Learning From No Child Left Behind

By U.S. News Staff

January 13, 2010 RSS Feed Print

Signed to law in January 2002, NCLB marked a controversial landmark for the federal government in education policy. It mandated high-stakes tests to measure student achievement. Schools that lag behind face penalties. With the law past due for reauthorization, U.S. News asked four experts to offer lessons that can be drawn from it.
Edited by Robert Schlesinger

By Margaret Spellings
Secretary of education for President George W. Bush

What lessons have we learned from the historic legislation known as No Child Left Behind? The most gratifying is that more kids are learning their lessons. How do we know? Because our schools are now required to find out how each student is doing every year in the key building-block subjects of reading and math...

By Randi Weingarten
President of the American Federation of Teachers

What have we learned from the No Child Left Behind Act? In a word: lots. Unfortunately, most of what we have learned shows that while the law's mission of creating high standards for all children was critical, its focus on stakes (the faulty emphasis on tests) and sticks (punishing schools in need of help) hasn't...

By Michael Cohen
President of Achieve, a nonpartisan education reform group

No Child Left Behind represents a continuation of a 45-year federal commitment to improving the education of poor children.

The law's greatest achievement was insisting that data on student achievement be broken down and reported by subgroups, focusing the attention of educators...

By Andrew Rotherham
Publisher of Education Sector; author of the blog Eduwonk.com

It is hard to find a national issue with a worse noise-to-signal ratio than the No Child Left Behind law. The contentiousness, obfuscation, and sometimes blatant misrepresentations leave parents, teachers, and policymakers baffled about what it requires or what its effects are. They likewise obscure issues the law has clearly highlighted and the...

Tags:: U.S. Department of Education,; No Child Left Behind,; education reform

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I am tired of being bashed for students who just don't care and parents who don't care enough about their children to support the teachers and their children in one of the most important aspects of their lives...education. I can no more teach a child who is resistant to learning than teach a dog who is blind to fetch a stick. What do these parents think we are? Don't they also know, that we,too, have families that we must attend to? If they took even half as much time as we do with our children, we would not have to have bills like NCLB and making teachers feel inadequate or inferior. Maybe if parents started taking responsibility for their ownership in the education process we could avoid all these programs that costs millions. A perfect example would be PBIS. I never heard of such a waste of money. It is sad to think that this program has to even exist. Not only are we supposed to teach academics, we also have to teach them to behave. Education is going downhill quickly. We need to stop bandaging and start healing. Our schools are a mess and we all know what needs to be done, so what are we waiting for????

Chris of IL 7:51AM March 14, 2010

A. NCLB meant more paperwork--annoyance and prevented focus on the students
B. NCLB meant poor evaluative measures--We are evaluated based on the ability to meet AYP(Student's proficiency) which is good except that it is compared to the students the prior year as opposed to that particular group's growth form the prior year; this leaves teachers being scored based on what teachers earlier on in the students lives were able to achieve or the lack thereof
C. NCLB meant teachers are held completely accountable--the students are no longer "allowed" to fail at anything, so first, many schools fin ways to get around it and just pass the students on. Second, parents are no longer held accountable for their children's success in school either. Third, communities are no longer held accountable(or never were), but now, a school is considered a "failure" if the poverty-mindset of the culture has robbed its youth of their potential.
*Warning Sarcasm Follows*
If a student fails it is because the teacher did not do their job. If a student is a behavior issue, it is the teacher's fault for not being a god. If every student that leaves is not on grade-level, the school must be a failure; forget the community's responsibility to its youth.
Sure, NCLB revealed the issues, but we knew them all along. NCLB is just a political way of making teachers and schools solely responsible for education. Did I mention, I get paid squat? 32,000 a year--don't call us baby-sitters if we can't get paid $5 a head/hour at least. This is not to mention the time and effort we put into trying to raise these kids when many parents neglect them, teaching strong morals, the need to succeed, the importance of family, the importance of relationships, the importance of giving it all you got.
You want to put more stress on our teachers; go for it. Underpaid, understaffed, and mistreated by many.
Me= 1 teacher + 90 students on a 3rd grade reading level entering my 8th grade class next year + 1 school that is on Tier 3 of NCLB's buck passing policies
I hope we can learn something--but this is just an online venting session for me that will have no true impact on anyone

GW of NC 9:55PM February 14, 2010

Personally, I think the test are not harder. I think alot of corners were cut, so the teachers wouldn't lose their jobs and all these reports that say that this worked is bull.
I had a son graduate this past year and his ability to read and write is limited. He would not be able to pass the same test I past to get a job like mine and to me, any 8th grader should be able to pass it. His reasoning skills, comprehensive skills and such are lacking. To add to the problem even more, his younger brother of 4 years is following in his footsteps.
So, from my own observation and others I know, we can not see an improvement, just more paperwork for the teachers, to justify their jobs and actually less time spent with the student.
The way things were 35 years ago worked. I can read and write very well, even with dyslexia. Not kids now days. But, that's my opinion.

al of OK 2:51PM February 04, 2010

Learning From No Child Left Behind

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