Reforming Education Again

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law by President Bush in 2002 as a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that was enacted in 1965 and re-enacted in 1994. The Elementary and Secondary Act also encompasses Title I, which is significant as it provides additional support for students who are disadvantaged, a factor that is often prominent in discussion of overall student performance in the United States.

The nation has given considerable attention to ESEA as it has established more stringent and ambitious standards on public school, professional educators, and the students who attend public schools in the United States. Moreover, the role of the government has been expended through the act to ensure that underprivileged children receive equitable educational opportunities.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was intended to improve student achievement and applied a four-pronged approach to the ensuring educational progress along those lines: 1) The instructional methods used in schools must be evidence-based; 2) parents are to be given options for the education of their children; 3) growth targets are to be established by individual schools and states; and, 4) schools are held accountable for hiring and supervising qualified teachers, and for the performance outcomes of students (Linn, et al., 2002).

With over a decade of implementation of NCLB, educators and parents have had opportunity to evaluate the policy intentions against the outcomes of the application of the law to public school. One area of research that should receive future attention from the United States Department of Education and education research think tanks across the country is the impact of allowing flexibility in the way in which teachers demonstrate that they are highly qualified. During 2005-2006, U.S.

public schools were required to demonstrate that all teachers were highly qualified, and a set of flexible standards was published (Ballard & Bates, 2008). Highly qualified teachers must hold bachelor's degrees, have full state certification or licensure, and prove that they know each subject they teach (Ballard & Bates, 2008). NCLB requires states to assess the degree to which all students -- particularly disadvantaged and minority students -- have highly qualified teachers, and schools must submit reports about their progress in meeting these goals (Ballard & Bates, 2008; Linn, et al., 2002).

NCLB permits states to explore different ways for current teachers to demonstrate their competency in subject matter and thereby meet the highly qualified teacher requirements (Ballard & Bates, 2008). The extent to which flexible plans to meet teacher shortage needs have impacted school and student performance goals is not well understood (Ballard & Bates, 2008; Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010; Linn, et al., 2002). One area of NCLB requires more research: the continuing racial achievement gap in the United States under the implementation of No Child Left Behind.

NCLB has shown some success in eliminating the racial achievement gap, as test scores are improving. However, the test scores are improving for all students, which means that the racial achievement gap is being maintained. States have leeway in the way they define racial and ethnic subgroups, and the accountability systems used may show only the average performance of the schools. Regardless of the reporting vagaries the fact of the matter is that the achievement gap between groups of students that are demarcated according to racial and ethnic affiliation continues.

The most difficult issues for equity in education continue to be defined along socio-economic lines, one of the main targets that No Child Left Behind was designed to diminish. More research is needed to.