The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), passed by Congress, was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002.
👉 Lost decade: This well-intended effort, though noble, squandered over a decade desperately needed to address the root causes of achievement gaps among K-12 students.
👉 The consequence: Tens of millions of K-12 students, whose socioeconomic futures were at risk, were left at risk.
The costs of the NCLB failure: Dollar cost; human cost.
The “dollar-cost” faiure: Over the course of its implementation, NCLB ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars at the local, state, and federal levels. Its effects on K-12 education were far-reaching, undermining the learning and teaching environment for teachers, schools, administrators, and students for a decade.
The “human cost” failure: The lasting impact of NCLB extends far beyond its financial cost. The damage to the quality of life and the socioeconomic mobility of ordinary Americans who went through K-12 during this time is profound.
(Further, the harm wasn’t just confined to the 50% of students who failed to meet basic proficiency standards; it also affected the other 50%, many sharing the same classrooms. For all of these students, learning was hindered by the pressure on teachers to “teach to the test,” a strategy driven by mandates they had no power to challenge. Teachers had no choice. School administrations had no choice. Funding and school reputations were tied to test performance. (To read more click NCLB background notes.)
The demand to fix performance of K-12 students was urgent. However, the bureaucratic solution, NCLB, was itself a disaster.
Visuralize the immense pressure by corporations, economic leaders, and civil rights groups on Congress and the members of the House Education Committee.Â
Clearly the U.S. Department of Education (ED) had been inept by allowing the national disaster of low-performing students remaining unsolved. Just the opposite, the horror had spread to a full one-half of the K-12-student population.  Â
How did the misguided process of coming up with NCLB happen?
Who was it who decided that the answer was NCLB?
Under intense pressure, and simply trying to right the wrong, the main culprits may have been Congressional leaders trying to process what others told them.Â
Rather than address the root cause of the devastaging and growing issue of significant disparities in student performance, Congressional leaders were led in a different direction: Everyone knew that better-performing students overwhelmingly come from better-performing schools. Thus, theoretically, by making all schools perform better, the issue would be resolved. Advice and anectdotes came from fellow congressment; the U.S. Department of Educaiton (DE), under whose watch the horror grew; and the U.S. President, touting a K-12 program that seemed to be successful, the “Texas Miracle.”Â
Thus Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act. Once signed into law, ED was assigned to manage it. Athough bandied about was the two-year 2004 target for 100% compliance by the nation’s schools, NCLB and its tactics became a fiasco and became a decade-plu horror story.Â
Long before NCLB, was ED out of its league as it watched the 50% form? Once NCLB was signed into law, who assigned ED to implement it?
Even though ED was in place decades before NCLB and had overseen the tragedy of disparity of K-12 results, it was nonetheless left to manage NCLB.
Once ED was assinged the management of NCLB handoff, it was as if ED leadership decided to jam open the floodgates, turn on the sirens, and run for high ground!
Instead of testing a controlled, pilot version of NCLB in select schools, the ED rolled out NCLB nationwide, perhaps with no functional plan for managing the widespread disruption that might (and did) occur. Calls to pause and reassess the program were ignored.
Low-performing students needed immediate help, but NCLB’s focus wasn’t on bringing immediate improvements in K-12-student performance; rather the NCLB focus was indirect. The focus was more about evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of schools and their administrations, often through standardized testing. ED described the effort as one of “accountability.”
ED provided the NCLB rules and regulations. States were left to administer the program. What followed was a bureaucratic nightmare, marked by punitive consequences that did little to help struggling students.
13 years later, the flood waters receded and the carnage was measured.
Roughly half of all U.S. K-12 students were casualties, left unable to read, write, or do math at minimum NAEP proficiency (or do any better in any other subject assessed).
NAEP was quietly replaced by yet another Congressional initiative, this time the Every Student Succeeds Act. ESSA, too, ran its course, squandering several more lost K-12 years–lost forever.