No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind Act

Updated: Sept. 23, 2011

The law that is known as "No Child Left Behind'' is the primary statute governing the federal government's role in education. First passed during the Johnson administration as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it was rebranded as part of its last major overhaul in 2001, when Democrats joined with President George W. Bush to make its focus the use of standardized test scores in schools, particularly those serving minority students.

The Obama administration proposed a sweeping overhaul of the law in March 2010 that would encourage states to raise academic standards after a period of dumbing-down, end the identification of tens of thousands of reasonably managed schools as failing, refocus energies on turning around the few thousand schools that are in the worst shape and help states develop more effective ways of evaluating the work of teachers and principals, among other goals. But efforts to address the problem have gained little traction in Congress, where several attempts since 2007 to rewrite the sprawling law have failed.

The administration's blueprint calls on states to adopt new academic standards that build toward having all students ready for college and career by the time they leave high school. That would replace the current 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency, a goal widely dismissed as unrealistic.

The standardized tests developed by the states under the No Child law focus on measuring the number of students in each grade level in each school who are proficient in reading and math. The administration would like to shift the focus to measuring each student's academic growth, regardless of the performance level at which he starts.

In September 2011, President Barack Obama said that states would be able to seek waivers around key provisions in the law, including its 2014 deadline for proficiency. “Congress hasn’t been able to do it, so I will,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at the White House. “Starting today, we’ll be giving states more flexibility to meet high standards.”

Under the plan outlined by the White House, Secretary of EducationArne Duncan would allow states that agree to overhaul low-performing schools and adopt more rigorous teacher evaluation systems to apply for relief from the Bush-era law’s 2014 deadline and other unpopular provisions. States that qualify for the waivers would be allowed to design their own school accountability systems.

The commitments the administration is requiring of states closely resemble elements of the administration's own blueprint for rewriting the No Child law that was sent to Congress last year but never acted upon.

“This sets a dangerous precedent," said Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "Make no mistake — this is a political move that could have a damaging impact on Congressional efforts to enact lasting reforms to current elementary and secondary education law.”

The week before the announcement that states would be able to seek waivers, the House passed the first of a series of bills that Mr. Kline had introduced in an effort to rewrite the No Child law. However, there has been no prospect for bipartisan consensus on a full rewrite in the House or the Senate.

For its first two years, backed by a friendly Congress and flush with federal stimulus money, the Obama administration enjoyed a relatively obstacle-free path for its education agenda. The primary focus was the $4 billion Race to the Top grant program, which benefited school systems nationwide.

But with the Republicans taking control of the House in 2011, the odds have appeared increasingly dim for any kind of sweeping overhaul of the No Child law. Instead, House Republicans are pushing a piecemeal approach, carving out areas of agreement.

A Law's Nuts and Bolts

The current No Child Left Behind law requires that test scores increase in every school every year, to meet the requirement that 100 percent of students reach proficiency by 2014. According to a new research report, 31,737 of the 98,916 schools missed the law's testing goals in 2009, vastly more than any level of government can help to improve.

The administration's blueprint would refocus the most energy and resources on about 5,000 truly failing schools, and it outlines several models for how districts could intervene in them. Most would involve dismissing the principal and many teachers.

But this ambitious agenda presents striking challenges of its own, both political and in terms of implementation. Teachers' unions and some Republican lawmakers immediately signaled their dislike for pieces of the plan, complicating the administration's job as Congress takes up the task of reworking the No Child law. And even if lawmakers were to adopt the plan in its broad outlines, experts said, years of work would be required to roll out the new federal policies to states and in the nation's 15,000 school districts.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Bush made education reform a major plank in his domestic platform, saying that he wanted especially to end the "soft bigotry'' of low expectations for minority students. The test-based system of accountability he proposed appealed to many Republicans, but the vastly increased role for the federal government in an arena traditionally left to the states ran into opposition from conservatives. Many civil-rights groups rallied to the cause of the "No Child Left Behind'' bill, as it was by then called, and with the help of some leading Democrats, notably the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the bill became law — and Mr. Bush's only solidly bipartisan domestic achievement prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The current law calls for every state to set standards in reading and math, and for every student to be proficient at those subjects by 2014. Students in grades 3 through 8 are tested yearly, and reports are issued as to whether schools are making "adequate yearly progress'' toward that goal. The scores of groups like minorities, disabled and non-English speaking students are broken out separately. Schools that fail to make the required annual progress, whether overall or for subgroups, face a mounting scale of sanctions, from being required to provide tutoring to students in poor-performing schools to the threat of state takeovers or the shutting down of individual schools.

Since the law was signed, educators have complained loudly that it was branding tens of thousands of schools as failing but not forcing them to change. Teachers' groups disliked the emphasis on preparation for now-crucial exams that the law brought. Many Democrats, including Senator Kennedy, complained bitterly that Mr. Bush had reneged on a promise to provide more federal aid to help low-scoring schools improve. Some states, led by Utah, sought to rebel against the law's strictures. And with every new round of data, academics debated whether new scores showed the bill's impact, positive or negative.

In October 2009, the latest results on the most important nationwide math test — The National Assessment of Educational Progress — showed that student achievement grew faster during the years before the No Child Left Behind law, when states dictated most education policy. Scores increased only marginally for eighth graders and not at all for fourth graders, continuing a sluggish six-year trend of slowing achievement growth since passage of the law.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama alternated praise for the law's goals with criticisms of its weaknesses, but left his own plans for it murky. The first step taken by Secretary of Education Duncan was to recommend a rebranding for No Child Left Behind, a name that had been mocked ever more frequently as Mr. Bush's popularity slid.

Education Secretary's Executive Authority

In March 2011, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told Congress that more than 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind.

Prodded by school districts clamoring for relief, Mr. Duncan signaled in June 2011 that unless Congress acted by the fall to overhaul the law, he would use his executive authority to free states from the requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The secretary's move brought a sharp rebuke from the Republican chairman of the House education committee, John Kline of Minnesota, who challenged the secretary’s legal authority and his plans to override provisions of the law. “He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Mr. Kline said of Mr. Duncan, who assumed powers greater than any of his predecessors when, in 2009, Congress voted $100 billion in economic stimulus money for the nation’s school systems and allowed the secretary to decide how much of it should be spent. 

Mr. Kline later criticized the Obama administration’s use of the $4 billion Race to the Top grant competition to get states to adopt its reform agenda.

In August 2011, Mr. Duncan announced that he would unilaterally override the centerpiece requirement of No Child Left Behind, that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Mr. Duncan said he was taking the action because Congress had failed to rewrite the law, which he called a “slow-motion train wreck.”

In September 2011, President Obama said that states would be able to seek waivers around key provisions in the law, including the proficiency requirement. Under the plan outlined by the White House, Mr. Duncan would allow states that agree to overhaul low-performing schools and adopt more rigorous teacher evaluation systems to apply for relief from the Bush-era law’s 2014 deadline and other unpopular provisions. States that qualify for the waivers would be allowed to design their own school accountability systems.

A Piecemeal Approach to Reform

On Sept. 13, 2011 — in an important first step to improve a provision of the No Child law and in a rare display of bipartisanship — the House approved a bill supporting the expansion of charter schools, the initial part of a legislative package planned by Republicans to carry out a piecemeal rewrite of the law. The billtweaks an existing federal grant program that provides start-up money for new charter schools — currently about $250 million— and adds some quality control provisions.

In the past, some charters that got started with federal money collapsed or closed after a pileup of educational or financial irregularities. The new legislation requires states to withhold 10 percent of federal financing for improvements in the procedures by which they authorize new charters.

The bill has the support of charter operators as well as civil rights and school improvement groups. If passed by the Senate, it will replace the charter school provisions of the No Child law signed in 2002 by President Bush.

This is the first of five bills moved to the House floor by John Kline of Minnesota, the Republican chairman of the House education committee. The other four include a bill stripping several dozen federal educational programs from the No Child law; a bill allowing school districts new flexibility in how they spend federal education dollars, which was approved by Mr. Kline’s committee in July 2011; a bill outlining new federal teacher effectiveness requirements; and a bill rewriting the law’s school accountability provisions. They will dominate the committee’s fall agenda, Mr. Kline said.

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 As you may already know the No Child Left Behind Act Of 2002 was put in place to help monitor and raise students proficiency in math and reading. According to this article this bill was set in motion with the idea that 100% proficiency would be reached by 2014. For most school this is not a realistic goal. according to the articl 30,000 of the almost 100,000 schools are not meeting this expectation.

"Under the plan outlined by the White House, Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan would allow states that agree to overhaul
 low-performing schools and adopt more rigorous teacher evaluation
 systems to apply for relief from the Bush-era law’s 2014 deadline
 and other unpopular provisions. States that qualify for the waivers 
would be allowed to design their own school accountability systems".


After I read this I wasn't sure if putting the responsibility in the hands of the state was a good idea. Although as of now this bill has been in affect for almost ten years. What should we do?