Panel That Studied No Child Left Behind Act Recommends More Emphasis on Preparation for College
Chronicle of Higher Education 2/14/07
When the No Child Left Behind Act first became law in 2002, it focused on raising student achievement for all children in the nation's elementary and secondary schools, while dealing with the achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and others. The panel, the Commission on No Child Left Behind, was formed last year by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit policy-research group, to identify the law's successes, challenges, and problems.
In its report, " Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation's Children," the panel acknowledged that the law had "spurred some improvement," but said that was not enough, and recommended a number of changes to make sure high-school graduates are better prepared for higher education or jobs.
Forty percent of students at four-year institutions and 63 percent at two-year colleges require remedial education, according to a study cited in the report. In a survey of human-resource professionals, the report says, 42 percent of respondents said new employees with a high-school diploma were "deficient" in their overall preparation for the entry-level jobs they typically fill.
The increasing concerns over how much students are learning are fueled by a U.S. Labor Department report saying that over the next decade, more than 87 percent of new high-wage jobs will require more than a high-school diploma. As states become more aware of the problem, they are developing ways to test soon-to-be graduates. For example, the report says, 26 states have joined the American Diploma Project Network and are now working together to align their high-school exit requirements with the skills required for higher education and employment.
The commission's recommendations include requiring districts with large concentrations of struggling high schools to develop and put in place comprehensive, districtwide improvement plans. Such plans would include research-based strategies to study ways to improve curricula, tools for analyzing resources for staff members, professional development, and instruction; and strategies to increase attendance and grade-to-grade promotion.
The recommendations also include requiring states to create a 12th-grade assessment test designed to make sure all graduates are college- and workplace-ready. The report further recommends that states consider awarding college credit for students who show mastery of college-level material on assessment tests.
In addition, the commission would require states to include additional information on school quality in the data they report to the U.S. Department of Education each year, such as student attendance rates, turnover rates for teachers and principals, the percentages of students in high-level courses, and graduation rates broken down by race, ethnicity, and special-education and English-language-learner status.
The No Child Left Behind Act has had significantly less effect on high schools than on elementary schools because federal money for school-improvement grants is tied to financial need as measured by the number of children receiving free and reduced-price lunches, the report says. High-school students, no matter how poor, are less likely than their elementary-school counterparts to sign up for the lunch program. As a result, the income level of high-school populations is often lower than what is reported to the government, and high schools thus miss out on the grants, the report says.
The bipartisan commission was led by Tommy G. Thompson, a former U.S. secretary of health and human services under President Bush, and Roy E. Barnes, a former Democratic governor of Georgia.
Congress is expected to begin work this year on updating and reauthorizing the law.