Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2011 No Child Left Behind: A Critical Look at the Historic Educational Reform And A Proposal of the Necessary Remedies Meghan L. Hartnett Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration Commons Recommended Citation Hartnett, Meghan L., "No Child Left Behind: A Critical Look at the Historic Educational Reform And A Proposal of the Necessary Remedies" (2011). Honors Theses. 995. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/995 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. No Child Left Behind A Critical Look at the Historic Educational Reform And A Proposal of the Necessary Remedies Meghan Hartnett Professor Clifford Brown Political Science Senior Thesis March 11, 2011 Table of Contents Chapter 1: The Role of the Federal Government in Education Through Out United States History 1 Horace Mann and America’s First Public Schools…………………..2 Brown v. Board of Education………………………………………...3 The Birth of the Resource and Achievement Gap……………………4 LBJ and the War on Poverty………………………………………….5 The Elementary Secondary Education Act…………………………...6 A Nation at Risk…………………………………………....................9 Federal Involvement and No Child Left Behind……………………...12 Reauthorization of Title I……………………………………………..14 State Determined Standards and Testing……………………………..14 Transparency and Subgroups………………………………………....16 Adequate Yearly Progress…………………………………………….17 Failing to Meet AYP and Sanctions…………………………………..19 District Labels and Sanctions…………………………………………22 School Choice…………………………………………………………23 Early Education and Reading First……………………………………24 Highly Qualified Teachers………………………………………….....25 School Report Cards………………………………………………......27 Scientific Based Research……………………………………………..28 Conclusion………………………………………………………….....29 Chapter 2: The Peculiar Politics of Education and the Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act 30 Introduction…………………………………………………………….30 A Nation At Risk……………………………………………………….31 George H.W. Bush –The Education President………………………....32 Charlotte Education Summit and America 2000……………………….33 President Clinton and National Standards………………………...........34 Goals of 2000: Improving America’s Schools Act…………………......35 Big Business and Republicans at Odds………………………………....38 The 2000 Election and the New Politics of Education………………....38 The New Federal Education Policy Regime……………………………43 The Blue Print…………………………………………………………..44 Bi-partisan Support –Winning Over Key Democrats…………………..45 The Big Four……………………………………………………………48 Forming Alliances in the House and Senate……………………………49 A Congressional Compromise………………………………………….52 George W. Bush –The Addition of a Compassionate Conservative…....52 Democratic Policy Challenges………………………………………….54 Conservatives and the Privatization of Education……………………...56 Where Were the Interest Groups?............................................................57 September 11th and Terrorism……………………………………..........59 Conclusion………………………………………………………...........60 Chapter 3: Critics of the No Child Left Behind Act 61 Introduction……………………………………………………………..61 High-Stakes Testing……………………………………………….........63 Teaching to the Test…………………………………………………….64 What About History Class?.....................................................................66 Can We Rely on These Tests?.................................................................68 The High Costs of Implementing the Tests…………………………….71 Is Credentialing Really the Best Method………………………….........71 State Variations in High Quality Teachers…….......................................73 Schools as Scapegoats…………………………………………………..74 The Issues of Achieving Adequate Yearly Progress……………………75 NCLB and America’s Top Students…………………………………….76 Subgroups and Increased Failure………………………………………..77 One-Size Fits All………………………………………………………..81 Students with Disabilities……………………………………………….82 What Exactly Do You Mean By Proficient?............................................82 2014 and the Race to the Bottom……………………………………….83 Conclusion………………………………………………………………88 Chapter 4: No Child Left Behind and the Achievement Gap 90 Introduction……………………………………………………………..90 What is the Achievement Gap?................................................................90 How Does NCLB Plan to Close the Gap?................................................91 Unintended Consequences –Will They Ever Catch Up?..........................92 More Ways to Fail………………………………………………………93 Low Performing Students Acting as Threats to Schools Livelihood……98 Home Life……………………………………………………………….99 Family Risk Factors……………………………………………………..101 Socioeconomic Status……………………………………………….......103 Summer Slide……………………………………………………………106 Conclusion………………………………………………………………108 Chapter 5: Can No Child Left Behind Be Fixed? 112 Introduction……………………………………………………………...112 The Great Compromise………………………………………………….113 A National Curriculum…………………………………………………..115 Alternatives to High Stakes Testing……………………………………..117 Giving Credit When Credit is Due………………………………………120 A Punishment That Fits the Crime………………………………………121 Growth and Value Added Model………………………………..............124 A Broad Curriculum……………………………………………………..128 Determining Highly Qualified Teachers………………………………...131 The Realities of the Achievement Gap………………………………….136 Parental Involvement……………………………………………............141 Concluding Thoughts……………………………………………………145 Work Cited 149 Chapter 1: The Role of the Federal Government in Education Through Out United States History On January 8, 2002, President George Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 into law. NCLB dramatically altered and expanded the federal role in both elementary and secondary education policy. The law was a result of a long standing history of educational reform for equality within the classroom coupled with a movement that began in the aftermath of the 1983 A Nation at Risk Report to make sure American youth stayed on par with other industrialized nations. No Child Left Behind was the most sweeping piece of transformational education reform since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. No Child Left Behind reaches a broad scope of individuals as it applies to all public schools and their students across the United States of America. The act aims to provide equality of outcomes in regards to the future of our world and the levels of elementary and secondary education in which they receive. The legislation is designed around the notion of outputs, also known as measuring academic performances through high-stakes testing. The law calls for a significant increase in federal education spending, mandates that states must design and administer proficiency tests to all of their students grades three through eight and again once in tenth through twelfth grade. No Child Left Behind requires that a qualified teacher is placed within every classroom, and also assures that states and local districts will be held accountable for the performance of their public schools through the method of enforcing an array of corrective measures within public schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress in the direction of the ultimate goal: 100% student proficiency. The passage of 1 No Child Left Behind has nationalized the politics of education to unprecedented levels, as the federal government’s stake in and influence over our country’s public education has never been stronger.1 The legislation, more ambitious and more sweeping than any previous accountability initiatives implemented into the American education system lays the groundwork for the overall objectives and promise of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) to be one of the greatest liberal reforms to date in the realm of the United States public education system. Horace Mann and America’s First Public Schools Throughout the first 250 years of the nation’s history, schools within the borders of the United States of America were either under the management of the local communities or sponsored by a variety of religious denominations. Neither the federal nor local government had any involvement in the realm of educating its citizens. What we known today as the public school system, did not emerge onto the national stage until half way through the nineteenth century. Horace Mann, an educational leader of Massachusetts, spent much of his life working on behalf of the cause of public education. Mann has been deemed the “father of public schools,” as he believed that public education was the “greatest discovery every made by man.” Horace Mann’s greatest contribution came in the form of catalyzing the public school movement in Massachusetts as he helped pass legislation which called for state funding of public schools in addition to the training of public school teachers. Movements of a similar nature eventually spurred in other states and today we have reached the point in which state governments now supply the greatest portion of financial support to public schools in American 1 McGuinn, 1, 2. 2 history. As states continued to assume greater control in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, there was little consideration to the role the federal government played or would play in the realm of public education. After leaving his position