No Child Left Behind Act: Intent, Impact, and Controversy

Introduction and Historical Context

It has often been noted by many astute observers that every solution to a problem creates another problem. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, or NCLB, a monumental piece of federal government legislation, is a strong example of an attempt to solve a complex problem that creates a complex web of problems in its wake. This paper examines literature on NCLB to explore the intent and the impact of the legislation on states, school districts, schools, teachers, and schoolchildren.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is the latest in a long line of United States federal government interventions in elementary and secondary public school education. NCLB was designed to help ensure that disadvantaged children receive the same educational opportunities as children living in more advantageous socioeconomic situations. In this way, NCLB is similar to, and a continuation of, the intent of other key federal education policies created in the twentieth century. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 enforced desegregation of public schools (McDermott & Jensen, 2005). The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 provided for bilingual instruction for students whose learning was inhibited under English-only instruction (Mayers, 2006). The 1994 Improving America's Schools Act encouraged states to create education standards and testing based on those standards, the results of which were to be used as measures of schools' accountability against state benchmarks (McDermott & Jensen, 2005). Each act extended the reach of the federal government's influence into the ways individual state governments administered their public education programs.

NCLB's Structure and Accountability Mechanisms

No Child Left Behind is considered by many observers to be the most intrusive legislation yet of its kind. Aimed at eliminating the gap in academic achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged American schoolchildren, NCLB establishes a rigid and rigorous system of standardized testing, ever-rising school and student achievement benchmarks, and mechanisms to address failure to attain those performance goals. The performance progress of schools and school districts depends on the performance gains of students as they take standardized tests created by their state's education officials across several grade levels. The performance goals increase every year, with 2014 as the finish line for all schools to close the achievement gap.

Failure to meet annual goals triggers a multi-level process of redress. The first year a school fails to reach its annual performance goal, the community it serves must be notified, and parents may opt to transfer their children to higher-performing schools. A second year of failure compels the state to act to reform the school, with options including replacing administrators and teachers and bringing in outside consultants. Additionally, supplemental instruction must be provided for low-performing students through private providers outside the school system. Failing to make the grade for a third year can result in the state taking over the school and possibly converting it into a charter school or a private school. Failures of this kind jeopardize federal funding for the stigmatized schools, creating a twofold cost: the loss of funding from Washington and the expense of the required corrective measures (Mayers, 2006).

School Improvement Cycles and Unrealistic Benchmarks

In his article "Doing the Right Thing, Knowing the Right Thing to Do: The Problem of Failing Schools and Performance-Based Accountability," Richard F. Elmore examines how two schools with different internal and external environments are both making improvements yet still being categorized as failures according to the standards enforced under the No Child Left Behind Act. Through years of observation and consulting work in schools of all kinds and in all types of socioeconomic environments, Elmore details the cycle of improvement that schools go through. The cycle includes gains in achievement and performance that soon level off as the problems first encountered and addressed give rise to new problems that teachers and administrators have not yet recognized. Faculty and staff must acknowledge the new set of challenges, determine how to address them, and create and implement a strategy for doing so.

This part of the cycle may very well require outside advice and assistance from those who can analyze the situation from a distance and with a fresh perspective. With the successful implementation of a new strategy for tackling emerging problems, the school will see performance gains, which will eventually level off again—and the cycle begins anew. While this may sound Sisyphean, Elmore points out that the effort required to recognize and adapt to new problems, combined with fresh input and insight from outside help, actually helps schools become better as teachers, administrators, students, and the community build the human and resource capacity to overcome new challenges. Their success shows that they are becoming more aligned in their thinking and more thoroughly sharing the same values. Elmore also discusses a school categorized as a success even though it is encountering the same problems as the two "failing" schools, demonstrating some real truth behind the saying "no pain, no gain"—because there will inevitably be frustration when schools reach those plateaus at the end of their gain spurts (Elmore, 2000).

Elmore argues that while standards-based accountability and performance goal-setting are not inherently negative, the way those features of No Child Left Behind have been enacted is having negative effects on all kinds of schools because the expectations are unrealistic. The policy demands ever-increasing performance gains every year and makes no room for the plateau periods that Elmore has observed schools go through time and again. Moreover, he points out that NCLB attempts to apply a one-size-fits-all approach that does not take into consideration the starting points of individual schools, nor the social, political, economic, and labor dynamics unique to each. The legislation compels states and school districts to view things through the same distorted lens and ties the hands of local officials and teachers as they seek to meet ever-higher goals with ever-greater stakes. In addition, Elmore explains how the federal government, by not offering direct aid in providing the required corrective actions, ignores its own role in helping challenged schools build the capacity needed to reach NCLB goals—thus losing the legitimacy of its authority by being unsupportive of the very advancements it demands (Elmore, 2000).