No Child Left Behind Act

Assessments under the No Child Left Behind Act

In December 2001, Congress passed with broad bipartisan support the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This legislation expands the federal role in the substance and standards of K-12 education. This issue brief introduces the basic "testing" provisions of the Act and highlights some areas for further reform.

Standards-based reform and regular assessments

Standards-based reform is founded on the premise that all children can learn at high levels. Congress had already required that states adopt reading and math standards. In the No Child Left Behind Act, Congress adds a requirement that states adopt science standards by the 2005-06 school year. In adopting standards, assessment, and accountability as the centerpiece of the legislation, Congress follows the lead of many state-based reform efforts.

Under the Act, beginning in 2005-06, students must be tested annually on state assessments in math and reading in grades 3-8; science assessments must be developed and put into place by the 2007-08 school year. Every other year, students in grades 4 and 8 will also take a national test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP).

Adequate Yearly Progress

Assessments are designed to provide information about how well students in a given school are doing compared with other students in the city, state, and nation. They can help pinpoint areas where an individual student or a group of students need help so that the school, district, and state create programs that are targeted to their needs.

Under the Act, schools are expected to bring up student achievement so that by the 2013-14 school year, all students score at or above "proficient" levels. Schools and districts will be held accountable for failing to make progress towards this goal. First, schools will receive some additional resources and professional development. If such measures do not translate into adequate improvement on assessments, they will be subject to corrective action, including staff or school restructuring and loss of their federal money. Students attending schools identified for improvement or corrective action generally have a right to transfer to other public schools and, in certain circumstances, to use federal money to buy supplemental educational services.

Closing the achievement gap

Currently, economically disadvantaged students, minority students, English language learners, and students with disabilities tend, on average, to lag far behind their peers on tests. The assessments and accountability provisions of the Act are intended to close this achievement gap. The Act therefore requires that states, districts, and schools break down general averages to show that these subgroups of students are meeting state objectives regarding adequate progress towards 100% proficiency. Alternatively, a school may satisfy this requirement by showing that number of students in the relevant sub-group that fail to show proficiency decreases by at least 10% and the group made progress on one or more other academic indicators, such as graduation rate, attendance rates, or decreases in grade-to-grade retention.

Reporting results

The school district must provide information to parents about their child's achievement on state assessments and other measures of student achievement. Remember, these tests are used to diagnose what students have learned and where they need to make further progress. Students prepare for these tests over a whole year, and in some cases over their entire time in school. Parents can help their children do well simply by making sure that their children attend school every day and that they do all assigned work.

The district must also issue reports that are available to the general public and to parents showing each school's achievement and the achievement in the district as whole and the state as a whole. The law requires that these reports be easy to understand and widely disseminated.

Providing resources to give students a true opportunity to meet standards

With qualified and experienced teachers and administrators, modern facilities, and up-to-date instructional materials such as textbooks and science labs, all children can learn. All too often, however, schools with the highest proportion of students failing to succeed on assessments are also forced to contend with serious resource shortages. In most states, dramatic disparities among districts exist. Urban public schools, which generally serve the country's most socio-economically disadvantaged students, usually have lower average per pupil expenditures than non-urban schools. Poor rural school districts are also generally under-funded relative to suburban districts.

No Child Left Behind sets out clear standards for academic performance --- but it fails to require that schools receive adequate resources to help their students meet standards. To ensure that the Act achieves its ultimate objective of raising student achievement across the board, educational funding at the state and local level, as well as the federal level, must be modified so that schools truly have the resources they need.

Do you want to learn more about the No Child Left Behind Act?

No Child Left Behind is a broad-ranging federal law that has implications for many aspects of federal education policy. For more information on No Child Left Behind, visit the federal legislation section of our website.