How Does No Child Left Behind Change Evaluation; And How Will It Help Me Know More About How My Child Is Performing?
(Taken from Reed's Manual: No Child With A Disability Left Behind)

REED MARTIN

The overall, and overwhelming, emphasis of evaluation under No Child Left Behind is aimed at group measures, rather than focusing on one individual student. It evaluates the performance of entire school buildings, entire grade levels, entire school districts, entire States and so forth.

Those are vitally important measures to judge whether we, as a nation, are going in the right direction.

Beginning over a decade ago, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was amended to include the "Improving America's Schools Act." The Congress was looking at test scores in general and the amount of money that they were spending on various approaches to education. Thousands of pages of statistics have been published in that effort.

That was an important phase in terms of the Federal Government's role in education because it confirmed that we were lagging far behind in many important measures.

In general, the amount of money going to State and local educational agencies continued to increase but test scores did not, drop outs continued to increase in most states and the percentage of students who were "finishing" high school, but who could not pass the state's exit exam and qualify for a regular diploma, did not seem to change.

It appeared to the Congress that it was time to consider a departure from the way we had been funding, and judging the success of, our public school system.

No Child Left Behind does not alter our special education laws (IDEA, Section 504 and the ADA) but it increases the emphasis on evaluating success of the educational effort in general.

Over a twelve year phase-in period, which is now underway, the Federal dollars will attempt to reinforce success and punish failure. Schools might lose Federal dollars based on lack of performance. Test results per school district and even test results per school building might lead to sanctions.

One sanction is to place a school on academic probation that might allow students at that school to attend another school. That might require busing for students who pursued that option and the district would have to spend extra money on that. At this same time, the district might be losing some of the Federal dollars as a sanction.

An entire school might eventually be closed. Parents might be allowed to choose to send their child to a school in another district. Parents eventually might be given vouchers (from public funds) to send students even to private schools.

A school that is underperforming might be required to offer after school programming and also arrange programming over the summer recess.

There is currently a great deal of concern nationwide whether we can cause a positive change in low performing schools by taking money away from them and giving it to other service providers.

Some schools have decided the best course for them is to get out from under No Child Left Behind by refusing to take any more "Title I dollars." One major school district has now said "keep your money" and filed suit against their State education agency to force the State to stop the sanctions against the local district for not meeting certain No Child Left Behind standards in the first round of evaluations.

One of the several arguments raised in that lawsuit is that the Federal government did not fully fund all the costs associated with the school district as they try to come into compliance with No Child Left Behind.

The argument that the school district does not have to comply with a Federal mandate, unless the Federal government "fully funds" all the costs associated with it, has been made over the past 30 years in regard to the IDEA and courts have judged it to have no merit.

An alternative that is then being tried by a number of school districts around the country is to "send back" the Title I dollars to the Federal government and say that lets the school district off the hook.

Depending on the very specific facts of the situation, a school building might escape penalties by refusing all Title I funds (we say "might" because there have not been judgments yet whether that can be done effectively) but the State Education Agency and the local education agency still owe a duty to those students under special education laws.

Under the IDEA, Section 504 and the ADA the school district is required to do much of what is in No Child Left Behind anyway – whether they "keep" the No Child Left Behind dollars or not.

No Child Left Behind evaluations are largely concerned with gross measures of how segments of our student population are performing – students with disabilities, students who are not proficient in the English language, students who read far below their grade level and so forth.

The information in this article and website is educational and not intended to be legal advice