A law that has shaped education like no law before

by Dale Mezzacappa

Since No Child Left Behind was enacted more than five years ago, education in the United States – not to mention the education debate – has not been the same.

Technically, the law is the 2002 version of the 42-year-old federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) with a catchy new name. But it is much more than that.

To an unprecedented degree, NCLB has expanded the reach of the federal government into local education policy and has driven what happens in classrooms, schools and districts like no law before it.

Building on a standards movement that began in the 1990's, it set the ambitious – some would say unattainable – goal that all students should reach proficient levels in math and reading by 2014, regardless of disability, ethnicity, command of English, or socio-economic status.

It required each state to set annual improvement goals for its schools and to publicize test results both overall and by demographic subgroup. As a consequence, schools could no longer mask their failure to educate children of color, those with disabilities, or English language learners.

A signature initiative of the Bush administration, the law was a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. It passed Congress with the help of prominent Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

But the bipartisanship goes both ways. As school districts started to grapple with meeting its requirements, traditional adversaries united in opposition – teachers' unions wary of too much testing lined up on the same side as conservatives who dislike federal interference.

At the same time, it split the civil rights community: some groups believe that the renewed attention on poor children and children of color is driving academic progress, while others believe that schools serving these children are subjected to unproven and punitive reform strategies, including conversion to charters, privatization, or replacement of staff.

The law did not set national standards for academics or teacher quality – leaving those things up to the states. In response, states have set widely varying benchmarks. And while federal education aid has increased since the law was enacted, a broad coalition of groups has complained that the increases don't come close to paying for the kinds of reforms needed in struggling schools to bring them up to speed. Kennedy has argued that the federal investment should have jumped fourfold to $80 billion. Instead, it has increased from about $17 billion to $24 billion.

This split is evident as Congress tries to reauthorize the law. After months of work, key Congressional leaders now doubt that any bill will move this year. Schools and districts may have to live under the law's current conditions until 2010.

Locally, NCLB has had a number of ramifications. Not surprisingly, most of Pennsylvania's schools that have been tagged as poorly performing are located in Philadelphia, Chester, and other impoverished areas. But the public reporting of test results has also exposed the failure of many well-heeled suburban districts to adequately educate their students of color, and disabled and low-income students, and this has fueled opposition to the law.

Following are summaries of some of the legislation's most important provisions and how they have played out in Philadelphia:

Testing and accountability

NCLB requires schools to test students every year in reading and math in grades three through eight and in grade 11, reporting the results broken down by student subgroups, including race, ethnicity, disability, English-language status, and income. To make “Adequate Yearly Progress” or AYP, the school as a whole and all the subgroups must meet proficiency targets in both reading and math or show rapid improvement. Other targets must also be met, including test participation and attendance rates, or graduation rates for high schools. Miss even one of these targets and the school does not make AYP.