NCLB Research Articles

Systematic Literature on the Reform Efforts in Education in the United States

Education reform aims to create equitable learning environments for all students, fostering their contributions to American society. This study explores public concerns and strategies in education reform, utilizing ethnomethodology as its theoretical framework to examine practical reasoning methods. Reform efforts emphasize social collaboration and state directives, rooted in citizens' lived experiences. Key components include high standards and accountability, authentic assessment, active learning, community building, lifelong learning, and character education. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) are pivotal in American politics, driving educational and social progress. NCLB emphasizes academic growth for disadvantaged students, while ESSA aims for equitable, high-quality education for all, preparing them for higher education and careers. Future research recommendations focus on individual instruction and strategies for active student engagement.

No child left behind, literacy challenges ahead: a focus on the Philippines

The Sustainable Development Goal 4 has commenced a global mandate to provide equitable access to quality education for everyone. In the Philippines, SDG 4 inaugurates the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Policy. This brief argues that while the NCLB has ensured equal access to quality literacy education, it poses socioeconomic-based challenges, declining rate of parental involvement in their children’s schooling, overemphasis on standardized tests, and the lack of community involvement towards literacy programs. The Holistic Literacy Enhancement Program (HLEP) is proposed in this paper to help address these challenges to NCLB. HLEP presents policy implications that could assist the NCLB in more efficient and effective implementation: equitable resource allocation, parental and community engagement, and culturally and linguistically relevant assessment tools.

The accountability paradigm post-NCLB: Policy Ideas and Moral Narratives

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a “policy paradigm” with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of implementation, policymakers replaced NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which gave states more control over the policy tools and mechanisms to regulate school improvement. This qualitative project captured the evolution of the accountability paradigm by studying the policy ideas and moral narratives of policy elites in California and Tennessee during the transition period between NCLB and ESSA. The study finds that interview participants legitimized the core design features of ESSA, but attached their underlying worldviews and beliefs to the flexible design features, which created unique accountability models with different institutional arrangements.

No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: Examining Special Educators’ Outcomes

Drawing on eight waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey, we used a difference-in-differences research design to examine special education teachers’ (SETs) responses to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the subsequent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA was associated with decreases in the proportion of SETs with special education as a field of study and graduate degrees, an increase in co-teaching, and a decrease in the proportion of SETs working in a resource delivery model, with no evidence that NCLB influenced these outcomes. Little consistent evidence was found to indicate these federal policies influenced SETs’ job attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction). We identified differences in these associations based on school poverty status and grade level. These findings help to better understand the status and challenges of the current SET workforce and the unintended consequences of federal reform policies.

Implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Policy: Examining the Perceived Roles of Public Teachers in Prosperidad National High School, Philippines

The No Child Left Behind policy ensures equal education and accountability for all students. The study aimed to investigate how the “No Child Left Behind” policy has been implemented and to know the vital roles that teachers play in the teaching-learning process. The study was quantitative in nature and employed a descriptive-correlational design. Purposive sampling was used to select 50 secondary teachers to participate in the study. The study used statistical tools to analyze and interpret data, using weighted mean and Pearson product-moment correlation analysis to determine the relationship between school administration’s support and teachers’ perceived roles. As for the findings, teachers need to be accountable for their students’ academic performances and be resourceful in making activities and remediation practices necessary for the implementation of the no-child policy. The budget allocation should be reviewed. The relationship between financial support, level of professionalism, and remediation practices was statistically significant with a p-value of 0.05. Technical support had weak associations, but financial support had strong associations. NCLB policy emphasizes equal access to education through effective teaching and learning strategies. The researchers recommended that school administration and the department head of education limit auxiliary tasks, provide more seminars, workshops, and trainings to teachers, and revisit the NCLB policy.

Representation of NCLB Implementation Program and Its Impact on Hispanic Students: A Critical Discourse Analysis on Media Reports

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) aims to improve US education system. Every student in the US must have the same rights to get a quality education. The state is responsible for providing fair, equitable and quality educational facilities to the community. In reality, however, the NCLB was not entirely successful. While the law stipulates equality for underprivileged students, in reality, the richer students get better facilities and the best teachers. In addition, not all school teachers meet the standards. Based on these problems, this study aims to examine the challenges NCLB faced. It also intends to investigate the ideal implementation of NCLB and its effectiveness for students in the United States. This research also explores minority groups, like Hispanics. They are the largest minorities in the US. This research seeks to answer (1) How is the NCLB implementation reported in the media? and (2) What are the impacts of the NCLB implementation on Hispanic students?. This study uses the theory of Critical Discourse analysis from Norman Fairclough and Jager with news articles as data sources. The news articles were taken from the New York Times, usnews.com, dailynews.com, fivethirtyeight.com, and CBS News. The results found that the NCLB is still problematic that still there are achievement gaps, protests, and low performance. In addition, there are still wrong beliefs, discrimination, and dishonesty regarding the implementation of NCLB. Through some possible ways to solve the problem, like supervising and revising NCLB.

Examining ESL and bilingual teachers’ agency after NCLB: expanding the ecological perspective

ABSTRACT There is growing recognition about the importance of studying teacher agency in working with Linguistically Diverse Students (LDSs) after No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) given that the high-stakes testing and accountability system, required by NCLB and largely maintained by ESSA, have exerted negative effects on LDS educators and students. In response to this, we compiled a comprehensive set of empirical studies and conducted a thematic synthesis to examine how various factors could impact pre-service and in-service teachers’ agency in English as Second Language (ESL) and bilingual PreK-12 classrooms in the U.S. We adopted the ecological model of teacher agency as the analytical framework to guide our synthesis. Through both a top-down and bottom-up coding process, we further expanded the existing ecological model by adding two factors: knowledge and emotions. Detailed analyses led to seven common factors that could shape teachers’ agentic power in working with LDSs, all of which are either from the iterational or practical-evaluative dimension of agency. The projective dimension of teacher agency is relatively less discussed. Among those factors, cultural and structural factors draw most research attention across the selected studies, with the structural factors exerting most constraining effects on teacher agency. Additionally, we uncovered nuanced differences in teacher knowledge and emotions through in-depth analysis of the ESL and bilingual contexts. Further implications on how to improve teacher education and professional development are provided, in addition to the future directions for research.

Influence of parental involvement and student achievement in biology

Parental involvement has become a priority on school campuses nationwide because of the positive effect on student academic performance suggested by some researchers and the legal mandate of the No Child Left behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 to implement parent participation strategies. This study investigated influence of parental involvement and student achievement in biology. The objectives were to find out how parenting is related to students’ academic performance, to find out the extent to which parenting is related to students’ academic performance, and how parenting influences student’s scientific skills. The study concluded that Parent involvement has a positive effect on students learning outcome hence parents should not relent in giving moral, emotional and financial support to their children’s education. It was therefore recommended that Parents should visit their children’s school and Biology teacher routinely to find out how they are faring in the subject. Parents should supervise children’s study time in the study of Biology.

The Impact of Teacher, School, and Student Factors on Standardized Student Test Scores Using Multidimensional Approach


 
 
 
 This study examines the effect of teacher (race, salary, and experience), school (climate and Financial Efficiency Star Rating), and student (attendance and mobility) factors on student Math and ELA standardized test scores in elementary (n = 1140) and middle (n = 451) public schools across the state of Georgia. The data used in this study was collected by Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) during the 2018-2019 school year. Three multivariate linear regression models are utilized to explore the main and interaction effects within and between factors. The first model analyzes the main effects of the three independent variables (teacher, school, and student) separately and then in a single combined model accounting for all factors. Individual model approach reveals strong positive correlations with Math and ELA test scores for all factors. However, the impact of each factor is greatly diminished in a combined model approach. The second model reveals that the interaction effects within factors does not impact student test scores significantly. Meanwhile, results from the third model show that the interactions between the three independent variables yield a modest impact on student test scores. Findings from this study can guide educators and policymakers to focus on factors that can improve student standardized test scores and meet the accountability mandate for school achievement as set by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 and its predecessor No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001.
 
 
 
 

The Origins of American Test-Based Educational Accountability and Controversies About Its Impact, 1970–1983

Background and Context: Statewide test-based accountability in the United States began with minimum competency assessments in public schools during the 1970s, starting in Florida and other Southern states. Controversies over IQ (intelligence quotient) testing contributed to the development of “criterion-referenced” exams that became the principal form of assessment for such purposes. These developments provoked considerable discussion, much of it focused on the high failure rates on such tests, disproportionally borne by ethnic and racial minority students. Controversy over these events eventually led to a formal debate sponsored by the National Institute of Education (NIE), and a federal lawsuit that established the legality of such assessment regimes. Purpose: This article is a historical account of the rise of standardized testing for school accountability in the United States and the controversies that it entailed in the years before 1983. It highlights events in Florida, which set the tone for developments elsewhere with a high school exit exam. It also describes controversies within the measurement field about statewide tests as graduation requirements. In addition, it considers the response of policymakers to criticism of test-based accountability, setting the stage for developments leading to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Research Design: The research for this study was historical in orientation, employing a combination of primary (contemporaneous) and secondary (subsequent) documents, along with published research, to construct an interpretive account in narrative form. This process yielded an explanatory frame highlighting debates over the proper use and practical impact of standardized testing for accountability purposes. The results generally comported with other historical accounts of the period, even as they provided a considerably more detailed record of relevant events and principal actors. Conclusion: This historical account places the origins of test-based accountability a decade earlier than A Nation at Risk (1983), often considered its impetus. Florida became the first state to establish a comprehensive testing system for accountability, and other Southern states soon followed. This had a racially disparate impact on these states and others, depriving many thousands of African American and other students of high school diplomas. There is scant evidence that such tests appreciably raised achievement levels for all students, a widely proclaimed purpose of accountability regimes. Even so, test-based accountability remained a controversial cornerstone of educational reform proposals for decades to come, anticipating debates during the contentious NCLB years.

Did consequential accountability policies decrease the share of visual and performing arts education in U.S. public secondary schools during the No Child Left Behind era?

It has been asserted that the test-based accountability of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) increased instruction in tested subject areas reading and math, leading to reductions in arts education. We tested this using two waves of data, before and after NCLB implementation, in a difference-in-differences design. The analyses indicated that the total teacher workforce increased substantially during this time period, while the percentage of reading and math educators remained constant, leading to an overall increase in the teacher corps for these subjects. In contrast, the percentage of music and visual arts educators decreased during this period, leading to a decrease in their numbers. Average subject-specific teaching loads increased across all of these subjects. The result was substantial increases in the number of reading and math courses taught, combined with overall stability in the number of arts courses. However, comparisons across states with varying implementation of test-based school accountability prior to NCLB failed to show a relationship between such accountability and changes in the percentages and teaching loads of reading, math, and arts educators. Thus, at least in terms of cross-state comparisons, changes in these outcomes cannot be attributed to state-specific changes in accountability brought on by the introduction of NCLB.

The Relationship Between School Turnaround and Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

School turnaround has emerged as a predominant strategy to improve chronically low-performing schools, although the approach remains controversial. This meta-analysis synthesizes results from 35 studies to examine the relationship between school turnaround and various student outcomes. We find that school turnaround is associated with improved attendance, standardized test scores, and graduation rates. When separating the results by the different turnaround models, transformation, turnaround, and restart models are associated with improvements in student test scores. We find no evidence of a significant relationship between school closure or state turnaround conducted under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers and student test scores. We describe how changes in organizational operations, human capital, and the governance and/or management of low-performing schools might have contributed to this observed relationship.

A Thirty State Analysis of Teacher Supervision and Evaluation Systems in the ESSA Era

We analyzed teacher supervision and evaluation policy systems in 30 states since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 in the United States (US). This qualitative study of state ESSA policy documents and legislation examined how teacher supervision and evaluation systems (TSES) models have been developed under ESSA, specifically regarding how the construction of TSES models conflated formative feedback with summative evaluation. Despite evolving federal-level and state-level education accountability policies spurred by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, we argue that TSES systems are influenced by state-level historical political culture (Elazar, 1994; Fowler, 2013), workplace behaviorism (Hazi, 2019), decision-making structures (Hazi & Arredondo Rucinski, 2009; Ruff, 2019), and policy rationalism (Louis et al., 2008; Orr, 2007). Data were analyzed inductively (Wolcott, 2009) to investigate how 30 states developed TSES models and from this we analyze the messages conveyed about improvement. Thus, while ESSA intended to provide states and local districts with more political control to develop and implement TSES models, our analyses shows how ESSA has extended and reinforced state-level TSES policy development and reduced districts’ local control and authority to supervise and evaluate instruction.

A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body by Wendy Shelly Greyeyes

Reviewed by: A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body by Wendy Shelly Greyeyes Kelsey Dayle John (bio) A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body by Wendy Shelly Greyeyes University of Arizona Press, 2022 Greyeyes starts this book with an example familiar to many community members, which is a collision of interests in a public Diné forum on education. Any Diné person knows and has likely attended one of these forums. This example illustrates an ongoing theme of the book: the intersecting mess of authority that affects the education system and its legacy within the larger context of Native nations and the US government. This book aims to demystify and contextualize one of the longest and most frustrating institutions within the Navajo Nation—education—making an important contribution to the ways that decolonial theory can be put into practice institutionally and politically. Chapter 1 focuses on the meaning and practice of decolonization within American Indian communities and how this theory might be applied to the particular example of Diné education. I admit that the mess of jurisdictions, agencies, acronyms, and stakeholders was confusing in the beginning. However, I found that Greyeyes purposefully avoided the trap of presenting a tidy timeline of events, which would be a disservice to the complexity. The most important moment for me in chapter 1 is when she argues that Diné people typically focus on the future and generations [End Page 113] to come with the belief that looking to the past is futile and at times violent. Because of this, she explains that her intentional look at history is important for future generations. This chapter also puts the work in conversation within larger fields of decolonial theory citing Sandy Grande's book Red Pedagogy in conversation with Marxist and decolonial literature from Franz Fanon to Paulo Freire. This is important because it plants the seed for readers to critique the United States' mission for public education, which stresses training for labor. Not to mention, readers have language to understand the racialization inherent in projects of Indian education. Chapter 2 focuses on outlining the different actors responsible for education on the Navajo Nation—state, federal, and local. Here Greyeyes describes the original purpose of Diné education as the practice of learning to live in relational harmony to all beings. She then uses a chronological approach to help readers understand the rise of different key players and legislation that determines the current moment. The chronology is also put in conversation with the broader landscape on Indian policy showing that educational policy is never just about the field of education, but related to the overall experience of American Indians in the United States. This shows the potential and impossibility given the Nation's entanglement with the federal government as a "domestic dependent nation," a status that casts a constant shadow on the Nation's enactment of sovereignty. The following chapter takes a deeper dive into the funding and policy landscape that has shaped the current moment. It begins with a brief mention of off-reservation boarding schools, a legacy, I think, could have been braided into other parts the book since its impact on education continues to be so great. A few important historic moments include the Johnson—O'Malley Act, the Meriam Report, the Kennedy Report, and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act , which all frame the scope of the Diné Department of Education's authority as well as the changing national landscape of educational policy. Chapter 4 gives a breath of fresh air because it centers the rise of locally controlled schools as the reader begins to understand that "tribal control" is interpreted by many as "localized control." This foregrounds the work at the Low Mountain and Rough Rock schools. I would not say that Indian education began with these schools but that they marked moments where informal education met formalized schooling. This is a distinction mentioned in chapter 2 but is necessary for the reader to remember throughout the entire text. Chapter 5 further contextualizes the bureaucratic nature of education, explaining how this confusing web of authority came to be. The reader can better understand the goal for the...

Framing Democratic Proceduralism in Education Reform: No Child Left Behind and Common Core State Standards

This paper aims to frame democratic proceduralism in education policy. This is shown by giving a background of research on how a robust civil society is contingent on an inclusive citizenship and further why the public sphere must be in balance with the state and market. The democratic process of deliberation is presented as a representational, inclusive, and non-coercive democratic process. The process of deliberation is then used to investigate the uptake of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It is shown that neither policy initiative followed a deliberative process, and the implications that this might hold for future reform is discussed.

New evidence concerning school accountability and mathematics instructional quality in the no child left behind era

Using longitudinal data from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era, I applied regression techniques and found a positive association between school failure to reach “adequate yearly progress” in mathematics and subsequent changes in the quality of middle grades mathematics instruction in districts where district leaders adopted robust theories of action for improving mathematics instruction. The positive association was robust to multiple sensitivity tests and may reflect a causal relationship. The evidence suggests that educational leaders in similar contexts can use school failure to reach accountability standards as measured by standardized assessments to promote instructional quality in mathematics.

Why ESSA has been reform without repair

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was designed to remedy the wrongs of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Yet Andrew Saultz, Jack Schneider, and Karalyn McGovern explain that, so far, it has failed to fundamentally alter how the federal government interacts with schools. They discuss the need for federal authority over issues of equity in education and how federal authority has expanded over time, leading to the accountability movement, which, under NCLB, required schools to provide quantifiable measures of student achievement. Although ESSA was touted as a return of control to the states, states are still held accountable for testing requirements, reporting data, and sanctioning underperformance. The authors recommend instead a model of rigid flexibility, in which centralized offices might require certain activities but allow schools some choice in determining specific goals.

Preparation and The Real World of Education: How Prospective Teachers Grapple with Using Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices in the Age of Standardized Testing

The most highlighted provision and consequence of the reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, is obsessive practices of assessing students across the United States (U.S.). Despite newly named policies, including Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) of 2015, which governs current U.S. K-12 education standards, concerns over NCLB’s unprecedented fixation on high stakes testing remain acute for many school districts. This manuscript examines the struggles of four preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PMTs) who grappled with enacting culturally responsive teaching practices at schools that aimed to meet accountability standards.

Negotiating Intergovernmental Relations Under ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under ESSA, focusing specifically on the relationship between the federal government (the principal) and state governments (the agents). First, we review power dynamics under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and ESSA, exploring implications of changes in the substance of both laws for the principal-agent problem. Next, using political discourse analysis, we show how shifts in the content of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and its implementation by the current administration influenced the federal review process of state plans for the sixteen states that submitted plans under the early deadline. We find the federal government was most likely to provide feedback around Title I, Part A, Section 4 pertaining to accountability and school improvement. Ultimately, however, states that ignored or defied federal feedback were successful given both the limits ESSA places on U.S. Department of Education authority and the current administration’s reliance on negotiation over sanction. Thus far, this approach has ensured states are realizing the maximum flexibility available through the law, as all state plans were approved, regardless of whether states heeded federal feedback and complied with the law.

A Review and Synthesis of the Response to Intervention (RtI) Literature: Teachers Implementations and Perceptions

This paper briefly reviews the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework. It explains how Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) enhanced RtI implementation in general education classrooms. The main focus of this paper is to identify general educators’ roles when implementing RtI components such as evidence-based interventions and assessment. In addition, empirical studies that focused on general educators perceptions of RtI reforms were presented. The reviewed of the RtI literature show the need for more research on the impact of professional development, general educators’ perceptions and implementation of RtI. Keywords: high quality instruction, learning disability, discrepancy model, identification. DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-15-02 Publication date :May 31 st 2019