On June 23, the House Education and the Workforce Committee held its tenth oversight hearing to examine the implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (P.L. 107-110). Chair John Boehner (R-OH) said that the purpose of the hearing was to examine how the law is improving student achievement in urban schools. Noting that the law requires student test data to be broken down by subgroup, Rep. Boehner said, “Now achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers, once hidden from public view, are public knowledge for all to see. The law is shining a brilliant spotlight on the most neglected corners of our public education system—the very corners of the classroom hidden from public view during the ‘aggregate’ data days.”
Ranking Member George Miller (D-CA) expressed his lingering concern that the NCLB is not adequately funded. However, he stated, “The question that really hounds me, is that many of you [the witnesses] have had experiences in getting a bump in performance…The goal of this legislation is that we make this continuous improvement over 12 years…What should we be doing in terms of those districts who have made the improvements to help them sustain it?” Dr. Mike Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of over 60 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems, summarized findings from a recent report it published, Beating the Odds IV: A City-by-City Analysis of Student Performance and Achievement Gaps on State Assessments, which detailed statistics on the percentages of urban students achieving at or above proficiency levels. According to Beating the Odds IV, between the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 school years, “the percentage of urban 4th graders scoring at or above proficiency levels on their respective state reading tests increased from 42.9 percent to 47.8 percent—an increase of 4.9 percentage points. The percentage of urban 4th graders scoring at or above proficiency levels on their respective state math tests increased from 44.2 percent to 51.0 percent—an increase of 6.8 percentage points.” Further, the study showed that 14.3 percent of urban school districts posted faster gains in both reading and math than their respective states in all grades tested.
While noting that “it would be difficult, of course, to claim that the new law has had a direct effect programmatically in just one year,” Dr. Casserly said, “We also give some credit to No Child Left Behind for focusing our attention more sharply on student achievement.”
Dr. Eric Smith, superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland, praised the NCLB for transforming the debate about public education in the U.S. “by changing the discussion from one about the lack of student achievement and issues beyond the control of schools and school systems to one about using research-proven strategies to ensure that each child can read, compute, and write on grade level.” Specifically, Dr. Smith said that the law allowed his district to clarify what is taught, restructure the school day to provide more time for teachers to teach and students to learn, efficiently and effectively use resources, and provide ongoing teacher professional development.
Stating that the law is “only the beginning,” Dr. Smith told the committee that he is focusing on reducing the achievement disparity between African American children and their peers. “The improvements in all students’ performances, but especially African American students, demonstrated to me that accountability is not the end result of public education reform,” he said, continuing, “It is merely an integral component of a well-crafted comprehensive strategy for educating all students.”
Paul Vallus, chief executive officer of the School District of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, expressed his support for the NCLB. “The greatest tool that NCLB provides to achieve this objective—and, I suspect, the greatest object of consternation of some of my colleagues—is the disaggregation of test scores by subgroup,” he said, adding, “For the first time, we are able to shine a spotlight on groups that have been historically underserved.” In discussing efforts undertaken by his school district to comply with the NCLB, Mr. Vallus said that over 45,000 students chose to enroll in a school outside of their neighborhood schools this year; targeted assistance has been provided to over 40,000 students in grades 1-9 performing below grade level through extended day academic programs; mandatory, uniform K-12 standards-based curriculum, instructional delivery models, instructional materials, and aligned professional development have been implemented for low-performing schools; and over 1,200 new teachers have been hired.
Speaking to the funding issue, Mr. Vallus told the committee that increased funding should be provided for class-size reduction, after-school assistance, transportation for school choice programs, special education, and school construction. However, he said, “while we can’t shortchange our children by failing to fund reforms, neither can we hold their futures hostage by waiting for a never-ending funding debate to resolve itself.”
Dr. Marcus Newsome, Superintendent of Newport News Public Schools in Virginia, agreed, saying he supports the NCLB but that it needs to be fully funded. “Among the greatest challenges for urban school districts is aging buildings. We need more flexibility with spending to provide adequate space to accommodate public school choice, and expanded opportunities for pre-school, all day kindergarten, and lower pupil-teacher ratios,” he stated.
Dr. Newsome also detailed several programs within his school district that are achieving success. In particular, he pointed to the An Achievable Dream Academy, a public school supported by private businesses. Students attend school for 8.5 hours a day, six days a week, 220 days a year. Every student that completes the program receives a college scholarship from the An Achievable Dream Foundation. “It has the highest poverty index in the city with 98 percent of the students qualifying for federally subsidized meals, and 98 percent of the students are African American. Yet this school has closed the achievement gap and exceeded all expectations,” he said. Most recently, Secretary of Education Rod Paige visited the school and called it a model for other schools, and Mutual of America recognized the school as “the most outstanding partnership in the nation.”
During the question and answer session, the superintendents were unanimous in stating that one of their biggest challenges is parental involvement. “The greatest challenge we face as a school district is coming up with support programs to get parents more involved and more supportive in their children’s education,” stated Mr. Vallus. He added that his school district has implemented a number of programs and policies aimed at increasing parental involvement, including a policy that requires parents to come to school to pick up report cards, which contain a parents’ checklist that must be completed by the parents. Other challenges cited included teacher quality and a lack of evidence-based tools to allow teachers to be more productive. “There are too many textbooks, or other strategies that are promoted, that have no basis in fact to help children excel and weeding that out is extraordinarily difficult,” added Dr. Smith.
