The efficacy of the No Child Left Behind Act has become a primary point of contention as the country moves toward Election Day 2004. Candidates running for office, from the local level to the presidency, have argued over whether the act's provisions have improved education and whether the government has adequately funded the act.
A study by a Yale Law School clinic, in cooperation with Connecticut Voices for Children, surveyed the principals and superintendents responsible for implementing NCLB in Connecticut and found that they believe the act needs improvement.
The report, titled "Early Changes, Enduring Challenges," was written by students and instructors in the Law School's Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization Legislative Advocacy Clinic. The report's authors used over 300 survey responses (representing about a quarter of the state's principals and half of the superintendents) and in-depth case studies of four school districts to generate findings and recommendations.
(You can read the full report here.)
Avni Gupta '05, one of the study's authors, says that she thinks the most fascinating point to come out of the study was that educators broadly accept the act's philosophical underpinnings, including the ideas of testing requirements and accountability, but want it to work better. "They really do want to do what's right for the kids," says Gupta. "They just worry about the way some of the pieces of the act might be hurting the kids and they want to figure out ways to make the act work."
For example, the act imposes various requirements for measuring student achievement. Nonetheless, the study reports that "Three-quarters of principals (75%) disagreed with the statement that NCLB has made it easier to assess the performance of their students accurately." While the act's measures of "Adequate Yearly Progress" compare the performance of one year's students to the previous year's, it does not measure the achievement of a group of students over time. One principal commented, "NCLB takes a slice of time and ranks you on that one picture. Success should be based on the same students over time, not different groups each year."
The study also found strong agreement among principals and superintendents that the sanctions imposed by NCLB on schools that fail to meet its standards won't help raise student performance. Ninety-seven percent of superintendents also believed that the federal government had not provided enough money to pay for the requirements imposed by the act. Educators noted increased costs in areas such as record keeping, professional development, and test administration.
Students from the clinic visited schools in four Connecticut districts--New Haven, West Hartford, Meriden, and New Milford--and interviewed students, teachers, and parents. Their direct observations largely confirmed what the surveys had turned up. "It added a lot of detail," says Gupta of the in-depth study of these districts. "It told the story that explains why the numbers came out the way they did."
The clinic students learned that they had tapped into an area of deep concern among educators. Gupta says, "When we talked to people in the in-depth districts, they just were so excited to talk about it and had ideas and had thoughts they wanted to share. And [they] hadn't felt like they had been asked in the past." On the written surveys, notes Gupta, "Superintendents would just fill up the pages back and front with comments in addition to the questions we asked them."
The report offers recommendations for improvements to the federal law, but also notes that Connecticut can do a better job taking advantage of the flexibility left to it by NCLB. The report suggests instituting longitudinal tracking and trend analysis to improve the formulas that determine adequate yearly progress, among its eight detailed recommendations.
The clinic undertook this study to provide legislators with solid information about how the No Child Left Behind Act is actually playing out in the state, and is now arranging meetings to discuss its findings with lawmakers. But, with little information yet available about the act's outcomes, the study's authors also hope it can add to the broader debate, as parents, citizens, and students consider whether No Child Left Behind is living up to its name.