No Child Left Behind: Views, Controversies, and Critiques

Introduction

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB), signed into law by President Bush, was intended to ensure proficiency in reading and mathematics among American primary and secondary students by the year 2014 (USDOE, 2001). Renewal of the NCLB program was up for a vote on its reauthorization in 2008, and nearly 100 national education, civil rights, and religious organizations signed a "joint organizational statement on NCLB" (Olson & Hoff, 2007) opposing renewal without fundamental changes.

According to many critics, the major aspects of the NCLB program's focus and defined goals were poorly designed and not capable of being evaluated in a meaningful way. In addition, critics argued that the program was responsible for undermining the quality and effectiveness of public school curricula in several states. Olson and Hoff (2007) suggest that there is some evidence that NCLB may have increased teacher quality, but critics consider it to have wasted considerable effort and public education funds with very little benefit to the actual quality of American public education (Murray, 2006).

Perspectives on the NCLB Approach to Public Education

The NCLB approach was adopted primarily on the basis of data analysis within the Bush administration that purportedly documented the closure of an educational gap between white and black students, as well as sufficient academic improvement in the President's home state of Texas. Murray (2006) suggests that the absence of any empirical studies establishing the academic effectiveness of the program — and the conceptual and methodological weaknesses of the data used to justify its proposal for Title I federal funds — may reflect deliberate deception rather than genuine mistake. In principle, the mechanism of NCLB compliance may actually reduce the quality of public education, especially for students whose satisfactory performance in targeted subjects is already above the level requiring remedial attention (Olson & Hoff, 2007).

That outcome is largely a direct function of the fact that the primary mechanism by which NCLB programs are evaluated relates to student performance on achievement tests administered periodically by education administrators in each state. This direct link between achievement test scores and eligibility for Title I federal funds creates a natural incentive for major adjustments in school curricula, designed to provide intense focus on reading and mathematics to the relative exclusion of all other subjects (Darling-Hammond, 2004).

Even worse, instead of merely promoting extra attention to reading and mathematics — which would not necessarily be a bad goal in itself — the NCLB program employs evaluation methods that are readily susceptible to manipulation through academic emphasis on achievement test scores rather than on genuine learning, even in reading and mathematics. Already, this has resulted in numerous documented instances of educators in several states cheating the system by drilling students on the actual questions from their scheduled tests beforehand, and even manually changing students' answers on achievement tests to improve scores (Sonnenblick, 2008).

In addition to reducing attention to developing the academic potential of the highest-performing students (Olson & Hoff, 2007), the NCLB program effectively redirects education funds toward a much narrower focus, usually at the expense of the full range of academic areas outside those covered by Title I funding determinants. Furthermore, whereas commercial enterprises previously furnished a wide range of beneficial academic texts and materials across different subject areas, the NCLB criteria have inspired a corresponding narrowing of education products, driven by demand (Murray, 2006).

Unfortunately, to whatever extent the NCLB approach accomplishes its objectives, any benefit is likely to accrue to primary school students rather than to middle school or high school students, simply because Title I funds are distributed disproportionately — with 85% directed to primary school programs (Olson & Hoff, 2007).

Likewise, the NCLB prescribes no real consequences for failing to meet its standards beyond loss of Title I eligibility, the publication of failure, and the right of parents of students in poorly performing institutions to apply for transfers to other schools (Olson & Hoff, 2007). The objectives themselves are poorly conceived because of the ambiguities inherent in the criteria of "proficiency" (Murray, 2006), and most importantly, they reflect a complete lack of uniformity in the specific methodology used to demonstrate progress toward federal objectives of improved student performance. Specifically, the Separation of Powers doctrine prohibits the federal government from establishing the particular academic standards used to gauge student progress and "proficiency." On the other hand, nothing in the Constitution or the fundamental structure of the U.S. government prohibits a federal requirement of uniformity pursuant to the collective decisions of a nationally representative board of educators from every state.

Olson and Hoff (2007) acknowledge some evidence of teacher improvement claimed by NCLB proponents, but suggest that many educators point out that the criteria used to establish that improvement relate primarily to initial licensing rather than to meaningful classroom performance — the latter being readily measurable within the NCLB framework. In fact, some NCLB critics regard this as a viable opportunity to improve the quality of public education that has been essentially "squandered" for its lack of meaningful inclusion within the NCLB concept (Olson & Hoff, 2007).

Conclusion

The aim of improving the quality of the American education system is a worthwhile goal. In principle, the use of federal Title I funds for that purpose, in conjunction with meaningful standards for eligibility, is perfectly appropriate. Likewise, associating student performance with objective standards of improvement is the most natural mechanism for establishing compliance with federal objectives. However, the NCLB approach leaves much to be desired; in its original form and present incarnation, NCLB may do more to undermine crucial aspects of overall education quality than it does to improve the performance of poorly performing primary school students.

Moreover, current methods of demonstrating institutional compliance leave much to be desired, primarily because they emphasize student performance of the type readily susceptible to inappropriate test preparation rather than genuine learning — even in the two areas specifically targeted by the NCLB system. Meanwhile, the NCLB performance standards reflect no national uniformity, and the only criteria articulated in connection with federal Title I fund eligibility relate to a subjective and amorphous concept of "proficiency" that only increases the likelihood of manipulation for funding purposes while further decreasing the actual quality of education.

Ultimately, the framework of a national incentive for improvement in public education is a worthwhile goal, but the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is a poorly conceived approach whose deficiencies may actually do more to undermine many aspects of education than any meaningful improvement inspired by its programs.

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