'No Child' Leaves Too Much Behind
RAND Commentary:
The No Child Left Behind Act, a federal law designed to ensure that all children can read and do math proficiently by 2014, comes up for renewal in Congress next year.
Debate over its future will center on whether the law is doing enough to improve education across America and to help children succeed in school.
But questions have arisen about the accuracy of student proficiency testing used to chart performance under No Child Left Behind, and about whether math and reading scores --- even if they are accurate --- should be used as the full measure of school progress under the law.
Schools whose students fail to hit math and reading proficiency targets set by the states in these two subject areas face sanctions or even outright takeovers.
As the Washington Post reported Sept. 3, many states --- which develop their own proficiency tests --- set proficiency levels in reading and math without any relationship to standards in other states or to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The NAEP, a test known as "the nation's report card," tests representative groups of students in certain subject areas to chart long-term educational trends.
Beyond this, recent studies have shown that schools are spending less time teaching social studies, the arts and physical fitness --- and more time teaching reading and math --- at least in part in response to No Child Left Behind.
It seems reasonable that if we continue the policy of holding schools accountable, we need to broaden the meaning of school quality to include more of the things that really matter to students, parents and society.
