No Child Left Behind

Requirements

The avowed purpose of the legislation was to bring more accountability to the public schools. To achieve this purpose the law requires schools to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), meaning that greater proportions of students will be judged proficient each year. Schools are required to embark on an extensive testing program that will document this progress.

Failure to meet these goals will be met with increasing levels of sanctions that would end, at the extreme, in dismissal of teachers and administrators and a takeover of low-performing schools by the state. This is the essence of high-stakes testing, meaning that important decisions will be made about the students (and teachers) as a result of these tests. There is an additional requirement that the gap between low-performing groups (minority, disability, and economically disadvantaged groups) and high-performing groups will be reduced over time.

Another requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act was that “highly qualified” teachers (teachers certified to teach in the subject area of their instruction) would be put in place in the schools by the 2006–2007 school year. As of 2008, this provision had not been met due to the lack of supply of “qualified teachers.” Still other parts of the law stress early literacy and the increasing use of educational technology.

Schools have responded to these requirements by establishing comprehensive testing programs and by paying particular attention to the education of economically disadvantaged children and those students from recognized minority or ethnic groups.

The clear assumption behind this legislation is that the public schools have been performing poorly and that teachers have either been unprepared or inadequate, resulting in poor performance by their students. The solution presented for these assumed difficulties has been to enforce academic standards. Raising performance standards with accompanying sanctions would, therefore, be one strategy to force better performance from public schools. However, there are many more societal differences between students from low-income or ethnically different families and students from high-income mainstream families. These differences include student mobility, parental participation, peer group relationships, hunger and nutrition, television watching, and more, which also have proven to be related to school achievement. Unless these other factors are also changed, schools may have a difficult time reaching the school achievement goals set for them by this legislation.

Consequences for Gifted Students

A number of unintended consequences have occurred since the law was enacted that impact the education of gifted students. Primary among them has been the increased emphasis in the school on basic student competencies rather than excellence in performance. Gifted students have not often had the opportunity to use the extent of their talents in the regular classroom, and the No Child Left Behind Act seems to compound the problem.

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