Civil Rights Project looks at ESEA

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/
For Immediate Release

No Child Left Behind: A Federal-, State- and District- Level Look at the 
First Year
Unparalleled Reports from The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University 
Examine Landmark Public Education Act

Cambridge, MA--February 6, 2004-- Today, The Civil Rights Project at 
Harvard University (CRP) releases the findings of a four-part study 
examining the landmark No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act through its first 
year of implementation (2002-2003). The research represents each level of 
government ? federal, state and district ? and focuses on state-federal 
relationships and the effects of school choice and supplemental education 
services on school districts. The reports take a unique approach and 
examine, at every level, the status of NCLB, as well as the intended and 
unintended consequences of the law, how the various levels of government 
work together to implement it, and how it works for low-income and minority 
students.

The reports show educators at all levels struggling to implement a dramatic 
and extremely complex change in federal education policy, which radically 
alters the role of federal and state governments while imposing 
unprecedented responsibilities and accountability for test score gains. The 
reports demonstrate that federal accountability rules have derailed state 
reforms and assessment strategies, that the requirements have no common 
meaning across state lines, and that the sanctions fall especially hard on 
minority and integrated schools, asking for much less progress from 
affluent suburban schools. The market- and choice-oriented policies, which 
were imposed on schools ?in need of improvement,? have consumed resources 
and local administrative time but have small impacts and are not being 
seriously evaluated.

?The federal role in American education has been an issue of great 
sensitivity in American politics for generations,? said Gary Orfield, 
Co-Director of The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and Professor 
of Education and Social Policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education. 
?The reality for too many public educators is confusion and frustration as 
No Child Left Behind is leaving too many children . . . and teachers . . . 
behind. I firmly believe, and this report supports, the time has come for 
local, state and federal educators and officials to work together to sort 
out the pluses and minuses and adopt administrative and legislative 
remedies to save the good objectives of the program and remove the 
arbitrary and unworkable provisions.?

The four reports were conducted by Gary Orfield and principal investigators 
Jimmy Kim and Gail L. Sunderman with CRP. They encompass six states and 
eleven dynamic school districts to create a representative national sample. 
(States: Arizona, California, Illinois, Georgia, New York and Virginia. 
Districts: Los Angeles Unified School District; Chicago Public Schools; New 
York City Public Schools; DeKalb County, GA; Fresno, CA; Mesa, AZ; 
Washington Elementary District, AZ; Buffalo, NY; Atlanta, GA; Arlington, 
VA; and Richmond, VA.) The states and districts were chosen to reflect the 
diversity of the country and to examine with special care the impacts of 
the law on minority students and schools.

Research is derived from one-on-one interviews, visits to school districts, 
massive analysis of state and local statistics, and analysis of government 
reports and documents. The studies include data collected between October 
2002 and July 2003. All reports and an executive summary are available by 
request and online at The Civil Rights Project, embargoed for February 9, 
2004. Highlights of the four reports and methodology follow:

FEDERAL REPORT:
The federal report, which examines the status of federal-state 
relationships during the first year, indicates that many of the conditions 
that would facilitate implementation of NCLB are not present.

Key Findings:

    * In June of 2003 only 11 states had accountability plans that were 
fully approved by the U.S. Department of Education, contrary to the federal 
government?s claim that all states were in compliance with NCLB.
    * Party alliance has not guaranteed cooperation with the federal 
goals, especially when they conflicted with local priorities and interfered 
with local control of education.
    * Though the law provides states with some money to meet the testing 
requirements, there is no support to assist them meeting the administrative 
costs of implementing other requirements.
    * District officials and local educators, who must implement the new 
requirements, were increasingly vocal about their objections to NCLB. 
Educators considered many of the NCLB provisions arbitrary and unfair, 
particularly the adequate yearly progress designations and testing 
requirements for special education students and English language learners.

STATE REPORT:
The State Report examines how six states (Arizona, California, Illinois, 
Georgia, New York and Virginia) designed their accountability systems to 
meet the Title I requirements and the implications of these provisions for 
schools with large numbers of low-income and minority students.

Key Findings:

    * The federal accountability rules complicated state efforts to build 
a coherent accountability system. States layered the federal accountability 
requirements on top of pre-existing plans, resulting in dual accountability 
systems.
          o The dual accountability systems meant that schools received 
conflicting signals about their performance. The federal rules identified 
289 schools in Arizona as low-performing and needing improvement, but these 
same schools met the state performance targets and earned either a 
?performing? or ?highly performing? label. In Virginia, 723 (40% of all 
schools) failed to make federal AYP goals while only 402 (22%) failed to 
meet state accreditation standards.
    * The federal law identified schools as needing improvement on the 
basis of their demographic characteristics rather than their contribution 
to student learning.
          o Despite the demographic differences between schools needing 
improvement and schools meeting AYP, two-year trends in achievement scores 
indicate that both types of schools made similar gains in reading and math 
proficiency scores. Regardless of initial differences in test score levels, 
all schools appear to help their students make similar improvements in 
reading and math over two years.
          o In Illinois and New York, schools needing improvement enrolled 
over twice as many minority and low-income students, on average, than 
schools meeting AYP.
          o In California, schools identified as needing improvement were 
more likely to contain a Black, Latino, socio-economically disadvantaged, 
and limited English proficient subgroup than schools making AYP.

CHOICE REPORT:
The Choice Report examined the schooling opportunities available to 
minority and low-income students in the eleven urban districts ? including 
Los Angeles Unified School District, the Chicago Public Schools, and the 
New York City Public Schools - in six states that were selected to 
represent different regions of the country.

Key Findings

    * Although thousands of students in these districts were eligible to 
transfer schools, fewer than 3% of eligible students requested to move to 
other schools.
          o In two of the nation?s largest school districts?Chicago and 
New York?just 1.9% of eligible students requested transfers in Chicago, and 
only 2.3% of eligible students requested transfers in New York.
          o No district in our study was able to approve all transfer 
requests. In general, districts with fewer transfer requests were more 
likely to grant transfers.
    * The Title I transfer policy provided limited opportunities for 
students to transfer to schools with high achievement levels and lower 
poverty rates.
          o In Mesa, sending schools had a higher average poverty rate 
(66%) than receiving schools (48%), and receiving schools had a higher 
average poverty rate than eligible receiving schools (28%). These figures 
indicate that eligible receiving schools with the lowest poverty schools 
were not chosen to accept student transfers. Chicago, Buffalo, and DeKalb 
showed similar patterns.
          o Despite the slightly lower average poverty rates in receiving 
schools, they still had average poverty rates that were higher than 40%, 
which is the criterion used to determine eligibility for schoolwide programs.
    * The federal law concentrates the costs and burdens of choice 
implementation in high-poverty urban districts and provides no incentives 
for local officials to adopt workable and effective transfer policies such 
as inter-district choice plans.

SUPPLEMENTAL EDUCATION SERVICES REPORT:
The Supplemental Education Services report examines the ability of 
districts to implement the requirement that schools offer supplemental 
educational services to students attending poorly performing schools.

Key Findings:

    * The potential for supplemental educational services to fragment 
Title I is significant.
          o Supplemental services shift the focus from improving poorly 
performing schools to improving individual student achievement, but only 
for those requesting services.
    * Demand for services in the first year was low, with fewer than 16% 
of eligible students requesting and receiving supplemental services. In 
most districts in the study this was less than 5%.
          o Dates show that this provision disproportionately impacts 
districts serving large numbers of low income and minority students, yet 
there is little empirical evidence of its effectiveness for the most 
vulnerable students.
    * Districts faced significant administrative burdens in implementing 
supplemental education services and in assessing the effect of this policy 
on student achievement and Title I schools.

Commenting on the shift in federal-state relationships, Principal 
Investigator, Gail L. Sunderman said, ?We are in the early stages of this 
shift and our research indicates that there is tremendous inequality across 
states in their capacity to implement the new requirements yet they are all 
held to the same standards. Having the federal government legislate how 
schools should be performing is going to be much more difficult than the 
rhetoric suggests.?

With respect to the research on test-based accountability, Principal 
Investigator, Jimmy Kim adds: ?While we embrace the overall objective of 
the federal law?to narrow the achievement gap among different subgroups of 
students?NCLB?s test-based accountability policies fail to reward schools 
for making progress and unfairly punish schools serving large numbers of 
low-income and minority students. Researchers need to examine both the 
intended and unintended consequences of NCLB?s accountability policies on 
minority students and the schools they attend. ?

The Civil Rights Project?s work in elementary and secondary education is 
funded by grants from the National Education Association, the Carnegie 
Corporation of New York, and the Mott Foundation.

A full report in PDF format is available upon request and at 
www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/esea/call_nclb.php, embargoed 
for release February 9, 2004

About the Authors:

Professor Gary Orfield is Professor of Education and Social Policy and 
founding Co-Director of The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and 
is the author of many books and articles on school desegregation and other 
civil rights issues and his work was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 
recent decision on affirmative action. His complete biography is available 
online at:
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/aboutus/fullbio.php/record_id=6/

Jimmy Kim, Ed. D. is a Research Associate for K-12 Education at The Civil 
Rights Project at Harvard University. He received his doctorate in 
Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate 
School of Education. Since 1999, he has been a research associate at the 
Center for Evaluation, which is housed in the Department of Statistics at 
Harvard University. His research has focused on the effects of compensatory 
education programs on the racial achievement gap. At The Civil Rights 
Project, he is currently involved in a five-year study that will examine 
state implementation of the ?No Child Left Behind Act? of 2001 and the 
effects of grade-level testing requirements on the achievement of 
low-income and minority students.

Gail Sunderman, Ph.D. is a Research Associate in K-12 Education at The 
Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. She received her doctorate in 
Political Science from the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on 
educational policy and politics, and urban school reform, including the 
development and implementation of education policy and the impact of policy 
on the educational opportunities for at-risk students. At the Civil Rights 
Project, she is involved in a five-year study examining the implementation 
of the ?No Child Left Behind Act? of 2001 and how this legislation 
influences educational change in states and local school districts.

For Further Information Contact:

Gary Orfield
gary_orfield@harvard.edu
617-496-4824 (office)
617-576-2840 (home)
617-359-2892 (cell)

Jimmy Kim
Principal Investigator
jimmykim@law.harvard.edu
617-495-3617

Gail Sunderman
Principal Investigator
glsunderman@yahoo.com
410-435-1207

Greer Bautz
Media Relations
greer_bautz@harvard.edu
617-496-1884 (office)

George Sheridan