Some Children Left Behind

8-18-04 N.Y. Times:

Four years ago, No Child Left Behind served as candidate George W. Bush's banner domestic issue, showcasing his claim to "compassionate conservatism." At campaign stops, Mr. Bush attacked the "soft bigotry of low expectations" in public schools, and once in office, No Child Left Behind became his legislative initiative. It aimed for nothing less than ending the achievement gap between whites and minorities, by threatening public schools with dire punishments unless they improved the academic performance of all students. The law is intended to ratchet up the quality of teachers at high-poverty schools, steadily raise student achievement in reading, math and science, and use student test scores to dictate whether a school should survive. It also promises students in underperforming schools a way out, through transfer to better schools or private tutoring.

[E]vents in many states suggest [that] all is not going as planned with the administration's goal.

Faced with the challenge of raising all students to academic proficiency by 2014, however, some states simply lowered their standards, while many others came up with statistical devices to exclude whole groups of children from the law's umbrella.

Many states have also found ways to transform No Child Left Behind into something closer to Some Children Left Behind, particularly for disabled children and immigrants. More than a dozen states have adopted higher threshold numbers for counting these students in school ratings, so that they are frequently excluded from accountability systems.

[I wish there were some realistic factoring or adjustment on this latter point in Georgia. My wife who teaches 2nd grade says one disabled student's test scores has a tremendous downward impact on the class's, but all that is reported is the class's average. The prior year her class may or may not have had a disabled student; thus comparing apples and oranges.]