Civil Rights Project at Harvard blasts NCLB

[Marilyn Langlois <langlois-rine@comcast.net>]

How much more evidence do we need that NCLB is not working??

Marilyn Langlois
Richmond CA
----------
From: Lwvinatsugub@aol.com
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:48:19 EDT
To: Lwvinatsugub@aol.com
Subject: LWVC/EF Education E-List: Civil Rights Project Report re: NCLB

The following is information about a new study by the Civil Rights Project
at Harvard University that was released last week.
 
The link to the full report is:
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/news/pressreleases/nclb_report06.p
hp
 
Barbara Inatsugu
LWVC/EF Program Director for Education (PK-12)
 
--------------------------------------------
 
The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (CRP) has released a new
study that reports the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) hasn't
improved reading and mathematical achievement or reduced achievement gaps.
The study also revealed that the NCLB won't meet its goals of 100 percent
student proficiency by 2014 if the trends of the first several years
continue. 
The report, Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on
the Gaps: An In-depth Look into National and State Reading and Math Outcome,
compares the findings from the National Assessment of Education Progress
(NAEP) to state assessment results and concludes that that high stakes
testing and sanctions required by NCLB are not working as planned under the
NCLB. The findings contradict claims of the Bush Administration and some
previous studies that showed positive results under NCLB.

Under the NCLB, states can decide which tests to use for accountability and
proficiency. In turn, states are required to look at their results and
sanction low-performing schools. NCLB requires yearly progress of all groups
of students toward the state proficiency levels. The report demonstrates how
over the past few years since the NCLB's inception, state assessment results
show improvements in math and reading, but students aren't showing similar
gains on the NAEP?the only independent national test that randomly samples
students across the country.

"Students should perform well on both tests because they cover the same
subjects," said the study's author Jaekyung Lee, professor at the State
University of New York at Buffalo. "What we are seeing is, the higher the
stakes of the assessment, the higher the discrepancies in the results. Based
on the NAEP, there are no systemic indications of improving the average
achievement and narrowing the gap after NCLB."

The report also shows that federal accountability rules have little to no
impact on racial and poverty gaps. The NCLB act ends up leaving many
minority and poor students, even with additional educational support, far
behind with little opportunity to meet the 2014 target.

"This report is depressing given the tremendous amount of pressure schools
have been under and the damage that a lot of high poverty racial schools
have undergone by being declared as failing schools," said Gary Orfield,
director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and professor of
education and social policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education. "We
have not focused on the kinds of serious long-term reforms that can actually
produce gains and narrow the huge gaps in opportunity and achievement for
minority students."

Key Findings 

The report compares the NAEP results with state assessment results during
the pre-NCLB period (1990-2001) with the post-NCLB period (2002-2005). It
compares post-NCLB trends in reading and math achievement with pre-NCLB
trends among different racial and socioeconomic groups of fourth and eighth
graders from across the nation and states.
NCLB did not have a significant impact on improving reading and math
achievement across the nation and states. Based on the NAEP results, the
national average achievement remains flat in reading and grows at the same
pace in math after NCLB than before. In grade 4 math, there was a temporary
improvement right after NCLB, but it was followed by a return to the
pre-reform growth rate. Consequently, continuation of the current trend will
leave the nation far behind the NCLB target of 100 percent proficiency by
2014. Only 24 to 34 percent of students will meet the proficiency target in
reading and 29 to 64 percent meeting that math proficiency target by 2014.
NCLB has not helped the nation and states significantly narrow the
achievement gap. The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in the NAEP
reading and math achievement persists after NCLB. If the current trend
continues, the proficiency gap between advantaged White and disadvantaged
minority students will hardly close by 2014. The study predicts that by
2014, less than 25 percent of Poor and Black students will achieve NAEP
proficiency in reading, and less than 50 percent will achieve proficiency in
math. 
NCLB's attempt to scale up the alleged success of states that adopted
test-driven accountability policy prior to NCLB, so-called first generation
accountability states (e.g., Florida, North Carolina, Texas) did not work.
It neither enhanced the first generation states earlier academic improvement
nor transferred the effects of a test-driven accountability system to states
that adopted test-based accountability under NCLB, the second generation
accountability states. Moreover, both first and second generation states
failed to narrow NAEP reading and math achievement gaps after NCLB.
NCLB's reliance on state assessment as the basis of school accountability is
misleading since state-administered tests tend to significantly inflate
proficiency levels and proficiency gains as well as deflate racial and
social achievement gaps in the states. The higher the stakes of state
assessments, the greater the discrepancies between NAEP and state assessment
results. These discrepancies were particularly large for poor, Black and
Hispanic students. 
About the report: 

The report was conducted by Jaekyung Lee, an associate professor for the
Graduate School of Education at State University of New York at Buffalo and
commissioned by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Research on the report began one year ago and uses a growth curve model with
longitudinal analyses of both national and state assessment data to explore
the effects of NCLB accountability policy on student achievement outcomes.

This report is part of the Civil Rights Project's long-term study of the
implementation of NCLB, which has produced a series of studies and the book,
NCLB Meets School Realities.