NCSL Task Force on No Child Left Behind Report
Executive Summary

February 23, 2005

Introduction
Summary of Chapter 1, The Federal Role in Education Reform
Summary of Chapter 2, Adequate Yearly Progress: The Centerpiece of NCLB
Summary of Chapter 3, AYP: Students with Disabilities and Limited English Proficiency
Summary of Chapter 4, Flexibility for States to Address Unique Schools and Districts
Summary of Chapter 5, Highly Qualified Teacher and Paraprofessional Requirements
Summary of Chapter 6, The Cost of Closing the Achievement Gap: Compliance vs. Proficiency

Introduction

The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB): to close or dramatically narrow the differences in achievement among American students that cross lines of skin color, ethnicity, immigrant status and wealth. The success of American democracy and our economic future depend on a society in which everyone is educated to their full potential.

State legislatures and local schools have been working for many years to improve the quality of education for all students and to close the achievement gap. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) does not encompass a new goal handed down from the national level; rather, it crystallizes efforts that were under way in states and classrooms all over the country.

Passage of NCLB in the fall of 2001 generated immediate interest among state legislators and prompted an unprecedented number of inquiries to the National Conference of State Legislatures regarding the content of the law and its relation to existing state education statutes. It was clear that the law had struck a chord across the political spectrum, eliciting both passionate support and fiery opposition in both political parties and among liberals, conservatives and moderates. Legislators’ questions fell into two categories: What do we need to do to make the law work and how can we effect improvements to it through additional congressional or administrative actions?

In March 2004, the Executive Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures created a Task Force of state legislators and legislative staff and asked them to focus on the latter of the two questions. It directed the Task Force to dissect the law, conduct hearings throughout the country, consult with practitioners and other experts, examine the pertinent literature and research, and formulate a comprehensive set of recommendations geared toward improving the No Child Left Behind law, making it more workable, more responsive to variations among states and more effective in improving elementary and secondary education.

The bipartisan Task Force met eight times in 10 months and, on January 29, 2005, presented the attached final report to the NCSL Executive Committee, which unanimously approved it. The report has six chapters. Most of it—chapters two through five—recommends very specific changes that could be made to the law. The first chapter, in contrast, raises fundamental questions about the act’s underlying philosophy, and the last chapter addresses one of the most vexing questions raised by legislators: the federal funding available for NCLB. The balance of this summary provides a chapter-by-chapter overview of the report.

Chapter 1: The Federal Role in Education Reform

The standards-based education reform movement has followed much the same path as many other public policy innovations in the United States. Innovation and experimentation began in a few state legislatures, then others adapted the reforms to the unique cultures and circumstances in their states. A second and even third generation of reforms refined the initial approaches. And, with passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government incorporated many of the state reforms into a single national policy, thereby significantly expanding the federal role in the administration of elementary education. But this assertion of federal authority into an area historically reserved to the states has had the effect of curtailing additional state innovations and undermining many that had occurred during the past three decades.

It also has questionable constitutional underpinnings. It pits the 10^th Amendment, which reserves powers to the states, against the spending clause of Article I, which allows the federal government to attach conditions to grants it provides to the states. Although the spending clause often has trumped the 10^th Amendment, the Supreme Court, in South Dakota vs. Dole and other decisions, has placed constraints on how Congress may exercise its powers under the spending clause. The Task Force is concerned that NCLB fails to meet two of the South Dakota vs. Dole tests: its grant conditions are not unambiguous and it uses coercion and not financial inducement to attain state participation.

Interestingly, No Child Left Behind includes two provisions that could redress the federalism imbalances that otherwise are present in the law’s approach. One, Section 9401 of Title IX, gives the Secretary of Education broad discretion to waive requirements of the law. The Task Force views this as an important tool that could turn state and federal government efforts from their current focus on process and strict adherence to the letter of the law to outcomes and compliance with the spirit and goals of the law. The other tool, Section 9527(a) of Title IX, notes that state and local governments should not have to incur expenses for implementing NCLB that are not funded by the federal government nor should the law force states or schools to change their curriculum or instruction. The Task Force believes this language should give state officials leverage in their efforts to ensure that the law is not an unfunded or underfunded mandate.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations in Chapter 1

1.) Congress should create a revitalized state-federal partnership that acknowledges diversity among states and shifts focus from processes and requirements to outcomes and results.

2.) Congress should remove ambiguity regarding the law’s grant conditions.

3.) Conduct a study of whether the law is an unfunded mandate.

4.) The Department of Education should develop a transparent and uniform process for considering waiver applications.

Chapter 2. Adequate Yearly Progress: The Centerpiece of NCLB

The standards-based reform movement has several central features: an emphasis on objective measures of student achievement, such as standardized testing, and holding schools accountable for their progress in meeting goals. No Child Left Behind’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) provisions incorporate both elements, albeit with an unnecessary level of rigidity and questionable methodology. The Task Force supports the premise and objectives of the adequate yearly progress concept, yet has numerous recommendations for modifying AYP to make it more valid and accurate and, a more effective tool in measuring student achievement.

The adequate yearly progress requirements of No Child Left Behind include several methodological flaws. NCLB mandates that schools be evaluated by comparing successive groups of students against a static, arbitrary standard, not by tracking the progress of the same group of students over time. The AYP requirements constitute a “static” evaluation model because they hold all schools, regardless of demographic factors and prior achievement levels, to the same benchmark. Standardized tests are far from perfect measures of student achievement and function better in combination with other measures, such as student portfolios.

The adequate yearly progress provisions are overly prescriptive and rigid. The law improperly identifies schools as “in need of improvement” by creating too many ways to "fail" and, therefore, spreads resources too thinly, over too many schools, and reduces the chances that schools that truly are in need of improvement can be helped.

The most counterintuitive and counterproductive feature of the adequate yearly progress requirements, though, are those related to remediation and school transfers. The law allows students to transfer from schools found to be in need of improvement before the school has an opportunity to address specific individual deficiencies. In addition, the transfer option is not viable for students in many urban and rural schools.

Ultimately, states should be allowed to develop any system they choose as long as it meets the spirit of NCLB.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations in Chapter 2

1.) Provide states much greater flexibility in meeting the objectives of the adequate yearly progress provisions.

2.) Give states the option of adding or substituting a “student growth” approach to testing and accountability, rather than the “successive group” approach prescribed by NCLB.

3.) Allow states to use multiple measures rather than relying exclusively on standardized tests to evaluate performance.

4.) Reduce the over identification of failure and make the adequate yearly progress provisions less prescriptive, rigid and absolute.

5.) Allow states to decide the order of interventions when a school is identified as being in need of improvement.

Chapter 3. AYP: Students with Disabilities and Limited English Proficiency

Including students with disabilities and limited English proficiency in the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind is an admirable goal. Yet, it presents considerable challenges for states, districts and schools, most glaring of which are the conflicts between NCLB and the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). NCLB requires students with disabilities to be tested by grade level, while IDEA mandates that students be taught according to ability.

The Task Force identified several other concerns related to NCLB’s students with disabilities provisions. One is its requirement that all students with disabilities be proficient by school year 2013-14. This is a laudable but unrealistic goal, which cannot be realized because it removes students from the special education subgroup when they reach the standard for their grade level. Another concern is that NCLB’s definition of “highly qualified” special education teachers conflicts with state certification practices.

Concerns related to the law’s limited English proficiency provisions center on the expectations for when students should be tested only in English and when schools should be expected to have them performing at grade level.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations in Chapter 3

1.) Give IDEA primacy over NCLB in cases of conflict.

2.) Provide states flexibility in determining the percentage of special education students who can be tested according to their ability, not their grade level.

3.) Allows states to determine the appropriate time to use native-language tests and English-only tests.

4.) Amend the law so special education teachers who teach multiple subjects are able to meet the definition of a highly-qualified teacher without having to prove content knowledge in each subject.

Chapter 4. Flexibility for States to Address Unique Schools and Districts

Many urban and rural schools face unique challenges in educating students and, as a result, in meeting the requirements of No Child Left Behind. The law, for the most part, does not recognize these differences and, instead, imposes a uniform set of requirements that all schools must meet. Some of the challenges faced by urban schools relate to their heterogeneity and the large number of subgroups they have as a result of their diversity. In addition, urban schools share with rural schools the challenges of providing school choice and supplemental services. School choice is difficult in an urban area where many other schools in the district are identified as needing improvement; and it is difficult in rural areas because of the long distances between schools. The geography of rural schools presents additional challenges to public education, including access to supplemental service providers.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations in Chapter 4

1.) The federal government should recognize that states are in the best position to identity special circumstances.

2.) Delegate flexibility authority in Section 9401 to states to allow them to respond to the unique conditions of urban and rural communities.

Chapter 5. Highly Qualified Teacher and Paraprofessional Requirements

The law sets fairly broad parameters for what constitutes a highly qualified teacher and provides states some latitude for setting their own definitions and qualifications. Even so, the federal parameters have posed problems for certain schools and school districts in all states. The portion of the law’s definition that requires teachers to prove content knowledge for each subject they teach is particularly problematic for hard-to-staff schools—for example, those in urban and rural districts. In addition, areas that were affected by teacher shortages even prior to NCLB have more challenges to adequately staff classrooms.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations for Chapter 5

1.) Permit states to allow teachers who are teaching multiple subjects to be considered highly qualified based on a single means of evaluation.

2.) Allow states to establish conditions under which exceptions could be granted to the highly qualified teacher provisions.

Chapter 6. The Cost of Closing the Achievement Gap: Compliance vs. Proficiency

Some of the most contentious issues surrounding the new law relate to its costs. The Task Force arranged these questions into three groups: whether the federal government is providing enough funding to meet the law’s requirements; if it is not, then what are the additional costs to states, both for administering the law and for actually reaching proficiency; and what are the financial consequences of not participating in NCLB? If the answers to these questions were straightforward, they would not be so controversial. The Task Force examined them from numerous angles and reached several important conclusions.

There is no doubt that the federal government has dramatically increased funding to K-12 education since passage of No Child Left Behind. In the first fiscal year following enactment, that increase was $4.7 billion, or 17 percent over the previous year. Federal K-12 education funding has risen a total of $10.4 billion since the law passed in 2001. Because the federal government’s current share of education funding is only about 8 percent, those increases constitute just a 2 percent rise in total education spending in the country. It is a lot of money, but when it is spread among 50 states and thousands of schools and school districts it is still a relatively meager increase in total K-12 expenditures.

Since the law went into effect in 2002, at least a dozen studies—some more rigorous and credible than others—have been conducted of the actual costs to states of meeting its administrative requirements. Not surprisingly, the estimates range rather widely; yet, more rigorous and recent studies agree that the average per-state increase in administrative compliance costs is about 2 percent. In the best case scenario, federal funding marginally covers the costs of complying with the administrative processes of the law.

States face a separate set of costs in order to reach the law’s standards of proficiency. The task force concludes that there are minimal new federal resources to allow schools to offer the remediation services and enhanced learning opportunities necessary to meet the proficiency goals of NCLB. The Task Force recognizes that current resources can be reallocated so they can be used more efficiently and effectively; yet, research and the members’ experiences indicate that simply reallocating existing resources is not enough to meet the law’s absolute proficiency targets.

In their frustration with various aspects of No Child Left Behind, several state officials have entertained the notion of choosing not to participate. One state, Utah, formally posed that question to the U.S. Department of Education. In early 2004, the department responded that not only would Utah lose its Title I funds, it would forfeit nearly twice that much in other formula and categorical funds for such programs as after school, drug free school and literacy. That response was sobering to other states and to members of the Task Force and reinforced the notion raised in Section I that compliance with NCLB is coerced. The Task Force concludes that punishing states financially for not participating in NCLB violates the spirit of a state-federal partnership to improve education.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations in Chapter 6

1.) Substantially increase federal funding for the law.

2.) Conduct a Government Accountability Office study of the compliance and proficiency costs associated with NCLB.

3.) Reevaluate the 100 percent proficiency goal established in the law.

4.) Reexamine the financial consequences for states that would choose not to participate.

Full final report: Delivering the Promise: State Recommendations for Improving No Child Left Behind.

NCSL Task Force on No Child Left Behind Report Executive Summary

NCSL Task Force on No Child Left Behind Report
Executive Summary