sections preceding my personal interpretation, but this objectivity will not necessarily entail a neutral presentation of this policy.

History

The history of the No Child Left Behind Act begins long before the Act was authored or before President Bush, Jr. was in office -- before President Bush, Sr. was in the presidential office, as a matter of fact. In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report detailing the findings of its three-year investigation of the nation's schools, and the results were far from optimistic. Over ten percent of all seventeen-year-olds were estimated to be functionally illiterate, with this number as high as forty percent for some minorities, and there were equally dismaying figures (with the same minority bias) regarding the ability to read critically, to write a persuasive essay, or to solve fairly basic math problems (Jorgensen & Hoffman 2003).

The U.S. Department of Education actually traces the history of the No Child Left Behind Act as going back even further, to the principles first espoused in the landmark case Brown v the Kansas Board of Education (1954), which ended the practice of segregation in all public institutions as well as many private establishments (USDOE 2010). According to the Department of Education, the No Child Left Behind Act was meant to create, "an education system that is more inclusive, responsive, and fair," and the act did pass in both the House and the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and the sponsorship of prominent leaders from both major political parties (USDOE 2010). Many, it seems, supported the Act for the restored equality and other reforms that its passage would purportedly lead to; few questioned whether the provisions of this legislation would actually promise as delivered, seeming to trust that it would simply perform as intended.

It does appear to be true that students previously at greater risk for being under-served by the educational system were receiving more attention, as each child's progress formed a data point that was factored into teacher, administrator, and school assessments (Toppo 2007). At the same time, however, many schools have had to limit the actual subject matter taught and lengthen school days in order to meet the specific standards set by the legislation and receive the funds that are tied to these standards (Toppo 2007). With full implementation of the legislation not occurring in many states until 2006, determining the long-term educational benefits of the program -- if they exist -- is not really possible (Toppo 2007; USDOE 2010).

Current Effects

Interestingly, current studies have found that the issues of equality that were stressed so much at the time of the legislation's proposal and passage have not really been as much a part of the results as was hoped for and as was indicated early on. Minority students did receive more attention, and there was an increase in their achievement observed, but the same increase was also observed in non-minority students (Benson 2010). There was some educational benefit from the No Child Left Behind Act, then, and this is certainly not be dismissed and of course not to be frowned upon, yet the legislation has not really changed the situation of inequality that minority populations experience insofar as their access to truly effective education (Besnon 2010). As long as other populations continue to receive better educations than minorities, they will have easier access to the opportunities afforded by education.

Another study found even less that was positive about the No Child Left Behind Act's effects. This study specifically focused on students identified as "high achieving" prior to the implementation of the legislation, and found that there was no apparent effect on the gap between minority and non-minority students, between the gap identified between male and female average scores in specific subject areas and overall, and furthermore that there was no positive academic effect discernable (Bernstein 2010). There was one area in which achievement scores moved, however: they were observed to decline in areas of science, that were not stressed as of fundamental importance in the legislation (Bernstein 2010).

This is in keeping with the observation made several years ago, and at the time when the No Child Left Behind Act was really beginning to take effect, that schools were narrowing the actual subject matters taught in order to ensure the legislated progress in desired areas that would enable them to receive full federal funding (Toppo 2007). This preliminary report also found evidence of early academic gains, however, and this view is supported by one of these more recent scientific studies (Toppo 2007; Benson 2010). The consensus on the No Child Left Behind Act, then, is that there is no consensus; the true effects of the legislation probably will not be more concretely determined for several years yet, and it is likely that they will remain in dispute even then. It is quite possible that other legislation might be enacted in the meantime that in some way alters No Child Left Behind and will thus mask its long-term effects, keeping them -- like much legislation -- a mater of eternal scholarly quibbling.

Implications for Teachers

The implications for teachers of the No Child Left Behind Act, however, are quite discernable both in the immediacy of their effects and in the very language of the Act itself. It has already been noted that schools have had to trim down on the subjects that are being taught, and the depths to which certain subjects are taught, and this ha of course had a direct effect on teachers' ability to both direct their own teaching and serve what many feel is the true purpose of their work as teachers -- providing true cultural knowledge and critical thinking rather than simply fundamentals. Though change was definitely needed, the No Child Left Behind Act was not the right change according to many teachers.

Schools that were already strapped for funds were the hardest hit by the new regulations and standards for federal funds, as they had fewer resources with which to achieve the standards being set by the No Child Left Behind Act and to provide the individual attention that the legislation required from each student as part of the school's "report card" (Reeves 2003). Especially hard hit were schools in rural areas, which are typically the schools with the least in the amount of absolute and per-student funding and also have difficulty attracting teachers (Reeves 2003). It was immediately clear that these schools would be unable to comply with the standards of the legislation and would suffer the consequences of reduced funding if state and county governments did not intervene and find ways to change their rural schools; for teachers this meant the instant increase of bureaucratic intervention in the teaching practice that did not clearly improve academic achievement, but that quite clearly frustrated teachers' intentions 9 Reeves 2003; Toppo 2007; Bernstein 2010).

The No Child Left Behind Act also had immediate implications for teachers in terms of job security. Section 1119 of the actual text of the legislation mandates that all teachers teaching "core" subjects be "highly qualified," and that states and schools must show certain increases in the number of "highly qualified" teachers employed (USDOE 2001). This has several implications for teachers. First, the designation of core subjects automatically relegates other subjects to lower attention, funding, and support. Second, the term "highly qualified" is loosely defined and the requirement of improvements in the numbers of "highly qualified" teachers necessarily entails many teacher losing their jobs due to this Act.

Personal Assessment

As stated in the introduction to this paper, I do not believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has been especially effective in achieving its desired goals or in improving education at all. It has done little if anything to close the education gap that exists between minorities and non-minorities and between genders, and also ended up hurting many of the schools that were already some of the worst performers. While removing unqualified and/or bad teachers and improving standards are certainly laudable goals and something that everyone can probably support, cutting funding to schools that fail to perform is certainly not the way to go about achieving these goals. In addition to these general problems, there is also one specific area of the legislation that has me especially worried and angered.