NCLB Research Articles

Urban School Principals and the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act

This exploratory study investigated how six practicing school principals responded to the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law (United States Congress Public Law 107–110, 2002, January, No Child Left Behind Act, http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf) in light of the multicultural leadership demands presented by an urban setting. It examines perspectives of principals on the legal aspects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and what they did to manage its requirements. Multicultural leadership literature provided a framework to understand the perspectives of school leaders. The findings suggest three principals were engaged in meaningful and practical work to both fulfill the requirements of NCLB and meet the needs of their students. Three principals were focused on the requirements of the law and did not see the connection between multicultural leadership and NCLB. The study’s recommendations include a multicultural leadership approach to current NCLB school reform.

Leaving No Child Behind Socially and Emotionally

Leaving No Child Behind Socially and Emotionally

Does technology integration “work” when key barriers are removed?

The effectiveness of Tennessee EdTech Launch (TnETL), a statewide technology program designed to meet the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate, was investigated in this matched treatment‐control quasi‐experimental study. The goal of the program was to provide full‐time, on‐site technology coaches to prepare teachers to create lessons that engage students in critical thinking and use of computers as tools in order to increase learning. The study examined TnETL impact on student achievement, teachers' skills and attitudes toward technology integration; use of research‐based practices; and students' skills in using technology as a tool. The study was implemented in two cohorts: “Launches” 1 and 2. This paper presents the findings of Launch 1, a three‐year program that involved 26 schools, 12,420 students and 927 teachers. Program effectiveness was measured via direct classroom observations, surveys, student performance assessments, focus groups, and student achievement analysis. Survey results showed that pro...

Why an Undemocratic Capitalism Has Brought Public Education to its Knees: A Manifesto

UNCHECKED capitalism is destroying our nation's public schools, and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the final nail in their coffin. Marching under the banner of accountability, right-wing, pro-business forces are willfully undermining the democratic right of all children to a free, high-quality education. Rather than support policies designed to reduce poverty and its toxic effects on the ability of children to succeed in school, our lawmakers are pursuing the misbegotten path of penalizing schools in poverty-stricken cities and rural areas for their failure to work educational miracles. In so doing, they are eroding the promise of our democracy. Most children at the bottom of the economic ladder start their formal education years behind middle-class children in language development, social behavior, and general knowledge of the world. This self-evident fact, repeatedly confirmed in research studies, creates a learning gap of Grand Canyon proportions between the children of social privilege and those who grow up poor, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic. No system of schools--public or private--has ever demonstrated that it can close this poverty-induced learning gap for most children. If policy makers know this--and they surely must--they ignore it. In fact, in the two decades preceding No Child Left Behind, a succession of presidents and Congresses gradually abandoned historically successful Great Society programs that had lifted many of the poor out of poverty. Today, more than one-quarter of American children live in poverty, more than in any other industrialized nation. (1) At the same time, those in the corporate elite and their political allies have ratcheted up the pressure on schools with a harsh accountability system that they have consistently shunned for themselves. Can you imagine applying to Enron and the Wall Street financial manipulators who brought us the credit and home foreclosure crises the same punitive standards we now apply to the schools? With No Child Left Behind, Congress ratified an upside-down education reform strategy: improve learning by feeding children less and testing them more. For those schools most affected by the false standards of NCLB--largely the ones in our poorest neighborhoods--all creativity, intelligence, and imagination have been sucked out of teaching and learning. The premise of the law--holding schools accountable for test results without any guarantees that students have received expert instruction in safe, well-equipped schools--contravenes science, flouts morality, and makes no economic sense. And in what I believe to be a historic and an unconscionable failure, our nation's educators have stood by and let all this happen. Instead of relying on the energizing principles of democracy--equity, opportunity, and fairness--to fight this law and the mindset it grows out of, educators have taken political and professional cover in technicalities. Teacher unions and groups representing administrators and superintendents have protested No Child Left Behind only around the edges and primarily from a narrow and self-interested intellectual point of view. They have not engaged in meaningful policy debates about the relationship of poverty to educational achievement, the essential role public education plays in our democracy, the huge disparity in wealth between the haves and the have-nots, or the role of schools in creating citizens/workers who can think. We educators cannot continue to act so thoughtlessly, or this nation will not survive as a democracy. I am not saying, as knee-jerk critics of my viewpoint allege, that poor children cannot learn. Neither teachers nor policy makers should be allowed to hide behind this facile and insidious assumption. This Manifesto is not about the so-called soft bigotry of low expectations that denies poor children a path out of poverty. Given all that we know from neuroscience about early brain development and the role of environment in nurturing aptitude, schools cannot be expected on their own to close the achievement gap between rich and poor. …

Preparing Preservice Teachers for Success in NCLB's Kindergartens: Learning from Experienced Teachers' Strategies for Managing Professional Relationships with Colleagues and Parents

Kindergarten has undergone dramatic changes since the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002. The literature on the challenges facing kindergarten teachers as a result of NCLB focuses primarily on curricular and instructional issues; little attention has been paid to NCLB's impact on the relational aspects of kindergarten teaching, such as partnership with parents and collaboration with colleagues. To address this gap, this article presents findings from a recent qualitative study of two veteran kindergarten teachers' challenges managing their relationships with the first-grade teachers at their school and with their students' parents. Participants demonstrated a range of successful strategies for responding to these difficult relational situations. Because many preschool and primary grade teachers are presently facing similar challenges, this study can contribute to teacher educators' ongoing efforts to ensure our programs prepare students to be effective in today's NCLB–influenced classrooms.

The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Teachers' Writing Instruction

The study uses Foucault's framework of governmentality to understand the impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on teachers' writing instruction and attitudes toward writing in high- and low-income schools. Using interviews and observations of 18 teachers, the study identified four themes: emphasis on testing, curricular effects, awareness of lower-achieving students, and concerns for English language learners. While teachers shared concerns in those areas, there were differences in how teachers from high- and low-income schools experienced the impact of NCLB on their writing instruction. The study suggests that NCLB has affected teacher morale as well as the nature and amount of writing instruction, but that school contexts figure into teachers' instruction. The example of one teacher from a low-income school demonstrates the potential for teachers to resist the coercive aspects of NCLB through their writing instruction.

Encouraging Entrepreneurial Behavior in Public and Organizational Policy

The powerful influence that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has exerted on schools in the United States has prompted just about all education organizations to rethink the way they do business. Some have tried legal strategies to change or block the law. Others have become involved in the legislative process as never before.For the National Art Education Association, the post-NCLB environment has proven to be both a challenge and an opportunity. Our members have shared the goal of putting the importance of student learning in and through the arts at the core of the reauthorization of the federal law. To do that, though, the Association has begun trying a new approach: policymaking. The importance of policy and its effect on practitioners has long been understood; NAEA has become increasingly interested in influencing policy decisions by bringing the insights and lessons of practitioners to the forefront.As David Hart (2003) wrote, no matter how good the intentions of policymakers, the policy process inevitably has limited time and information. And, Hart continued, no matter how hard people try to be objective, they cannot fully shed preconceptions built over a lifetime of experience and training. Therefore, entrepreneurial policymakers, like entrepreneurs in the private sector, have needed to be nimble and adaptive, trying creative strategies to bring ideas to the table that serve practitioners well.As a result, the NAEA has been developing the characteristics of entrepreneurship, which include forming new alliances, creating unique ways for leaders to think and work together, trying new ideas, and assessing our risks on investments. And in doing so, we have also seen new value placed on creativity, innovation, design, and empathy. That shifting emphasis, which author Daniel H. Pink (2005) defined as more reliant on the right than the left hemisphere of the brain, has led us to expand our previous notions of the traditional roles for organization leaders and organizations themselves.A Policy and Research AgendaOver the past months, the leadership of the NAEA has begun to facilitate a set of strategic conversations with the NAEA Board of Directors and other national leaders to more fully understand the landscape of the NCLB reauthorization and to come to clarity-if not consensus-on the core values that visual arts education provides. Now, and over time, these strategic conversations will influence a proactive policy and research agenda for the association that will inform our entrepreneurial policy work. To date, NAEAs national policy discussions have particularly focused on four areas.Art as a core subject. As changes in our society and the nature of business demand the crucial entrepreneurial skills of innovation and lateral thinking, visual arts education becomes more important as a means of enabling students to develop skills in self-expression, problem solving, communications, and teamwork. As Pink (2004) said, We are all in the art business.As NCLB undergoes reauthorization, NAEA and our like-minded partners are looking for ways to document and assess how the arts nurture these important skills. NAEA is not looking to integrate arts into other subject areas, which could reinforce the perception that arts are not a core subject. Instead, the Association is looking to assess content for every program in arts education and make the case for art as a core subject to governors, state legislators, and members of Congress.Student access. Collecting and reporting on the status and condition of arts education at the state level is critical to ensuring equitable access. States should be required to collect and report comprehensive information about the status and condition of all core subjects for which challenging academic standards apply. The report should include student enrollment, pupil/teacher ratios, amount of instructional time, budget allocation, teacher subject certification, full-time equivalent teacher load and/or other such measures chosen by the state to be significant in the subject area. …

Educator and Administrator Perceptions of the Impact of No Child Left Behind on Special Populations

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) seeks to address the inequality in schools and to correct achievement disparities prevalent in education, but little is known of NCLB's effect on students in special education. This study assesses the impact of NCLB on special education by asking educators, administrators, and staff who serve students in special education about their perceptions of the impact of NCLB for students with disabilities. Survey responses were received from 248 respondents across the state of Texas. Findings include positive perceptions of changes related to accountability, teacher qualifications, and evidence-based practices; negative perceptions related to assessment; and perceptions of no changes in relationships and communication with parents or freedom for states and communities.

The Impact of Performance Level Misclassification on the Accuracy and Precision of Percent at Performance Level Measures

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) performance mandates, embedded within state accountability systems, focus school AYP (adequate yearly progress) compliance squarely on the percentage of students at or above proficient. The singular importance of this quantity for decision‐making purposes has initiated extensive research into percent proficient as a measure of school quality. In particular, technical discussions have scrutinized the impact of sampling, measurement, and other sources of error on percent proficient statistics. In this article, we challenge the received orthodoxy that measurement error associated with individual students' scores is inconsequential for aggregate percent proficient statistics. Synthesizing current classification accuracy research with techniques from randomized response designs, we establish results which specify the extent to which measurement error—manifest as performance level misclassifications—produces bias and increases error variability for percent at performance level statistics. The results have direct relevance for the design of coherent and fair accountability systems based upon assessment outcomes.

Responding to Teacher Quality and Accountability Mandates: The Perspective of School Administrators and Classroom Teachers

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools and subject areas; and (4) retaining qualified teachers over time. This paper draws on interview and focus-group data from multilevel case studies of teacher policy to better understand how principals and teachers function in the current teacher policy context. It is part of a broader research effort to explore practitioner perspectives on the array of policies and practices aimed at enhancing teacher quality across all levels of the education system in three states: Maryland, Connecticut, and New York. In the article, we consider the implications of our findings for salient policy concerns, including the highly qualified teacher provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Dynamic and Uncertain Pathways between Early Childhood Inclusion Policy and Practice

Abstract In the United States, early childhood inclusion dates back to the civil rights movement with the 1954 case of Brown v. The Board of Education, an issue of segregation by race in schools and followed by the Americans for Disability Act (ADA). A Free Appropriate Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), from Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has influenced inclusive practices. Both the IDEA and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) provide language supporting early childhood inclusion, but the implementation of inclusion has been uneven. Many factors influence practice, including changes overtime in the interpretation of existing laws, definitions of what is inclusion and research outcomes of inclusive practices. Local infrastructure for serving young children, funding, qualified personnel, motivated leadership and teachers, and informed parents are also factors impeding or facilitating early childhood inclusion. The complexity involved suggests a dynamic process with uncertain pathways from policy to practice.

Changes Proposed to No Child Left Behind

Changes Proposed to No Child Left Behind

Science Education: Cassandra's Prophecy

AFTER A Nation at Risk was released, the state of American education was widely discussed, and not just by educators. The 1980s produced a number of reports on the status of science education that complained of declining science and mathematics achievement, falling enrollment in the subjects, and a shortage of qualified teachers. All the attention sparked renewed federal interest in science and mathematics education, school/industry coalitions were established, and a call for help was issued to all interested parties. Business and industry, concerned about the scientific literacy of their current and future employees, offered to assist with money, training, equipment, support for competitions, and other cooperative efforts. While the new reports were troubling in their own right, in light of the Sputnik-associated science education reforms of a generation earlier, they were downright disturbing. We had all been warned that our system of science education wasn't working well, but, in spite of a national effort, it seemed that the message--like Cassandra's prophecy of the fate of Troy--was going unheeded. Concern about science education and science standards has usually been driven by worries that American students are falling behind their international peers in achievement. In the case of Sputnik, the international touchstones were students in the Soviet Union. In the years immediately following A Nation at Risk, students in Japan and Germany were the comparison groups. Test scores, as always, were the comparative measure. And the concerns seemed at least partly justified by scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Eighty-two percent of the nation's 12th-graders performed below the proficient level on the 2000 NAEP science test. Moreover, in recent years, business leaders such as Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, have called for more emphasis on science education, arguing that the U.S. risks losing its economic edge if it does not change. Public opinion surveys, on the other hand, indicate most U.S. parents are satisfied with science education. Their level of concern has actually declined in recent years. (1) The current emphasis on content standards, which has its roots in the years immediately following the release of A Nation at Risk, was strengthened with the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Among its many mandates, NCLB required that, beginning in the 2007-08 school year, schools must administer annual tests in science achievement at least once during three grade spans: 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12. Yet despite its own requirement, the law has succeeded in pushing science to the back burner. Schools now focus on reading and mathematics, with little time left for science in the rush to prepare teachers and students for high-stakes standardized tests. In April 2002, shortly after NCLB was passed but before any of its mandates had taken effect, Olaf Jorgenson and Rick Vanosdall explained in these pages that some districts were already so fixated on basic-skills preparation that students were spending 20% of total class time on test preparation. When NCLB took effect, they speculated, things would only intensify. (2) Yet the predicted failure of science education to meet the demands of the modern world seems to continue to be ignored. In spite of efforts to keep science from becoming a second-class discipline, the science scores on the most recent NAEP indicate that science achievement in the U.S. is at best in a holding pattern. Scores were up slightly in 2005 over both 1996 and 2000 at the fourth-grade level; they held steady for both comparison years at the eighth-grade level; and they showed a slight decline from 1996 at the 12th-grade level, but not from 2000. GATHERING THE WHOLE VILLAGE The continued reports of the unsatisfactory state of U.S. science education and the predicted consequences for our nation's economic and intellectual vitality attracted the attention not only of educators and politicians but also of an increasing number of professional scientists and engineers. …

A Nation at Risk and No Child Left Behind: Déjà VU for Administrators?

WHEN THE National Commission on Excellence in Education submitted A Nation at Risk to Secretary of Education Terrel Bell on 26 April 1983, there was little to suggest this report would shine a spotlight on education education would last a quarter of a century. Indeed, not long after the release of this document, critics were already downplaying its recommendations. truth is, wrote one, that the public schools are doing the job well, the product is viable, and the public is receiving what they need from the schools. (1) It was only natural for educators to defend their practice and their profession. Since the shock of Sputnik in 1957, the education establishment had apparently rebounded and, in the view of many Americans, had responded appropriately. Educators were clearly stung by many of the recommendations contained within A Nation at Risk. In addressing the recommendation noneducators with subject-area expertise should be considered for teaching positions, one central office administrator responded, know content. What they don't know is how to be a psychologist, counselor, policeman, diplomat, disciplinarian, referee, entertainer, and magician, all at the same time. (2) In the early and mid-1980s, few administrators realized they would spend the next 25 years serving as apologists for their profession. I was principal of a junior high school in 1983, and I retired as superintendent in 2005, well into the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). One constant in all those intervening years was the need to respond to criticism of the schools by legislators, business interests, and members of the general public. Here I wish to examine the years between 1983 and NCLB in an effort to determine whether we school administrators really are experiencing deja vu all over again. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS The common perception of the years before the era of reform attributed to A Nation at Risk is most administrators were managers. School boards were happy with principals and superintendents who could build good schedules, discipline students, construct and manage budgets, and deal successfully with the community. It was widely believed administrators came largely from the ranks of coaching or from the nation's corps of band directors. Educators with such backgrounds were supposedly used to organizing, planning, and dealing with relatively large groups of people. Administrators were expected to recognize good teaching talent and then turn those teachers loose in the classroom to instruct the nation's youths. Teachers were expected to be the instructional experts. Curriculum development was typically reduced to the process of selecting textbooks. Both building-level and district administrators were overwhelmingly male and were expected to be transmitters of the educational culture of the school district. If a school was orderly and the parents were happy, everything was copacetic. With the release of A Nation at Risk, things began to change. The report seemed to have struck a chord with much of the American public, and a sleeping tiger had been awakened. Or to paraphrase one writer, the reform movement was a political cause in search of a theme, and A Nation at Risk became theme. (3) Unbeknownst to administrators at the time, their world was about to shift dramatically. The document contained a recommendation addressing Leadership and Fiscal Support. The National Commission on Excellence in Education specifically targeted the difference between management and leadership in its first implementing recommendation, proclaiming, Commission stresses the distinction between leadership skills involving persuasion, setting goals and developing community consensus behind them, and managerial and supervisory skills. Although the latter are necessary, we believe schools boards must consciously develop leadership skills at the school and district levels if the reforms we propose are to be achieved. …

Initial impacts of No Child Left Behind on elementary science education

This research examines the impact of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act on elementary science education within a Midwestern state possessing strong national education measures. Elementary teachers (N=164) responded to an online survey, which included both closed-ended and open-ended questions pertaining to science instruction and changes made in science instruction since the implementation of NCLB. More than half of these teachers indicated they have cut time from science instruction since NCLB became a law. The reason given for this decrease in science education was mainly the need to increase time for math and reading instruction.

No Community Left behind

HE DEBATE over the reautho rization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) generally overlooks or looks past what may be the most fundamental flaw in that legislation. As the law is now writ ten, decisions regarding what the young should know and be able to do are removed from the hands of parents and local community leaders and turned over to officials and experts located far from the schoolhouse door. Re moving the debate over such an important matter from the reach of citizens at the local level and denying them the right to act on the results of their debates destroys one of the greatest resources the nation has in the struggle to maintain a sense of com munity in an increasingly globalized and impersonal world.' Good schools require strong communities to sup port them. It is time state legislators and members of Congress awakened to the fact that the best chance we have of significantly improving the quality of educa tion received by most Americans is to revitalize the idea of local control of schools. Rather than entrusting the future of education to bureaucrats at the state and fed eral levels, regardless of how expert these bureaucrats may be, we must give our attention to building trust worthy local communities. I will argue that placing local communities at the center of the debate over standards is the best way to build such trustworthy communities. It is also the best way to create great schools in every community.

Reading Instruction for Students with Visual Impairments: Whose job is It?

Unlike other areas of education, reading instruction is supported by considerable research on its content and instructional methodology that is rigorous, systematic, and meets the experimental or quasi-experimental standard required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and IDEA, 2004 (Smartt & Reschly, 2007). (Experimental and quasi-experimental research involves data collection from a large number of participants who were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group, which provides for the greatest confidence in the results.) A review of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data for the fourth-grade reading sample indicated that only 35% of the national sample of students without disabilities and 13% of students with identified disabilities were at or above the proficient level (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007). (Over 50% of the sample with disabilities took the reading test with accommodations.) Scores for both groups of students have risen slightly since 1998. The improvements in these scores may be interpreted to indicate that the recent emphasis on research-based literacy is effective. HIGHLY EFFECTIVE READING TEACHERS Over the past 20 years, research has emerged that shows a correlation between the quality of the teacher and the outcomes of students. There is a substantial body of literature on the attributes of a highly effective teacher (Blankenship, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 2000; Fullan, 1982; Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Moore & Esselman, 1992; Murnane, 1981; Rosenholtz, 1989; Ross, 1992; Turner & Camilli, 1988). The literature indicates that a highly effective teacher must have both pedagogy--the teaching skills to adjust to a variety of learning styles and abilities and the ability to engage students in learning--and content knowledge, a high degree of competence within a single content area such as reading. In the area of reading instruction, content knowledge is defined as an understanding of the five core components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Scientifically based reading instruction includes a number of instructional components that have been found to be effective with struggling at-risk readers, such as explicit instruction with modeling and systematic instruction with scaffolding (Smartt & Reschly, 2007). Smartt and Reschly (2007) also found that many general education pre-service programs do not provide instruction in the five core components of reading instruction, nor do they teach future teachers how to provide scientifically based instruction in reading. The prospects for teachers who choose to work with students with identified disabilities are even more tenuous. Smartt and Reschly (2007) and Goe and Coggshall (2007) report that some university programs have made progress in providing the necessary background in reading instruction for special education teachers by requiring that these teachers have dual certification in both general education and special education. However, the premise that special educators with dual certification have a greater likelihood of having received instruction in both the core components and the instructional methodology of reading have not been confirmed. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FIELD OF VISUAL DISABILITIES There is little or no opportunity for future teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired who are enrolled in personnel preparation programs for teaching students with visual disabilities to receive the needed coursework in reading instruction if they are not in a dual certification program or don't already have certification in reading. Although instruction in braille and communication modes are noted as content areas under compensatory skills, one of the nine instructional areas of the expanded core curriculum that Hatlen (1996; 2003) recommends be taught or facilitated by teachers of students with visual impairments as part of their educational program, some teachers report that they learned the braille code but not how to teach braille or how to infuse it into literacy instruction. …

Highly Qualified Kindergarten Teachers: Have They Been Left Behind ?

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has increased the academic expectations for kindergarten children. Where kindergarten was once a place for children to learn to socialize through play, many kindergarten classrooms have become replicas of first grade with children sitting at desks completing worksheets, learning to sound out words, and memorizing sight words. And, where once kindergarten teachers were educated with an emphasis on child development, the NCLB requirement of highly qualified teachers shifted state licensing requirements to majoring in subject areas. In many teacher education programs, the change moved the preparation of kindergarten teachers out of early childhood teacher education programs into elementary/middle school programs. This article identifies the characteristics of highly qualified kindergarten teachers, summarizes state credential requirements for kindergarten teachers, shares a research study on the education of kindergarten teachers in one state, and suggests an action plan to make sure we have highly qualified kindergarten teachers for our kindergarten children.

PK Inclusion: Getting Serious about a P-16 Education System

WITHIN the broad P-16 framework, the transition from high school to college has commanded the bulk of attention from policy makers, think tanks, foundations, and the research community in general. Immediate and long-term concerns about the skills of the American work force and our global competitiveness fuel this focus. Significantly less attention has been paid to the P part, the first years of the P-16 continuum that pertain to young children. We argue here that the years--from prekindergarten through the primary grades--are the cornerstone of any P-16 system. They provide a strong foundation for children's lifelong learning, educational excellence, and eventual competitiveness in the marketplace. From the perspective of P-16 systems, the learning experiences children have during the early childhood years (birth to age 5) should be better integrated and aligned with those they have during the kindergarten and elementary school years. Aligning early childhood education with elementary schools is not a new idea. Since initiatives in the early 1970s to connect Head Start with elementary schools, such as Project Follow Through and Project Developmental Continuity, a few policy makers and educators have tried to bridge the gap between the cultures of early education and K-12 education. They recognized that one or two years of early childhood education would not be sufficient to sustain gains in achievement over the long term. For low-income children, sustaining the gains made as a result of attending high-quality prekindergarten (PK) programs requires continuing to provide them with high-quality learning experiences into the elementary school years. As public investments in PK programs increase, the challenge of sustaining gains from high-quality programs is rising on the policy agenda. And as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) raises expectations for all children's achievement, the challenge of preparing strong and eager learners from the start, rather than remediating them later, is also rising on the policy agenda. To ground the discussion of presented here, we offer brief descriptions of what might look like in policy and practice. These examples are by no means a comprehensive depiction of P-3. At the level of the child, a focus on ensures that children experience continuous learning opportunities that bolster their social, emotional, and cognitive development. (1) These opportunities--including emotional supports, instructional supports, and classroom organization--would be in place whether a child is 3 years old and enrolled in a PK program or 7 years old and in a second-grade classroom. At the school level, a focus on is evident in clear transition policies to help children and families navigate the changes that occur as children move from grade to grade. (2) For example, a school might institute policies and practices that enable PK children and their parents to visit kindergarten classrooms before the start of their kindergarten year, thereby permitting them to get to know the teacher and become familiar with the classroom layout, materials, and schedule. At the district level, a focus on might be evident in the implementation of common professional development requirements for both PK teachers and K-3 teachers. Such professional development would focus on providing staff with the tools and knowledge to provide meaningful learning opportunities to all young children from 3 to 8 years of age. At the state level, a focus on is evident in the creation of common learning standards that are informed by research about the developmental characteristics of children and that are used by all publicly funded programs. These learning standards would be appropriate for children at each grade level and would be aligned from grade to grade. DEFINING THE 'P' PART We ourselves have differing views on how to define and conceptualize the P-3 part of P-16 systems. …

The influence of scientific research and evaluation on publishing educational curriculum

AbstractPrior to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, scientific research to support development of curriculum materials or to demonstrate curricular efficacy was not required. NCLB transformed the development and publishing process for K–12 educational materials by prompting publishers to increase funding for experimentally based research on educational products used in schools. To maintain a viable place in the market, textbook publishers have faced challenges such as difficulty in conducting experimental research in schools, coordination with states' proposed curriculum adoption cycles, and use of limited resources to meet the needs of many more stakeholders in the new accountability framework. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.