The latest release of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provides no evidence for the effectiveness of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. In long-term trends, the achievement gap between white and minority students has hardly budged over the past decade. Congress should get rid of No Child Left Behind…

The underlying principles of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--the demand for high standards, greater accountability, and the focus on long-overlooked student populations--are good. NCLB has done well for public education. Still, tens of thousands of educators nationwide are hoping that this year's reauthorization debate in Congress will lead to…

The Kingdom Come School in Linefork is now a public school, but it began its life in 1924 as part of the settlement school movement that was all the rage at the beginning of the twentieth century. The school was founded by Hiram Frakes, a methodist minister who wanted to create a community that valued education, and promoted opportunities for its…

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says he is eager to use a proposed $15 billion federal incentive-grant fund in part to reward states, districts, and even nonprofit organizations that have set high standards for the students they serve. Duncan's comments came in an interview in which he named as priorities reauthorization of the federal No…

For the 2003-04 school year, 73% of Florida schools were identified as in need of improvement under criteria of the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act, President Bush's 2001 renewal of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. One year later, that figure had been cut almost in half, to 37.4%. California…

The author of this article, a Montana teacher who is on sabbatical, while she is writing a book, relates what having time to read education news has done to her views of the No Child Left Behind Policy. She refers to NCLB as a masterpiece of language manipulation, and says that President Bush has a massive education program that doubles as a…

In this article, the author discusses the present academic situation of middle schools. Middle schools are gaining the reputation of being the "wasteland" of American education, a perception bolstered by the accountability measures under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. When the act was just getting underway, about 18% of all Title I…

In this article, the author discusses the importance of having more experienced and more prepared teachers for students to learn more. Here, the author presents two books: (1) A Good Teacher in Every Classroom; and (2) Preparing Teachers for a Changing World. A Good Teacher outlines current research on effective teaching, citing necessary areas of…

There are approximately 8,600 schools in the US that had failed to make their minimal requirement of "adequate yearly progress" and were labeled under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy criteria, as "low-performing." Some of these schools were in fact doing great but had only failed in meeting the requirement of having 95% of its students take the…

The Southeast Center for Teaching Quality and Georgia State University sent research teams into six southeastern and southern states to find out if the increased accountability policies are having positive or negative effects at the classroom level. The teams found strong support for standards-based reform and for state accountability systems.…