No Child Left Behind legislation highlights

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation was used by the Portage School Board at the December 15 Board meeting to justify a change to semester science classes in 9th and 10th grades even though there is no data to substantiate such a change for all students. In fact, this type of change runs exactly counter to much of what is posted on the NCLB web site, where they stress using methods that have been proven to work. Below are four interesting quotations taken from a very informative web site at nclb.gov. For more information about the way NCLB applies to Portage, click here.

Here are the quotations from the NCLB website-

1. "No Child Left Behind puts the focus on instruction and methods that have been proven to work" This is in contrast to experimental ideas that have not yet been tested, and may or may not work.

2. There are a lot of education fads. Does No Child Left Behind do anything to prevent bad or untested programs from being used in the classroom?

"For too many years, too many schools have experimented with lessons and materials that have proven to be ineffective--at the expense of their students. Under No Child Left Behind, federal support is targeted to those educational programs that have been demonstrated to be effective through rigorous scientific research. Reading First is such a program. Programs and practices grounded in scientifically based research are not fads or untested ideas; they have proven track records of success. By funding such programs, No Child Left Behind encourages their use, as opposed to the use of untried programs that may later turn out to be fads. Furthermore, No Child Left Behind's accountability requirements bring real consequences to those schools that continually fail to improve student achievement as a result of using programs and practices for which there is no evidence of success. Such schools would be identified as needing improvement and required to make changes as outlined in the section on Accountability, including using education programs that are grounded in scientifically based research "

3. What is scientifically based research?

To say that an instructional program or practice is grounded in scientifically based research means there is reliable evidence that the program or practice works. For example, to obtain reliable evidence about a reading strategy or instructional practice, an experimental study may be done that involves using an experimental/control group design to see if the method is effective in teaching children to read.

4. No Child Left Behind requires that federal funding go only to programs that are backed by evidence.

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