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…

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…

How do proficiency-based accountability systems affect inequality in academic achievement? This article reconciles mixed findings in the literature by demonstrating that three factors jointly determine accountability's impact. First, by analyzing student-level data from a large urban school district, we find that when educators face accountability…

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…

Business leaders from important sectors of the American economy have been urging schools to set higher standards in math and science--and California officials, in mandating that 8th graders be tested in introductory algebra, have responded with one of the highest such standards in the land. Still, many California educators and school…

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 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…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for improving test scores of minority students in third through eighth grades, making middle level schools a key venue for closing the racial gap in achievement. This study, by analyzing data on the 15,000 eighth graders who took the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics,…

Background: The Hawaii Department of Education (HDOE) launched its Hawaii State Assessment (HSA) in spring, 2002, within the context of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) Act of 2001 and its mandates to close the "achievement gaps" between subgroups of students. Thus, it is important to investigate the extent to which student…

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…

With the specter of No Child Left Behind hanging over their heads, educators should be wary of using disaggregated data to track selected populations of students and their progress through school. Such data can be misleading by showing that students are doing well, although they may be taking classes that are not challenging. Although the myth of…

Eighty-seven percent of all Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) students instructed during 2002-03 were continuously enrolled (CE) in one school from the first week of the school year until the last day of school. Across grade levels CE percentages steadily increased from only 82% in kindergarten to 94% in grade 12, except for a dip to 83% in…