Applied Research Center on Education - As various provisions of President Bush's signature education policy No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are implemented, it is important to analyze whether race-based disparities are documented and addressed or simply ignored.

National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) - Works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.

NCLB—Let's Get It Right - American Federation of Teachers.

States Revolt - A grassroots rebellion is growing against the No Child Left Behind law's expensive rules and regulations. Communities for Quality Education has identified efforts in all 50 states to fix the federal law since 2003.

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March 2010 - Re-education: Conservative education scholar Diane Ravitch returns to her liberal roots - Over the last few years, Diane Ravitch has become one of the nation’s leading critics not only of conservative educational policies like vouchers but of more centrist ideas too, like charter schools, testing, and merit pay for teachers, Washington Monthly.

March 2009 - Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School - Nine New Studies Paint a Troubling Picture ...kindergarten, long a beloved institution in American culture, is in serious trouble. If the problems are not recognized and remedied, the same ills will be passed on to preschools and even to programs for children ages birth to three, Alliance for Childhood.

September 2008 - A Call to Restructure Restructuring: Lessons from the No Child Left Behind Act in Five States - Restructuring is the last stage of school improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Beginning in 2004, each state was required by federal law to set aside 4% of its total Title I allocation to assist districts and schools in improvement, including schools in restructuring. In the 2007-2008 school year, there were 3,599 Title I schools that were involved in sanctioned restructuring under NCLB, a 56% increase from the previous school year. Schools and districts identified for restructuring must choose from a menu of options designed to restructure the school. Despite restructuring efforts, only 19% of identified schools in five states studied were able to pull up the performance levels of their school systems and make their Annual Yearly Progress goals. None of the five federal restructuring options were associated with a greater likelihood of a school making AYP overall or in reading or math alone. In other words, there is no statistical reason to suspect that any one of the federal restructuring options is more effective than another in helping schools make AYP, Center on Education Policy.

September 2008 - State Systems of Support Under NCLB: Design Components and Quality Considerations - Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), state education agencies are required to establish a state system to support schools identified for improvement.  Data from a national survey of state administrators reveals the majority of state education departments do not have the fiscal or technical capacity to aid low-performing schools. Study provides a set of indicators state officials can use to evaluate the quality of state supports, American Institutes for Research.

NCLB Section 1117. School Support and Recognition.
By law, states must allocate 95% of the set-aside to “local educational agencies,” which include school districts and regional assistance centers. These entities can then pass the funds to schools or provide schools with services. The remaining 5% can go to state activities (State Systems of Support, above).

September 2008 - Help Wanted: State Capacity for School Improvement - State officials report limited capacity to provide adequate assistance to schools, particularly with regard to staff, funding, and technology, American Institutes for Research.

June 2008 - High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind - During the NCLB era, achievement gaps between high- and low-achieving students have narrowed. Both high and low achievers have made test score gains since the federal government debated and implemented NCLB—though not necessarily because of NCLB—but low achievers have gained more. The trend is evident on both national and state NAEP scores, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (Executive summary; Full report).

Key findings:

• While the nation’s lowest-achieving youngsters made rapid gains from 2000 to 2007, the performance of top students was languid. Children at the tenth percentile of achievement (the bottom 10 percent of students) have shown solid progress in fourth-grade reading and math and eighth-grade math since 2000, but those at the 90th percentile (the top 10 percent) have made minimal gains.
  
  
• This pattern—big gains for low achievers and lesser ones for high achievers—is associated with the introduction of accountability systems in general, not just NCLB. An analysis of NAEP data from the 1990s shows that states that adopted testing and accountability regimes before NCLB saw similar patterns before NCLB: stronger progress for low achievers than for high achievers.

Local response:
October 22, 2009 - Federal rules leave gifted kids behind - By teaching to the middle, we fail to help top learners achieve their potential, Star Tribune.

Summer 2008 - Accountability Left Behind - U.S. Court of Appeals sides with the NEA, would free districts from NCLB requirements, Education Next.

October 2007 - The 17th Bracey Report - When a social crisis — real, imagined, or manufactured — appears, schools are the scapegoat of choice; when the crisis is resolved, they receive no credit.... The most recent effort to lay blame for societal problems at the feet of the schools is the “ED in ’08” campaign from Strong American Schools. The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation front this campaign to the tune of $60 million, Phi Delta Kappan.

September 2007 - 39th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll Of the Public’s Attitudes Toward The Public Schools - The more people know about NCLB, the less they like it, Phi Delta Kappan.

September 25, 2007 - NAEP Data Contradict Bush Administration Education Claims; "No Child Left Behind" has not led to faster school improvement, National Center for Fair & Open Testing (More Information).

July 2, 2007 - A Think Twice review of Answering the Question That Matters Most: Has Student Achievement Increased Since No Child Left Behind? - A new report released by the Center on Education Policy, “Answering the Question That Matters Most: Has Student Achievement Increased Since No Child Left Behind?” has received a great deal of attention in the press and is likely to be cited often in the upcoming debate on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The report acknowledges several important methodological weaknesses, but other such weaknesses are never mentioned. (Press Release) (Original Report).

May 2007 - Supplemental Education Services under NCLB: Emerging Evidence and Policy Issues, Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice:

Supplemental Education Services, a key component of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, has been adopted and implemented without any systematic research or scrutiny, notwithstanding potential problems that call out for investigation... The report finds that SES programs have low participation rates and offer limited services for English Language Learners and special education students. It also finds that states and school districts lack the capacity to offer significant monitoring or accountability for SES programs-in stark contrast to the NCLB law's strict accountability measures applied to the schools themselves. But the key finding of this report is essentially a non-finding: the overwhelming absence of evidence to support (or refute) the wisdom of the SES policy.  The report states, "existing research offers little information about specific conditions that support positive outcomes" from supplemental education services provided under the law. "To make well-informed decisions in the future, policy makers will require additional empirical evidence."

Winter 2006 - Getting Ruby a Quality Public Education: Forty-Two Years of Building the Demand for Quality Public Schools through Parental and Public Involvement - The linchpin of NCLB will be the nation, state, community, and parents acting on the information they receive about school performance; the irony is that the primary focus of schools has been on passing the tests and complying with the hundreds of pages of law and guidance, rather than on parents and communities working with schools to improve achievement, Public Education Network.

November 2006 - Fixing Failing Schools: Is the NCLB Toolkit Working? - Original research about NCLB remedies presented at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Washington, D.C.

2006 - Ten Moral Concerns in the Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, A Statement of the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy.

March 2006 - No Child Left Behind has failed - By regulating at such a young age we are making schools the kind of place kids love to hate, Minnesota Daily.

February 2006 - The Unraveling of No Child Left Behind: How Negotiated Changes Transform the Law - Over the past two years, the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) has made such extensive compromises in implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) that the law’s legitimacy is in serious question. In response to growing state and local opposition to the law, political and professional criticisms of its requirements, and the increasing number of schools and districts identified for improvement, the administration has allowed a wide variety of changes in state accountability plans. These changes reflect a political strategy by the administration to respond to the growing state opposition to the law by providing relief from some of the law’s provisions and reducing, at least temporarily, the number of schools and districts identified for improvement. But they are also a concession by ED officials that NCLB is not working and have created a policy that has no consistent meaning across states, Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

January 2006 - Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, Forum on Educational Accountability.

November 2005 - Clark: An American Indian education manifesto - We do not accept that test scores define the potential or truly measure the growth of our children in any legitimate way, Indian Country Today. From American Indian Tribes and NCLB-- Should tribal governments support the law or not?

June 2005 - No Child Left Behind: Where Does the Money Go? - Examines how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dollars flow from the federal government through states and districts and into the coffers of companies, mostly for-profit companies, Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU), Arizona State University.

February 2005 - Does No Child Left Behind Place a Fiscal Burden on States? Evidence from Texas, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

February 2005 - NCSL Task Force Report on No Child Left Behind, Provides a comprehensive set of recommendations geared toward improving the No Child Left Behind law. The first chapter raises fundamental questions about the act’s underlying philosophy, and the last chapter addresses one of the most vexing questions raised by legislators: the federal funding available for NCLB, National Conference of State Legislatures.

Open to the Public: Speaking Out on “No Child Left Behind,” Summary of Nine Hearings May–October, 2004, Public Education Network.

September 2004 - Listening to Teachers: Classroom Realities and No Child Left Behind, What teachers think about the law and how they, and their schools, are responding to its strategies for change, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

September 2004 - No Child Left Behind Act:  Additional Assistance and Research on Effective Strategies Would Help Small Rural Districts, United States Government Accountability Office.

September 2004 - No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements Needed in Education’s Process for Tracking States’ Implementation of Key Provisions, United States Government Accountability Office.

August 2004 - 36th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed say they know little about The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The percentage a year ago was 76%. And, although down 14%, 55% say they do not know enough to state whether they view it favorably or unfavorably. Still, 51% express the belief that NCLB will improve schools in their community; lack of financial support is now firmly established in the public's mind as the major problem facing the public schools, Phi Delta Kappa International (Full Report).

May 2004 - Failing Our Children - How "No Child Left Behind" Undermines Quality and Equity in Education, An Accountability Model that Supports School Improvement, FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

March 2004 - No Child Left Behind: Listening to Minnesota Educators, Office of U.S. Senator Mark Dayton.

March 2004 - Academic Atrophy: The Condition of the Liberal Arts in Americas Public Schools - Social studies, civics, geography, languages and the arts are getting squeezed out in the four states studied (Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico and New York). The shift away from liberal arts subjects is most pronounced in elementary schools and schools with large minority populations. The reason was the emphasis by the No Child Left Behind education reform on the three core subjects and high-stakes testing, Council for Basic Education.

February 2004 - NCLB: Does it really affect you? A call to stop shortchanging children, MassPartners for Public Schools (Massachusetts).

February 2004 - Poll of Parents on “No Child Left Behind” Behind” - Three-Quarters Oppose Fund Cut-Off if their Child's School "Fails," Conducted by the America Project of the Civil Society Institute (Press Release).

April 2003 - April Foolishness: The 20th Anniversary of A Nation at Risk - It has been 20 years, though, since A Nation at Risk appeared. It is clear that it was false then and is false now. ... The various special interest groups in education need another treatise to rally round. And now they have one. It's called No Child Left Behind. It's a weapon of mass destruction, and the target is the public school system. Today, our public schools are truly at risk, Phi Delta Kappa.

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