Achievement for Every Student

Most educators have now read about the landmark No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) signed by President Bush in 2001. (1) Many are beginning to experience its effects, and more will do so in the years ahead. As the most recent incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the NCLB breaks new ground. For the first time in federal education policy, the law mandates that all students completing the eighth grade by the end of the 2013-2014 school year should perform at the proficient level. To achieve this goal, the NCLB creates an ambitious array of incentives and sanctions to spur schools, school systems, and states to creative action. The NCLB is full of promise. We can hope it will cause states to significantly improve their standardized assessments. Perhaps schools at all levels will become more effective in helping students develop increasingly sophisticated literacy skills. Maybe the achievement of low-performing students will leap forward because they will finally have teachers who know how to successfully engage them in deep learning. The NCLB provides education leaders some financial resources and flexibility to achieve these great things, but a chasm stands between the law's intentions and major improvements in student achievement. As more than 35 years of Elementary and Secondary Education Act implementation has demonstrated, no matter how powerful federal law may be, it pales in comparison to the control local educators exercise every day. Do I really mean that teachers and administrators have more power than the federal government? Yes, because each day individual educators make decisions that either advance or frustrate the intentions of federal policy to increase student performance. It may strike readers as strange to suggest that teachers and administrators have real power. Educators feel so burdened by the complex and often conflicting requirements of policymakers that many teachers and administrators begin to believe they are victims, weak and always on the defensive. Every day, however, educators exercise their power in one of three ways: (1) they rise to the challenge of a new policy or law, and seize its opportunities to improve their practice; (2) they ostensibly accept the new mandate, but change their practice very little, if at all; or (3) they resist the new requirement and contribute to a climate that makes its effective implementation more difficult. (2) The more than 1,000 pages of NCLB provide educators myriad opportunities to make critical choices. Contrary to what many teachers and principals believe, there is wide latitude for schools, school systems, and states to determine how they will use NCLB funds to increase the performance levels of both teachers and students. Indeed, many pages of the law include lists of possible educational interventions local schools and school systems should consider. …