No Child Left Behind: Teacher Quality and Student Achievement

Overview of the No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act (Public Law 107-110) is a Congressional act signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002. The bill was a bipartisan initiative, supported by Senator Edward Kennedy, and authorized a number of federal programs designed to improve standards for educational accountability across all states and districts, while increasing the focus on reading. Much of NCLB's emphasis stems from the view that American students are falling behind their global peers academically. Contrary to popular opinion, NCLB does not establish a national achievement standard; each state must set its own standards, but in order to receive federal funding, states must meet a basic set of performance criteria (Abernathy, 2007).

Teacher Quality and Accountability Under NCLB

The national school reform initiative known as No Child Left Behind directly addresses teacher quality (U.S. Department of Education, 2002), placing importance on effective and accurate teacher evaluation practices. Identifying predictors related to teacher evaluation systems that lead to teacher job satisfaction would assist school administrators in designing programs and policies to retain quality teachers in the classroom. The high attrition rate affecting the supply and demand of technology teachers — most especially in the rural areas of North Carolina — is particularly alarming (Weston, 1997). As rapid technological innovation continues to reshape society, the problems that remain unaddressed regarding the supply and demand of technology teachers must be quickly resolved to ensure that children are not left behind academically.

Constructivism, Diversity, and 21st Century Pedagogy

With the implementation of No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001 came a significantly intensified emphasis on teacher accountability and evaluation, measured predominantly by student performance on standardized tests. One of the central paradigms of 21st-century pedagogy and educational policy in the United States focuses on diversity within the student population and on expanding the principles of constructivism to view each learner as unique, with different prior knowledge, cultural backgrounds, and needs within the modern school environment. Constructivism allows for individual uniqueness and encourages diversity as part of the educational process (Dougimas, 1998).

Students are encouraged to form and express their own opinions, backing them up with facts and knowledge, and to move beyond rote learning — progressing upward through Bloom's taxonomy until they are able to synthesize, analyze, and even create new ideas and products. Students must also take on some of the responsibility for their own learning: a teacher cannot be with a learner at all times and must therefore impart the skills necessary to succeed while still following a prescribed curriculum and approach to core skill sets. This, of course, requires multiple evaluation measures that both improve teacher effectiveness and student performance (Partee, 2012).

Teacher Effectiveness and Student Achievement

Many have questioned the responsibility placed on teachers to increase student test scores, at the risk of ignoring other factors that influence those scores and the many other roles that effective teachers play. However, Marzano (2003), in responding to the question of what works in schools, concludes that research unquestionably links successful schools with teacher effectiveness: "Although most attempts to answer this question arrive at slightly different quantitative estimates, all researchers agree that the impact of decisions made by individual teachers is far greater than the impact of decisions made at the school level" (Marzano, 2003, p. 63).

In an earlier study that analyzed achievement scores in mathematics, reading, language arts, social studies, and science for over 60,000 students across grades 3 through 5, Wright, Horn, and Sanders (1997) concluded that "the most important factor affecting student learning is the teacher. In addition, the results show wide variation in effectiveness among teachers. The immediate and clear implication of this finding is that seemingly more can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers than by any other single factor" (p. 63).

Conclusion

While 100% full inclusion is neither wise nor always practical, the rule should be inclusion and the exception segregation. We do not live in a society in which we can arbitrarily choose the level of disability we will encounter, and by making the classroom a mirror of the way we would like future society to function, we can establish new normative behaviors, a new sense of empathy and compassion, and a reduced fear of those who are different. Progress is, in fact, variable, and if students have different gifts, then their progress must be measured differently as well (Center on Education Policy, 2010).

Today, students of all cognitive abilities are expected to meet standards aligned with a national pedagogical philosophy. The majority of students with disabilities are expected to participate and make progress in the general education curriculum, and to participate in state assessments, with accommodations as necessary. Federal law requires that individualized education programs (IEPs) align with academic standards for all students, including those with moderate and severe disabilities.

Standards are necessary and, at times, draconian — but what is likely required is a revamping of the evaluation system to measure what is truly important and to hold teachers accountable for what they can realistically accomplish, not for outcomes they have no power to control (Wong, 2011). What a vast change this would make in the quality of education, quality of life, and in the learning experiences of everyone involved.