NOVEMBER 2007 HOT TOPIC

State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has an ambitious goal: ensuring that all children are proficient in reading and mathematics by the 2013–2014 school year. Key to achieving that goal is accountability—holding schools and districts accountable for whether their students master state content standards, as measured by state tests.

Such accountability, in turn, rests on several key premises: that clear definitions and targets for desired academic outcomes will provide both incentives for, and indicators of, improvement; that identifying districts and schools not meeting their improvement targets will help focus assistance and interventions where they are needed most; that widely available information about student performance will allow parents, educators, and other stakeholders to make informed decisions about how best to serve their students or children; and that targeted assistance will stimulate school and district improvement.

What progress are states, districts, and schools making in implementing the accountability provisions of NCLB? To help answer this question, the federal government funded two studies—the Study of State Implementation of Accountability and Teacher Quality Under NCLB (SSI-NCLB) and the National Longitudinal Study of NCLB (NLS-NCLB)—under the direction of RAND and the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

No Child Left Behind: What Do We Know About Achieving the Goal of Accountability?

The third volume in the report series, a collaboration by researchers from the two studies, identifies a number of key findings related to accountability through the 2004–2005 school year at the state level (SSI-NCLB) and at the district and school levels (NLS-NCLB):

• States, districts, and schools had mostly met the relevant NCLB accountability requirements through 2004–2005.
• All states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had enacted the NCLB accountability provisions as required, including academic achievement standards in reading and mathematics and other required performance indicators.
• More than half of states were testing students in all required grades in reading and mathematics in advance of the 2005–2006 NCLB deadline. However, 20 states were behind schedule in implementing assessments that measure English-language proficiency. A similar number of states were not able to notify schools of their performance on the statewide assessments before the start of the 2004–2005 school year.
• Seventy-five percent of the nation's schools made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in 2003–2004. Of the 25 percent that did not make AYP, half (51 percent) did not succeed because the school as a whole (i.e., the “all students” group) or multiple student subgroups did not meet achievement standards. When schools did not make AYP for a single subgroup, it was usually for students with disabilities.
• About one-third of schools that did not make AYP did not do so in the students with disabilities or limited English proficiency (LEP) student subgroups. About two-thirds of those schools reported needing technical assistance to improve instruction for these subgroups.
• Thirteen percent of the nation's schools were identified for improvement in 2004–2005. Those schools were most likely to be high-poverty, high-minority, large, urban schools to which Title I has historically directed substantial resources.
• Nearly all schools reported making multiple improvement efforts. Schools identified for improvement focused on more areas of improvement than did nonidentified schools. Schools also reported receiving technical assistance that met their needs, except in two areas. About one-half of schools needing assistance to improve services to students with disabilities and to improve services to LEP students did not have these needs met. States and districts were implementing the required interventions in schools identified for improvement and corrective action, but they were not implementing the required actions in most of the 1,199 schools requiring restructuring.

Overall, the findings paint a picture of considerable activity and rapid implementation of NCLB requirements, but they also identify areas in which limited implementation and information present challenges to achieving the goal of proficiency for every student in reading and mathematics by 2014.

In particular, the findings show that the numbers and percentages of identified schools and districts varied considerably across states, partly because of differences in state standards, assessments, and AYP targets during that time frame. In addition, at that time, some states still struggled to deliver information on school status in a timely manner, and some states and districts still struggled to provide basic resources to schools. For example, about one-third of teachers in identified schools reported that they did not have an adequate number of textbooks and instructional materials. Also, the increasing number of schools and districts identified for improvement presents challenges to state and district support systems. Finally, little is known about the quality of local improvement efforts or the effectiveness of state and district technical assistance and interventions.

READ THE REPORT:
State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act: Volume III—Accountability Under NCLB: Interim Report

READ THE RESEARCH BRIEF:
Accountability Under No Child Left Behind: Progress Toward Implementation

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