Fixing Failing Schools

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has fundamentally reshaped debates about American schooling by mandating that students in each district school make “adequate yearly progress.” Schools and districts that fail to improve are subjected to a five-year “cascade” of remedies and sanctions. These detailed prescriptions are intended to force low-performing schools and districts to improve and provide new options for their students.

Now available is a comprehensive five-year assessment of the implementation of all NCLB remedy provisions. Until now, NCLB as a whole has attracted extensive analysis and even more opinion, but complete and rigorous examinations of its remedy provisions have been sparse—especially when compared to the attention lavished upon the law’s testing and reporting sections. This assessment was conducted by a wide-ranging group of renowned education scholars and analysts.

The 12 studies, produced by researchers in eight states for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, credit the five-year-old law with creating some school improvement, but doubted that it can solve some of the most intractable problems…

The studies cite a series of problems both from a national perspective and from case studies in California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey. A common theme is the ability of schools to block the changes envisioned by the law…

Under the No Child Left Behind law, schools that fail to meet minimum testing standards for two consecutive years must let students transfer to a different school in the district, then pay for tutoring in the third year. Schools eventually could face the removal of their leaders.

Several of the studies mentioned the low rate of parents accepting the transfers or tutoring, in part because many schools don't tally their test results until the subsequent school year…

I: The Big Picture—National Implementation and Capacity

Presenters:
Michael Casserly, Council of the Great City Schools
Jeffrey R. Henig, Columbia University Teachers College
Paul Manna, College of William and Mary
Michael J. Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

II: The NCLB Remedies in the States

Presenters:
Julian Betts, University of California, San Diego
Patrick McGuinn, Drew University
Alex Medler, Colorado Children’s Campaign

III: The NCLB Remedies in the Districts

Presenters:
Stephen K. Clements, University of Kentucky
Jay P. Greene, University of Arkansas
Jane Hannaway, Urban Institute
David Plank, Michigan State University

Individual reports by the presenters are available at:

http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1351,filter.all/event_detail.asp

To read more about the studies go to:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/12/01/study_says_localities_curb_ed_reform/

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