Has No Child Left Behind Improved Public Education?

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By Dennis Van Roekel, a 23-year teaching veteran and longtime activist and advocate for children and public education, Van Roekel is president of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.  As NEA President, he leads the nation's largest labor union and advocate for quality public schools.

NCLB has failed its fundamental purpose – to raise student test scores and close achievement gaps. Reading and math test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress confirm a faster rate of improvement in student achievement before NCLB than since its enactment. According to a July 2007 article in the Educational Researcher “progress in raising test scores was stronger before No Child Left Behind was approved in 2002, compared with the four years following enactment of the law.” And the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that “the No Child Left Behind Act’s current accountability system provides insufficient evidence that the law has succeeded in raising student achievement levels or closing the nation's racial achievement gap.…”

NCLB is also narrowing the curriculum by limiting the time that school districts spend on non-tested subjects. In a 2007 report [1] from the Center on Education Policy, 44 percent of school districts reported cutting time from one or more other subjects or activities (social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch and recess) at the elementary level to devote more time to reading and math.

Ironically, recent research by a University of Maryland professor [2] finds that NCLB’s focus on high-stakes testing “has actually undermined the quality of teaching in reading and math.” The research further found “…declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum.” These declines were attributed to “…the pressure teachers were feeling to ‘teach to the test.’”