Education Next: NCLB Uses a Flawed Measuring Stick to Judge School Performance

STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The federal law No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is using the wrong measuring stick to identify failing schools, says Harvard University's Paul E. Peterson in the new issue of Education Next. To make the law’s accountability system work, he proposes two fixes:

“A Lens That Distorts: NCLB’s Faulty Way of Measuring School Quality”

• Using a more accurate method to measure schools’ academic progress
• Holding students, teachers, and administrators -- not just schools -- accountable for improvement

Congressman George Miller, chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, has announced that Congress will consider changes to NCLB’s method of measuring schools’ progress this fall. Currently, NCLB looks not at how much individual students learn from one year to the next but at whether a school’s students are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward full proficiency -- a standard each state sets individually -- by 2014.

Peterson proposes moving to an A to F scale that focuses strictly on student growth. This was not possible when NCLB was originally enacted because most states had no way of tracking student progress over time. Since 2002, however, several states, including North Carolina, Texas, and Florida, have put such systems into place.

Peterson recommends that Congress mandate tracking systems in all states as a way of identifying those schools that are effective and those that are not. States that have both tracking systems and high proficiency standards could have the option of using the A to F scale as another way of showing that its schools are making AYP. As the distortions brought about by NCLB’s current method of measuring progress intensify, states will be motivated to move to the new system sooner rather than later.

Peterson also points out that, for NCLB to work, individuals -- students, teachers, and administrators -- must be held accountable. As the law stands now, only entities -- schools, school districts, and states -- are recognized for gains or subjected to sanctions.

In states where students are held accountable, the results have been promising, Peterson notes. In Florida, for example, the performance of third graders jumped during the first year in which they had to pass a test to move on to fourth grade. In Massachusetts, mandating that students pass a test to graduate from high school spiked performance the first year the law was introduced, with continuing gains in subsequent years.

Teachers should also be held accountable for student learning, once the other elements of a well-designed accountability system have been put in place. By tracking student progress from one year to the next, classrooms in which the most, and least, learning is taking place can be identified. That information can be used to reward high-performing teachers and to help low performers improve. Likewise, says Peterson, administrative leaders can and should be held responsible for the learning gains realized at their schools.

Peterson’s analysis is part of a forum on the future of NCLB published in the new issue of Education Next.

Read “A Lens That Distorts: NCLB’s Faulty Way of Measuring School Quality,” part of the forum entitled “Will NCLB Hit the Wall?” now online at www.EducationNext.org.

Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He serves as editor in chief of Education Next.

Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform. Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.