America spends $115,000 per-pupil on education, one of the highest in the world. Even with high funding being provided for the educational budget, standardized state assessment scores are not reflecting the aim for higher quality of education that NCLB is trying to accomplish. Teachers use an assortment of assessments to gauge student's mastery…

Speaking in front of the Education Writers Association, Secretary Betsy DeVos said that decades of reform efforts and increased social spending, both inside and outside of schools, "hasn't ultimately improved anything for any students, particularly not for the most vulnerable students." This seems to be a standard refrain from DeVos, and…

Despite efforts from the No Child Left Behind Act (2000) aimed at better educating minority children, the African American-Caucasian test score gap persists. The population of public school students is increasingly diverse; yet, 90% of public school teachers are Caucasian females (Graybill, 1997). Within this ethnographic dichotomy, what effect…

The latest release of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provides no evidence for the effectiveness of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. In long-term trends, the achievement gap between white and minority students has hardly budged over the past decade. Congress should get rid of No Child Left Behind…

In this research investigation of score comparability for language minority students (English language learners [ELLs] and former English language learners), we examined 3 indicators of score comparability (reliability, internal test structure, and differential item functioning) for 4th and 8th grade students who took the NCLB-mandated content…

For a decade, at least since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the nation's foremost education goal has been to erase achievement "gaps" in which African American, Latino, and low-income students dramatically lag behind their peers. This emphasis has enjoyed broad support through the Bush and Obama administrations, and from major…

A major debate among education reformers over how best to reduce the achievement gap broke out during the 2008 presidential campaign. Most advocates on both sides backed Barack Obama, but they urged him to pursue different policies. The Education Equality Project (EEP) supported a continuation of accountability and other school-focused reforms.…

More than seven years ago, President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into law. Sweeping calls for testing, intervening in persistently low-performing schools, and policing teacher quality made it the most ambitious legislation on K-12 schooling in American history. The law, due for congressional reauthorization in 2007, still…

This article examines the controversy that continues to surround the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Since its passage, NCLB has been criticized for a number of reasons. One of the criticisms is that it is unfair to include special education students and students with limited English proficiency in the accountability system and judge them by the…

This study offers systematic trend analyses of NAEP national and state-level public school fourth and eighth graders' reading and math achievement results during pre-NCLB (1990-2001) and post-NCLB (2002-2005) periods. It compares post-NCLB trends in reading and math achievement with pre-NCLB trends among different racial and socioeconomic groups…

Title I provides extra instructional services designed to raise achievement for low-performing students in schools with relatively high poverty rates, and for all students in many of the nation's highest-poverty schools. To learn more about how well Title I students are performing academically, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) compared…

This article discusses a report from Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. The report says almost half the states have seen rising math scores on their state exams for elementary school pupils since the federal No Child Left Behind law was enacted. It also states that reading scores have improved among 4th and 5th…

In this article, the author examines the construction of standardized testing not only as a cultural product, but as an imperialistic product. She conducts both a postcolonial discussion of the critique of testing and examines the ways that children of color are represented in the content. Recognizing first that the increased use of tests is part…

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized test scores are the indicator used to hold schools and school districts accountable for student achievement. Each state is responsible for constructing an accountability system, attaching consequences--or stakes--for student performance. The theory of action implied by this…

No Child Left Behind calls for schools to close the achievement gap between races in math and reading. One possible way for schools to do so is to encourage their teachers to engage in practices that disproportionately benefit their minority students. The current study applies the technique of Hierarchical Linear Modeling to a nationally…