What Do We Know About the Impact of No Child Left Behind?

Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) to improve the academic achievement of all students in U.S. public schools. Now, six years later, Congress is beginning the process of reauthorizing NCLB. What do we know about NCLB's impact?

Fortunately, a great deal. When the act was passed, Congress authorized the National Longitudinal Study of NCLB to provide information on how districts and schools were addressing NCLB provisions. The RAND Corporation, along with the American Institutes of Research (AIR), is leading this effort and has reported on a series of issues related to NCLB's impact.

Standards-Based Accountability

At the core of improving schools under NCLB is a system of standards-based accountability (SBA) that requires states to develop content and achievement standards, measure student progress through tests, and intervene in schools and districts not meeting yearly student proficiency targets.

A RAND study looks at how educators are responding to SBA provisions in three states representing different approaches, regions, and student populations: California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Researchers found that although the states had different accountability systems, districts in the three states focused on similar school improvement activities: aligning curriculum with state standards, using data for decisionmaking, and providing extra support to low-performing students.

In addition, the study found that teachers changed their instruction in both desirable and undesirable ways in response to the accountability provisions. Most teachers noted that SBA increased the focus on student achievement and on a more rigorous curriculum, but they also reported that SBA reduced teachers' morale and the breadth of topics covered.

When it comes to implementation, teachers noted inadequate funding first, but they also said that they were hampered by the wide range of student abilities, students' lack of basic skills, inadequate parental support, and absenteeism and tardiness. Given these challenges, most teachers in the study felt that NCLB's expectation that all students reach proficiency by 2014 was unrealistic.

The study recommended improving alignment among standards, tests, and curriculum; providing educators with professional development assistance; and exploring ways to measure performance more accurately.

Title I School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services

Beyond creating greater school accountability, NCLB also creates new educational options for parents whose children attend Title I schools—schools receiving significant federal funding for children deemed at risk of academic failure, as determined through qualification for free and reduced-price lunch—that have not made adequate yearly progress toward meeting state standards for two or more years.

The first option allows parents to transfer a child to a school not identified for improvement if the child's school is in year 1 or later of identified-for-improvement status. The second option allows low-income parents to enroll their child in supplemental educational services—such as tutoring, remediation, or other academic instruction—offered by a state-approved provider, in addition to instruction provided during the school day. This option is available if the school is in year 2 or beyond of identified-for-improvement status.

A RAND study analyzed which students chose to participate in each option and how each affected student achievement in nine large, urban school districts across the country. Supplemental educational services showed some promise in raising achievement among disadvantaged students and those most affected by underperforming schools. But given that service providers' operational characteristics (e.g., class sizes) vary widely, further research might help identify provider characteristics that are particularly effective in raising student achievement.

Meanwhile, the effects of NCLB-related school choice remain in question. The study did not find that school choice had any effect, positive or negative, on student achievement, but it might be that participation rates are still too low to identify impacts.

Evaluating Teacher Quality

NCLB requires that states set standards that teachers must meet to be considered highly qualified. An AIR-authored study analyzed the progress of states, districts, and schools in implementing the teacher qualification provisions of NCLB through the 2004–2005 school year and found that, although states are working to comply with the NCLB requirements for teacher qualification, several issues warrant attention.

First, there is variation across states in policies regarding highly qualified teachers, which raises questions about whether all states have set sufficient standards to ensure that teachers have solid expertise in the subjects they teach. Second, variation exists in teachers' qualification status across types of teachers and schools, which highlights ongoing inequities in students' access to highly qualified teachers. Finally, many teachers were not notified of their NCLB status, which means that they may not have taken the necessary steps to become highly qualified.

The potential for the NCLB provisions to effect positive change in the nation's teaching workforce depends partly on addressing these important issues.

INTERVIEW

Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater: Ways to Improve NCLB Brian Stecher is a senior social scientist in RAND Education whose research focuses on applied educational measurement, including the implementation, quality, and impact of state assessment and accountability systems; the cost, quality, and feasibility of performance-based assessments; and the development and validation of licensing and certification examinations. He is currently directing a multistate, National Science Foundation–funded study of NCLB accountability provisions and has published widely in professional journals. He has a Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Now that Congress is beginning to reauthorize NCLB, what does the research tell us? We can see from the research that NCLB has flaws, but many of these can be fixed if the country wants to continue to have a strong accountability system. There are changes that Congress can make that will preserve the act's goals of accountability and student improvement. One issue the research speaks to is what happens when teachers focus on the subjects NCLB pushes. The research shows that when schools respond to NCLB's focus on reading and math, they do so at the expense of other subjects, such as science, social studies, and physical education. Parents and teachers should push to have these subjects included in NCLB's accountability system if they value them, and Congress should ensure that all educational outcomes important to society are included when it comes to determining whether a school is performing well. What about the issue of “proficiency”? NCLB uses proficiency to determine whether students and schools are making progress; unfortunately, each state defines proficiency differently. The end result is that many children end up being behind their peers in other states. If the goal is to foster achievement for all students, Congress should encourage similar standards across all states. The issue of proficiency is not just that it's defined differently, is it? That's true. The focus of NCLB is on getting kids to a proficient level. But schools should also be rewarded for improving performance across the entire distribution of achievement. Research shows that teachers are focusing more attention on students close to the proficient level and less attention on those at higher and lower levels. How could this be remedied? There are methods for computing progress that would accomplish the goal of giving credit for improvement at all levels—so-called “value-added” methods. If we shift to such measurements, it would have the added benefit of sending better signals to teachers who are struggling to meet the needs of students with limited English proficiency and students with disabilities … and we would be able to do this without compromising the act's important steps to ensure that these students are counted. Do any other findings from the research suggest ways to improve NCLB? The way that NCLB is set up now, schools that repeatedly fail to meet performance standards are supposed to face severe sanctions; these sanctions include replacing all the school's staff or reconstituting the school with new public or private leadership. It turns out that states and districts are actually opting for lesser sanctions, such as adopting a new curriculum. This suggests a disconnect between Congress and state and local educators. Congress could reduce this discrepancy by legislating more moderate sanctions for all but the most egregious failure or by creating an enforcement mechanism for implementing sanctions. For more information: Revamp NCLB to Fulfill Its Promise

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