Reading Gains Slow Under NCLB

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

READING GAINS SLOWING, STUDY SAYS
Los Angeles Times -- June 30, 2006
by Mitchell Landsberg

The pace of improvement in the reading abilities of elementary school 
students appears to have slowed in a number of states since enactment of 
the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a study by researchers at UC 
Berkeley says.

The report, scheduled for release Wednesday, also finds that the goal of 
the federal education initiative — to ensure that all students are 
proficient in core subject areas — has been muddied by wide disparities 
in the definition of "proficient."

A spokesman for the federal Department of Education called the study 
"flawed and misleading."

The report echoes the results of an analysis this month by the Civil 
Rights Project at Harvard University. That study found that No Child 
Left Behind had not led to gains in math or reading achievement, nor had 
it achieved another major goal: reducing the gaps in achievement among 
racial and economic groups.

Since enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002, "a lot of governors and 
a lot of state school chiefs have celebrated and claimed significant 
progress in terms of reading and math achievement," said Bruce Fuller, a 
professor of education and public policy at Berkeley and lead author of 
the new report.

But, he said, "in many cases — including in California — state officials 
seem to be exaggerating progress that has been made in children's basic 
reading skills."

For instance, though 80% of the fourth-graders in Texas are considered 
proficient readers according to state tests, only about 30% earn that 
ranking in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is the 
federal benchmark. The gap in math scores is smaller, but still vast — 
over 80% score proficient on state tests, but only about half that many 
on national tests.

In Massachusetts, by contrast, the state figures have consistently been 
within 10 percentage points of the national test scores in math and reading.

Of the 12 states included in the study, California had one of the 
smallest gaps between state and federal test scores. In an interview 
Thursday, Fuller praised California Superintendent of Public Instruction 
Jack O'Connell for being "courageous in setting that bar quite high."

California was also unusual in that its fourth-graders had improved 
their reading scores on the national assessment at a greater rate since 
2002 than in the decade before. Most of the states examined by Fuller's 
group showed a slowdown in reading gains after passage of the act, the 
centerpiece of President Bush's education policy.

Math scores have tended to improve at a quicker pace since 2002.

Rick Miller, a spokesman for O'Connell, said California might simply be 
ahead of other states because it adopted a test-based system of 
accountability before No Child Left Behind.

Miller said it was premature to say the federal program was not working.

The Harvard study suggested that the act was not accomplishing its 
goals. A summary of the study concluded that "the national average 
achievement remains flat in reading and grows at the same pace in math 
after NCLB than before." Like the Berkeley report, it based its 
conclusions on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Kevin Sullivan, the Department of Education spokesman, acknowledged the 
discrepancy between federal and state test results, but said that should 
ultimately lead to states raising their standards. "The fact that state 
scores have risen more quickly than NAEP scores does nothing to diminish 
the gains we have seen on both state and NAEP scores," he said in an e-mail.

Sullivan said that Fuller's group, Policy Analysis for California 
Education, "has a track record of putting out flawed and misleading 
information about No Child Left Behind."

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-na-tests30jun30,1,7851826.story