Department of Education - No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Oveview

What is the No Child Left Behind Act?

In January 2002, President Bush signed the "The No Child Left Behind Act." It reauthorized the existing Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). NCLB made the most sweeping changes in federal law regarding public schools in nearly 40 years.

NCLB, Your Child and Your School

The law may help your child in two ways:

• Your child may be eligible to move to a better school or could receive free tutoring.
• Your school could qualify for grants to use toward attracting top-notch teachers or other school programs.

But your child and your school may not receive the full benefits if you don't ask for them. The U.S. Department of Education has neither the personnel nor the budget to make sure that all of the nation's more than 90,000 public schools comply with NCLB's complicated regulations. Education officials in the Bush administration have said from the start that the key to enforcement would be parents who pressure schools to give their children the options provided by the federal law.

The Law's Goals and What It Says

Philosophy: The law, which was passed with bipartisan support, was designed to introduce national standards to a system in which students in some demographic groups were more likely to succeed and others likely to be left behind. But it allows states to determine how success is measured.

Targets: States are required to set targets for overall achievement and for specific categories of students, such as English language learners or economically disadvantaged students. These targets determine whether the school makes "adequate yearly progress," or AYP, as measured by state standardized tests. A school can fail — even if it is making substantial progress for most of its students — if one category of students cannot meet the standards. The goal is for every student in public school to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Testing: Students must be tested annually in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and at least once in grades 10 through 12. By 2007, students must be tested in science, too. Schools that don't meet goals for their overall student bodies or specific categories of students are sanctioned.

Affected schools: The law applies to schools that receive Title I money from the federal government. Schools that get Title I funds are generally those in which at least 35% of students are from low-income families. More than half of all public schools are Title I schools.

How the Law Affects Teachers

Teachers must be "highly qualified" to teach core academic subjects in every classroom. Specifically, an elementary school teacher must have a bachelor's degree and pass a rigorous test in core curriculum areas. Middle and high school teachers must show they're competent in the subjects they teach by passing a test or by completing an academic major, graduate degree or comparable coursework.

Research, including a 2006 study of three states by the think tank Education Trust, shows that students in schools with a large percentage of minority and low-income students are more likely to be taught by teachers who are inexperienced and lack a major or minor in the subjects they teach. The teacher qualification provisions of NCLB are aimed at insuring that schools where students tend to need the most help employ teachers who are qualified to provide it.

No state met the 2006 deadline to have a highly qualified teacher in every classroom. The U.S. Department of Education extended the deadline to June 2007 and ordered states to explain how they would meet it or risk losing federal funds.

The law covers other teaching staff, too. Most teachers' aides and other "paraprofessionals" are now required to complete two years of college or an equivalent type of training.

Reading Instruction

NCLB also requires teachers in kindergarten through third grade to teach reading based on "scientifically based" research. Schools may be eligible for "Reading First" grants to assist with improving reading instruction. Although this program has shown initial signs of effectiveness in helping to boost reading instruction, it came under scrutiny in September 2006 when a scathing report (PDF) by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education revealed that several members of the panel who award Reading First grants may have had conflicts of interest because they had ties to publishing companies which promoted specific reading materials with a specifc philosophy.

Unsafe Schools

States must have an "Unsafe School Choice Option"—that is, a plan that allows students to transfer to a safe school if they attend a school designated as a persistently dangerous school or if they become victims of violent crime.

Sanctions

Those that haven't met "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) for two consecutive school years are identified as "in need of improvement." Every student in the school will be given the option to transfer to a better-performing school in the district, with free transportation included. However, NLCB requires that priority in providing school choice be given to low-achieving children from low-income families.

School districts may not use lack of space as a reason to deny a transfer, but they have some flexibility in meeting this requirement. School districts may restrict which schools are available for transfer and when transfers may occur. They may sign contracts with neighboring districts to accept students from failing schools, contract with online schools, create schools within schools, offer supplemental services a year early, hire more teachers, add portables or build new classrooms at more successful schools. If a school continues to fail to meet AYP, these sanctions take effect:

After three consecutive years, the school must also provide "supplemental education services," or SES, to children who remain at the school. Those services can include tutoring, remedial classes, after-school services and summer school programs.

The federal government has allowed some districts to switch the order of sanctions. Students would be eligible for free tutoring if these schools fail to meet their goals for two years in a row and would then get the option to transfer if the school misses its goals a third time.

After four consecutive years of failing to meet annual goals, the district must take action to improve the school, such as replacing certain staff or implementing a new curriculum.

After five years, the school is identified for restructuring and arrangements must be made to run it differently. These can include a state takeover, the hiring of a private management contractor, conversion to a charter school or significant staff restructuring.

How Schools Can Benefit

There are rewards for schools that close achievement gaps between groups of students or exceed academic achievement goals. States can use federal funds to pay teachers bonuses, and they can designate schools that have made the greatest achievement gains as "Distinguished Schools."

Other benefits of No Child Left Behind include:

• Grants for teacher training. Parents should be aware that districts have flexibility in how they can spend federal funds designed to find and retain quality teachers, including alternative certification, merit pay and bonuses for teachers of high-need subjects such as math and science.
• Grants for reading instruction. A key component of NCLB is a new national initiative called Reading First that aims to help every child learn to read. Almost $6 billion will be distributed over several years to states submitting grant proposals for reading instruction based on "scientifically based" research in kindergarten through third grade.
• Flexibility in spending federal funds. School districts have considerable leeway in spending up to 50% of their non-Title I funds in categories such as teacher quality, technology, after-school learning, and Safe and Drug-Free schools. For example, a district may decide to spend 50% of its federal technology funds on recruiting quality teachers instead of on technology.

What Schools Must Tell Parents

• Student academic achievement for all student groups
• A comparison of students at the basic, proficient and advanced levels of academic achievement within the school district and compared to other students statewide
• High school graduation rates and dropout rates
• The professional qualifications of teachers
• The percentage of students not tested
• The names of schools identified as "in need of improvement"

The U.S. Department of Education also requires states to participate in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and math assessments of fourth- and eighth-grade students every two years. These tests allow parents to compare how students are performing in different states.

How the Law is Working

The nonprofit, independent Center on Education Policy releases annual report cards on NCLB. The organization, which advocates for public schools, surveyed education officials in 50 states and gave the law a mixed report card in 2006. The center concluded that as a result of the law:

• Districts are better aligning classroom teaching with state academic standards.
• Principals and teachers are making better use of test results to improve teaching.
• Scores on states tests are higher in a large majority of states and school districts.
• Teachers report high stress levels and poor staff morale because of the pressure to improve scores.
• Most school districts are cutting back on social studies, science, art or other subjects to make more time for reading and math, the subjects that are tested.
• The effect on achievement gaps between groups of students of different races or ethnicities is unclear. While most states and districts reported that the achievement gap in test results had narrowed or stayed the same, the center's own case studies did not find the same results. As a result, the study concluded, it is "impossible to reach an overall conclusion about achievement gaps."

In a harsher report, the The Civil Rights Project, formerly known as the Harvard Civil Rights Project, concluded in 2006 that NCLB is failing to close the achievement gap, won't make its 2014 goals and has not significantly improved reading and math achievement.

Federal education officials dispute these conclusions