Sunday marks a decade of No Child. Did the law do any good?

Although not on politics, everyday I read Maureen Downey's blog Get Schooled in the ajc.  Today she writes about NCLB, a law whose time, I hope, came and has now gone.

Sunday will mark the 10-year anniversary of No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law that President George Bush envisioned as his legacy.

Bush signed No Child into law on Jan. 8, 2002, explaining that “the fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning.”

Because the anniversary is looming, I am getting lots of statements on the law and its impact, most offering a mixed review of its effectiveness. I listened Tuesday to a panel by RAND Corporation education experts. I will write about the panel later this week, but the consensus was that the law was effective in directing attention to previously ignored students, but that it was too proscriptive and overly reliant on multiple choice testing that narrowed instruction.

But one group that sees little benefit from No Child is FairTest, which has issued a report maintaining the controversial law “failed badly both in terms of its own goals and more broadly” and led to a decade of “educational stagnation.”

Among the report’s contentions:

- NCLB failed to significantly increase average academic performance or to significantly narrow achievement gaps, as measured by NAEP. U.S. students made greater gains before NCLB became law than after it was implemented.

- NCLB severely damaged educational quality and equity by narrowing the curriculum in many schools and focusing attention on the limited skills standardized tests measure. These negative effects fell most heavily on classrooms serving low-income and minority children.

- So-called “reforms” to NCLB fail to address many of the law’s fundamental problems and, in some cases, may intensify them. Flawed proposals include Obama Administration waivers and the Senate Education Committee’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization bill

“NCLB undermined many promising reform efforts because of its reliance on one-size-fits-all testing, labeling and sanctioning schools,” explained FairTest’s Lisa Guisbond, the new report’s lead author. “A decade’s worth of solid evidence documents the failure of NCLB and similar high-stakes testing schemes. Successful programs in the U.S. and other nations demonstrate better ways to improve schools. Yet, policymakers still cling to the discredited NCLB model.”