No Child Left Behind Act and Its Impact on English Language Learners

Introduction

The United States is no longer a simple "melting pot," but has rather emerged in the 21st century as a "salad bowl" where many minorities may not readily assimilate into mainstream American society as they once did. The implications of these trends for the public school system have been profound, particularly in view of the mandates established by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (hereinafter "NCLB," or alternatively, "the Act"). According to Arce, Luna, Borjian, and Conrad, "Proponents of the No Child Left Behind Act claim that its mission is to close the achievement gap by holding school districts and states accountable, encouraging the use of flexible educational approaches, and supporting parents' rights to school choice" (p. 56). Less than 13% of teachers in American classrooms currently possess even minimal ESL training, however, and just 8 to 10% of teachers hold bilingual or ESL certification (Rice & Pappamihiel, 2004).

Furthermore, the number of ELL students in American classrooms continues to increase faster than the system can accommodate them. More than four-and-a-half million students were identified as English language learners (ELLs) attending school in the United States, prekindergarten through Grade 12, in 2000–2001, accounting for almost 10% of total public school enrollment (Komatsu & Witt, 2006). During the period from 1989 to 2006, the ELL population approximately doubled — a trend researchers predict will continue for at least the next two decades (Komatsu & Witt, 2006). While special language programs are provided for more than 400 different language groups in American classrooms, approximately 80% of ELLs today are Spanish speakers (Ortiz, Wilkinson, Robertson-Courtney & Kushner, 2006). In this environment, identifying the impact of the NCLB on ELL students represents a timely and important investigation.

The following tentative research questions are based on a preliminary review of the literature and may be subject to changes, deletions, or additions as the research process progresses:

What are the specific requirements of the NCLB for ELL students across individual subject areas? What are the responsibilities of ELL students, ELL teachers, and school districts and administrators? What changes have taken place in standardized or high-stakes testing scores since the enactment of the NCLB? And what has been shown to be effective in helping ELL students achieve improved performance?

Rationale and Significance of the Study

Because resources are by definition scarce, it is vitally important for educators and administrators at all levels to use available resources to their maximum advantage in achieving the performance mandates established by the NCLB. In this regard, Kesson and Ross (2004) emphasize that "the diverse responsibilities of public schools present a huge challenge to educators, and even when schools are performing well, it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to deliver all the expected results when their mission necessarily entails contradictory purposes" (p. ix). Likewise, as Mayers (2006) emphasizes, "Ideally, each citizen would have the opportunity to be taught by a well-trained educator, and teachers would be equipped with an ability and liberty to apply the fruits of their teaching experience to their process as they tailor the delivery of curricula to the idiosyncratic needs of their students" (p. 449). Far more importantly, young English language learners are not products and schools are not factories, and there is no room for false starts and little room for experimentation when it comes to these children. Therefore, identifying the impact of the NCLB on English language learners represents a timely area of investigation, one that can identify opportunities for improvement where deficiencies exist and provide a best-practices guide for educators seeking superior alternatives.

In an increasingly multicultural society, developing laws that are equitable and fair is becoming harder than ever, and even the most well-intentioned legislation may produce unintended or unexpected consequences — the NCLB is no exception. According to Abedi and Dietel (2004), "One of the most controversial aspects of NCLB is its performance requirements for subgroups within the general student population. The NCLB requires that all children, including English-language learners (ELLs), reach high standards by demonstrating proficiency in English language arts and mathematics by 2014" (p. 782).

In an era of increased demands for accountability on the part of teachers and students alike, this date is not a suggestion or a recommendation, but a fundamental mandate that must be met. As a result, it is the responsibility of school districts across the country to help ELL students achieve ongoing progress toward this objective — as gauged by student performance on a wide range of high-stakes state-level tests — or face serious consequences for their failure (Abedi & Dietel, 2004). Rice, Pappamihiel, and Lake (2004) report that "growing demands for accountability, such as that called for in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, will soon make it impossible for school districts and teachers in the United States to ignore their responsibilities to provide appropriate assistance to all students, including ELLs" (p. 121). The consequences for failure are in fact serious — and expensive. According to Imber and Van Geel (2004):

The federal statute known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) imposes on states and school districts a complex set of requirements intended to ensure that all children achieve academic proficiency. Students in schools that fail for two consecutive years to make "adequate yearly progress" must, under the NCLB, be given the option to transfer to another public school in the same school district, including a charter school if permitted under state law, that has not been identified under NCLB as needing improvement. The school district must provide or pay for transportation for the student to attend the new school. (p. 34)

The introduction of high-stakes testing regimens has made these costs even more severe. Their link with the NCLB is made clear by Rice and her colleagues: "With the advent of the No Child Left Behind legislation, reading and mathematics have assumed a critical importance to standardized tests" (p. 121). According to Cochran-Smith (2005), a growing body of evidence has identified a discernible pattern across the country regarding the NCLB's impact on ELL students: "New regulations requiring that graduation rates be included in NCLB accountability provisions are not being enforced, whereas incentives for removing low-scoring students are rigidly followed. This means that there may now be perverse incentives in many states to push low-performing students out the back door so districts can avoid test-driven sanctions" (p. 99). Based on the foregoing, it is clear that educators, administrators, and students alike are confronted with significant challenges when it comes to meeting the requirements established by the NCLB.

In reality, it is difficult to find fault with the apparent goals of the NCLB. Cochran-Smith (2005) points out that "nearly everybody agreed with the bill's purpose — 'to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to attain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments'" — a worthwhile purpose that was to be accomplished through complex funding methods and the provision of more federal resources to high-poverty and struggling schools (p. 99). According to Chamberlain (2004), the two primary goals of the NCLB are: (a) to raise standards across U.S. schools; and (b) to decrease the achievement gap between students who traditionally perform well and those who have traditionally been considered underachieving — the latter group generally including students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, students from low-income families, urban students, rural students, and students with disabilities.

One way to achieve a decrease in the achievement gap would be to lower the bar, but this would defeat the purpose of the legislation and run contrary to the fundamental goal of providing a quality education in the 21st century. Nevertheless, the latter group of students described by Chamberlain (2004) does represent a particularly difficult demographic to educate for a wide range of reasons. These harsh realities adversely affect the ability of many disadvantaged students to compete on the same basis as their advantaged counterparts. Despite the enormity of these challenges, the NCLB is the law of the land and its mandates are clear. In their study "Challenges in the No Child Left Behind Act for English-Language Learners," Abedi and Dietel (2004) report that the NCLB has established difficult mandates in an attempt to reduce the achievement gap; although these objectives are worthwhile, achieving the required levels of performance demands substantive improvement in student learning for many ELLs. The obstacles for ELL students are particularly challenging, given that they include both educational and technical issues:

Review of the Relevant Literature

Historically low ELL performance and very slow improvement. State tests show that ELL students' academic performance is far below that of other students — oftentimes 20 to 30 percentage points lower — and usually shows little improvement across many years.

Measurement accuracy. Research shows that the language demands of tests negatively influence accurate measurement of ELL performance. For the ELL student, tests measure both achievement and language ability simultaneously.

Instability of the ELL student subgroup. The goal of redesignating high-performing ELL students as language-proficient causes high achievers to exit the subgroup. The consequence is downward pressure on ELL test scores, worsened by the addition of new ELL students, who are typically low achievers.

Factors outside of a school's control. Research shows substantial non-school effects on student learning even within ELL subgroups. Schools are therefore unable to control all factors related to student achievement.

Given these constraints, it would seem that schools able to achieve the performance standards required by the NCLB within the established timeframe will be the exception rather than the rule. At least some authorities suggest that the true purpose of the legislation is to create a situation in which students, teachers, and schools will inevitably fail because the standards are impossible to achieve. As Kesson and Ross (2004) suggest, "Current federal educational policy, embodied in the No Child Left Behind Act, sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 1970s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves" (p. xiv). These authors even suggest that the same corporate forces driving the privatization of the nation's prison and jail system are at work in Congress: "The current reform environment creates conditions in which public schools can only fail, thus providing 'statistical evidence' for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of 'freedom of choice'" (Kesson & Ross, 2004, p. xiv). These researchers maintain that the NCLB represents the tip of a conspiratorial iceberg with the privatization of the nation's public schools as its ultimate goal: "In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent" (Kesson & Ross, 2004, p. xiv).

Other educational authorities have tended to agree with this overall assessment of the NCLB, if not on the level of a conspiracy, at least on the level of high-governmental meddling that has resulted in less-than-desirable coverage of the NCLB's true impact on the nation's schools and on ELL students in particular. As Mayers (2006) observed, "Despite the grim reality of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, the general public appears to be largely misinformed. This is due, in part, to what appear to be deliberate efforts on the part of the Bush administration" (p. 449). Arce and her associates (2005) emphasize that "the Bush family has taken a particular interest in education by directly and indirectly supporting the implementation of the NCLB legislation. This president, who is publicly propagandizing against public institutions (especially education and social security), sponsors legislation that directly profits his family, but punishes poor children and public school educators. NCLB is the pinnacle of investment schemes" (p. 56). According to Ascher (2006), the impetus behind this "NCLB as investment scheme" framing is nothing less than the co-opting of the nation's schools by powerful elite-headed conglomerates:

The federal out-of-school tutoring program features free-market strategies promoted by the Bush Administration: parental choice, money following individual students, and the privatization of educational delivery. Created in response to low standardized-test scores, the requirement for supplemental educational services also reflects NCLB's lack of interest in the wider goals of public schools or students' school experiences. Just as NCLB has forced high-poverty schools to narrow their academic offerings to ensure that students make "adequate yearly progress" in English and math, the supplemental services provision extends this narrowed educational agenda into students' out-of-school hours. (p. 136)

Even assuming there is no hidden political or economic agenda behind the NCLB, the private sector continues to benefit from the Act's mandates at the expense of those who can least afford it. The consequences of failure are profound and can have lifetime implications for ELL students who are unable to achieve satisfactory performance in required subject areas. In response to these issues and disturbing trends, a number of educators have searched for superior alternatives to existing approaches to delivering educational services to ELL students; a representative sampling of such studies is provided below.