Introduction
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires that American states put in place goals for students as well as groups of students defined by race, ethnicity, disability, poverty, and limited English proficiency. In addition, the Act requires that schools realize annual progress in achieving the set goals. Many states have strived to review their education and establish what needs to be done to meet the federal requirements. In this paper, focus shall be on the State of Texas. First there will a legislative background leading up to the NCLBA, then the provisions of the Act, followed by a detailed look of Texas in relation to the Act.
Background to the NCLBA
The move towards standards-based education and assessment in the United States began with the 1981 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education titled “A Nation at Risk.” The recommendations captured in it favored lasting reform by requiring “the best effort and performance from all students irrespective of their ability and socioeconomic statues (Stencher et al, 2010). The enactment of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA) brought about significant improvements to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The latter was adopted by President Lyndon Johnson as part of his war on poverty. The IASA was designed to heighten federal funding of poor schools having low achieving students.
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. While the NCLB was largely a reauthorization of previous policies such the ESEA of 1965, it brought in more stringent requirements relating to the measurement of student progress along with the use of science-centered instructional practices (Wood, 2007). The NCLB is arguably the largest ever undertaking of federal involvement in K-12 education.
The NCLBA is made up of 10 major titles:
• Title I – Improving Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged
• Title II – Preparing, Training and Recruiting High
• Quality Teachers and Principals
• Title III – Language Instruction for Limited English
• Procient and Immigrant Students
• Title IV – 21st Century Schools
• Title V – Promoting Informed Parental Choice and
• Innovative Programs
• Title VI – Flexibility and Accountability
• Title VII – Indian, Native Hawaiian and Alaskan Education Programs
• Title VIII – Impact Aid Program
• Title IX – General Provisions
• Title X – Repeals, Redesignations, and
• Amendments to Other Statutes (Hunter, 2006).
However, Title I has emerged as major one where the focus is on providing additional federal funding to boost the achievement students in economically-disadvantaged schools. Title I funds can apply to pre-school programs, hiring of paraprofessional staff, class size reduction, extended-day and –year programs, professional teacher development, and implementation of new program (Dorel, 2009). The federal government launched the annual testing requirements and accompanying accountability measures for schools and districts using the Title I of the NCLBA.
Major items in the NCLBA
Annual Testing
States are required by the bill to test every student annually in grades 3-8 in reading together with mathematics by the 2005-2006 school year. Individual states have the power to chose and develop the states although they must be aligned with the academic standards of the state. In addition, it required that states have in place supplemental assessments in science for each grade in elementary, middle, and secondary schools by 2006-2007. According to the Act, $387 million would be released in the year for the development of the assessments and “such sums as necessary” for five year to follow.
Reporting of student scores would be on the basis of individual and disaggregated subgroups which will enable policymakers to assess the overall trends and differences between and among different subgroups (Andersen & Taylor, 2007). Furthermore, assessment results and other data obtained from individual schools, school districts, and the entire state would be reported through report cards to parents and the public by the 2002-2003.
Furthermore, the Act demands sampling of students in grades 4 and 8 to undertake the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics and reading in order to obtain a comparison to state assessments. All the costs related to the NAEP testing shall be offset by the federal government.
Annual Yearly Progress
The NCLBA outlines annual yearly progress expectations for all students as opposed to the former requirement for disadvantaged students only. To this effect, every state is required to determine a minimum bar of performance on the basis of the lowest-performing demographic subgroup, or the lowest-performing schools in the state, whichever is higher (Hunter, 2006). After the setting of the bar, a state has 12 years to gradually raise it until the state attains 100 percent proficiency in both reading and math for all groups.
Accountability
Failure for a school to meet AYP goals for two years in a row, warrants measures for improvement. The school is thus to receive technical support and must establish improvement plans based on results of research on problematic areas (Fagan, 2002).
No Child Left Behind in Texas
Background history
Assessment of Knowledge and Skill Test
President George W. Bush hails from the state of Texas where the NCLBA has taken root. The history of standardized testing in the State of Texas began with the adopting of the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills (TABS) which was introduced in 1980. The TABS was updated and replaced by the Texas Educational Assessment of Basic Skills (TEAMS) in 1985. The TEAMS was a standardized test which assessed basic skills in reading and mathematics and was formerly purposed as a diagnostic instrument to inform instruction (Maxwell, 2011). In 1990, the TEAMS was replaced by the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), a high stakes criterion-referenced test that was based on a statewide curriculum. In 1999, Texas formed the National Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) following the change in the testing instrument by the 79th Legislature.
The TAC constituted national experts mandated to provide guidance and training to the State Board of Education (SBOE) tasked with drafting and implementation of a standard-setting plan for the TAKS test which is described in the TEA Student initiative. By the late 1990’s, TAKS had established Texas as a leader as a leader in the standards movement. So much so that at the time No Child Left Behind Act was developed in early 2001, President Bush referred to the data from his home state of Texas to show the significant improvement the standards movement had on student learning in the United States (Wood, 2007). However, a 2000 study titled “The Texas Miracle” questioned the meaning of the test scores as pertains to student progress in learning. In addition, the study and others held that the data was manipulated to produce exaggerated results to fulfill underlying political motives (Brown et al, 2011).
Assessments
According to the Texas Education Code, sec. 39.023, TEA must adopt or come up with tests tailored to assess the extent to which an individual student has gained necessary knowledge and skills in reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies.
Given that the state of Texas was a model for many NCLB provisions, it was initially expected to encounter lesser hurdles in the implementation of the law as compared to other states lacking such testing and accountability systems in place (Texas AFT, 2008). However, problems for Texas came in form of conflicts between its statutory testing & accounting systems on one hand, and the newly designed federal requirements. Though the state of Texas did not have to go through the trouble of developing new reporting systems in line with NCLB, it was required by the federal law to disaggregate test results for additional student groups. Section 39.051 of the Texas Education Code requires that test results be disaggregated according to race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. NCLB directed that test results be disaggregated to indicate performance of special education, migrant, and LEP students (Haris et al, 2006).
Impressive scores have been reported in the state of Texas since the adoption of NCLB. Majority of Texas students have taken the TAKS introduced in 2003 to replace the TAAS. In 2003, passing rate in was 63%, followed by 67% in 2004 and then 72% in 2005. However, Governor Rick Perry asked for a larger accountability system that would raise the standards and ensure that students are adequately prepared for college and work. By 2008, third-, fifth-, and eighth-grade students were required to show reading and mathematics prowess so as to earn promotion to the following grade level (Maxwell, 2011).
Accountability
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 directs states to come up and implement a single, statewide accountability system by which it will evaluate the test results for student groups as well as measure progress in its test results from year to year (Texas AFT, 2008). To this effect, Texas was at an advantage when NCLB come into force because the state had had an operational accountability system in place for a while then. According to sec. 39.072 of the Texas Education Code enacted back in 1993, TEA was mandated to release accountability ratings for individual districts and schools in the state.
TEA issued its maiden annual performance ratings following the new state accountability system, in which districts and schools are ranked on the basis of student performance on the TAKS test along with subsequent criteria like completion rates in high school and dropout rates for grade 7-8 students (Texas AFT, 2008). The new system resulted in a handful of “Exemplary” and lots of “Academically Unacceptable” schools and districts. This was attributed on the issue that a high number of students encountered difficulty in excelling in the rather rigorous TAKS test. Since 2004, TEA has been able to issue a distinct list showing schools that fail to make sufficient yearly progress for common indicators – reading, mathematics, attendance rate, or graduation rate – in two years in a row in line with NCLB requirements (Brown et al, 2011).
Measuring AYP
NCLB demands states to develop criteria to assess whether districts and schools are making progress for year to year for all students taken through tests. As such, TEA is required to measure progress in all schools even those that are non-recipient of Title I funds as well as optional education and charter schools. Stiff sanctions face schools and districts that receive Title I funds but fail to meet established AYP standards (Stencher et al, 2010).
Over the last years, an increasing number of schools and districts have continued to meet the TEA criteria approved by the USDE. 47 percent of all students in campus and those in six varied subgroups are required to pass the TAKS reading/language arts, while 33 percent need to pass the mathematics section (Andersen & Taylor, 2007). The required pass rates were designed to be raised until the 2013-14 school year when 100 percent excellence is expected to be achieved.
Texas’ inaugural campus and district AYP designation under the new NCLB were issued in September 2003. The following year, a total of 199 Title I schools that failed to meet AYP standards for two consecutive years were flagged by TEA.
Highly qualified paraprofessionals and teachers
According to NCLB, all teachers of key academic subjects must be “highly qualified” i.e. being holders of a bachelor’s degree, have current state certification, as well as demonstrate subject-matter competency in the core academic subjects. Schools are further required to commit a minimum of 5 percent of their Title I funds to helping teachers become highly qualified (Dorel, 2009).
The Texas State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC) sets requirements relating to teacher certification (Walsh et al, 2010). Teachers are required to hold a bachelor’s degree containing coursed in education of have an alternative certification from other approved certification program as well as pass subject and grade level tests (Walsh et al, 2010). Approximately 95 percent of Texas teachers fulfil the NCLB definition of “highly qualified”. However, this requirement proved problematic in Texas districts with teacher shortages in such subjects as mathematics, bilingual education and science. This made the USDW to relax some standards for teacher certification e.g. allowing college graduates who passed subject tests to teach 8-12 grades for a couple of years without formal certification.
The NCLB also requires paraprofessionals to have a minimum of two years of postsecondary or have the ability to demonstrate necessary skills on a local or state academic assessment.
Problems of NCLB in Texas
Notwithstanding the positive milestone that the No Child Left Behind Act has had to the state of Texas, a number of concerns have been raised about the test score comparison for accountability structure. The greatest of the concerns is that there is constant change in population of students every year (Haris et al, 2006). This is a concern because the most valuable testing comparisons can only be achieved from a longitudinal study of the same student population over a set length of time. As such, evaluation ought not to be drawn from a single test rather from a series of assessments carried out over time. This is because comparison of a single year to another one would reflect the changes in demographics, school policies as well as teachers. It is common practice for administrators in Texas schools to conduct assessment without paying enough consideration of compliment with the domain the instrument is meant to test (Williams, 2008).
Conclusion
There is need for policymakers to improve the No Child Left Behind Act so that it can better the education sector of Texas and all other states in the United States. The main focus should be on the value implications of the test score interpretations and the social ramifications of the actual application of the test scores (Fagan, 2002). Lastly, further research is required to ensure that assumptions relating to testing instruments, the meaning of the collected data, as well as the ramifications of the assessment on learners and learning process are duly aligned.
References:
Andersen, L. M., & Taylor, F. H. (2007). Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society. Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
Brown, L., Langenegger, A. J., Garcia, R. S. (2011). Practicing Texas Politics. Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
Dorel, G. T. (2009). Assessing the Self Efficacy of Paraprofessionals: The Impact of the No Child Left Behind Act. Michigan: ProQuest.
Fagan, T. (2002). Implications of the No Child Left Behind Act for States in the Southwestern Region. Retrieved from: http://www.sedl.org/pubs/policy90/NCLBA-policy-brief.pdf
Hunter, C. R. (2006). No Child Left Behind And Other Federal Programs for Urban School Districts. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing.
Maxwell, E. W., Crain, E., & Santos, A. (2011). Texas Politics Today: 2011-2012 Edition. Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
Texas AFT. (2008). Beyond TAKS (and NCLB): Putting Texas School Accountability
Back on Track. Retrieved from: http://docs.texasaft.org/legislative/TestReformForumPaper100208.pdf
Haris, S., Irons, J.E., & Crawford, C. (2006). TEXAS SUPERINTENDENTS’RATINGS OF
STANDARDS/ASSESSMENT/ACCOUNTABILITY PROGRAMS. Retrieved from: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ756223.pdf
Stencher, M. B., Vernez, G., & Steinberg, P. (2010). Reauthorizing No Child Left Behind: Facts and Recommendations. California: Rand Corporation.
Walsh, J., Kemerer, F., & Maniotis, L. (2010). The Educator’s Guide to Texas School Law: Seventh Edition. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Williams, L. L. (2008). Benchmark Testing and Success on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills: A Correlational Analysis. Michigan: ProQuest.
Wood, L. T. (2007). The No Child Left Behind Act: The Divide Between Policy and Practice. Michigan: ProQuest.
