NCLB in retrospect

NCLB in retrospect
A new report from the American Enterprise Institute considers the record of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), asking if it was a well-intentioned initiative that failed, or did it actually attain its stated goal of improving academic achievement, particularly for disadvantaged students? The report concludes that school accountability systems in general, and those of NCLB in particular, have only modest beneficial effects on standardized test scores; however, accountability systems are complex and can have both beneficial and harmful elements. Schools exposed to punitive NCLB sanctions, or the threat of sanctions, tended to outperform nearly identical schools that barely avoided them. Most individual sanctions in the NCLB regime, such as offering students transfers, tutoring, or modest "corrective actions," had no discernable effect. Schools restructured under NCLB posted significant improvements in both reading and math scores, suggesting leadership change is an essential reform in persistently low-performing schools. While a pure focus on proficiency can lead to diversion of resources from higher- or lower-performing students, complementary policies that focus on those students mitigate this risk substantially. The report recommends that any new law focus on test-score gains rather than levels of proficiency; incentivize schools rather than teachers; intervene with rather than fire underperforming teachers; and move state and district autonomy even further. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

Published by LEAP

Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.

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