Running head: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

No Child Left Behind Act

Jennifer Lapin
PSYCH/655 PSYCHOMETRICS
August 8, 2016

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Background and Legal Implications

"On January 8, 2002, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA), and this legislation reauthorized, and provided major reform, to
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA)" (Jennings & Rentner, 2006, p.
110). There were calls for reforms in the educational sector after the Cold War together with the
successful launch of the Sputnik spacecraft by the Soviet Union in the year 1957. The reason for
introducing this law was to make the American learners be competitive just like their
counterparts around the world. Many people were concerned that the American education was
not internationally competitive at that time.
The legacy of ESEA has been under a lot of controversies. Before the introduction of
ESEA, most of the policies related to educational decisions were under the hand of the state and
local governments. Critics of ESEA argue that Title I did very little when it came to improving
the performance of learners. This is because accountability was not mandated by it.
After the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal role with regards to
the educational system in the country increased. It started to ensure that each and every school is
held accountable for the academic progress of every learner. Through this law of No Child Left
Behind, a lot of focus was directed to making sure that schools and state enhance the
performance of some groups of learners. Such groups of learners are poor and minority children,
students in special education, and English-language learners (Ryan, 2004). These were to be a
group of learners whose achievement trails their peers on average. The states were not directly
forced to comply with this requirement, but those states that failed to do so were risking losing

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federal Title I money. All the loopholes that were in ESEA were filled with the introduction of
No Child Left Behind Act, such as accountability for teachers and schools and bridging the
achievement gap that was present for learners of lower socioeconomic background.
Due to the introduction and proper implementation of No Child Left Behind Act, states
are now testing learners in math and reading. This is done in grades three to eight and once in
high school. Also, the states and schools were forced to report the results for the entire student
population together with that for particular subgroups of learners, such as children from lowincome families, racial minorities, students in special education, and English-learners.
Thanks to the law, now students are brought to the proficient level. This is because states
were required to ensure every learner reaches this level on every state test. Though, the states
were to decide how to design their proficiency and the type of test to utilize. Even though not
every state managed to ensure, every student passed proficiency bar, but the learners' level of
proficiency improved.
Schools are now hiring instructors or teachers who are high qualified. This is because the
law calls for states to hire teachers who are highly qualified to administer learning. This means
that teachers had to have a bachelors degree together with state certification when it comes to
the subject they are teaching. After the introduction of this No Child Left Behind Act in the year
2002, every teacher that was hired with Title I money was required to be highly qualified
(Jennings & Rentner, 2006).
Analysis of biases
Biases of the No Child Left Behind Act is evident from the portion that proves to be
problematic. This is because this law has matured without any form of congressional

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reauthorization and update. For example, it is not clear whether the two major remedies for
schools that are performing poorly did much to improve the achievement of learners. In a
number of cases, learners did not take advantage of the opportunity that was provided through
transferring to other schools so as to get free tuition. The process that was employed by states for
screening teachers for quality was to uniform. There were other states and districts that found
hard to screen teachers. There are other districts that successfully petitioned to provide their own
tutoring services. An example of these districts was Chicago. Also, the states were fearful to put
into place dramatic school turnaround strategies, especially for perennially failing schools.
Many people criticized the No Child Left Behind Act since it made the footprint of the
federal government grow in K-12 education. The law was biased because much emphasis was
directed to standardized tests. It is believed that the law has narrowed to curriculum through
putting much attention on reading and math (Kim & Sunderman, 2005). The schools are now
forced to spend very little time on other subjects. And these subjects are now not explicitly tested
like reading and math. Some of these subjects that have been looked down upon are arts, foreign
language, and social studies among others.
Many educational advocates also believe the federal government is also biased when it
comes to funding. The law has not been appropriately funded compared to others in different
sectors. The law has been underfunded. This law has forced institutions to increase their
educational spending so as to meet the cost of reaching ambitious goals of the No Child Left
Behind Act. All these are meant for a better achievement of students. However, the spending of
the federal government did not reach the level that was outlined by the law. For example, by the
year 2007, annual funding of the No Child Left Behind Act program was supposed to increase to
$25 billion, but it never reached there. In the fiscal year 2015, approximately $14.5 billion was

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given to Title I. This is below the required amount. The government is not willing to
appropriately fund this law. This is why many organizations are criticizing it.
Many districts and states have started to ignore part of the law. This is the case when it
comes to the requirement to hire teachers who are highly qualified. Hiring teachers who are
highly qualified is distributed unevenly between schools that are wealthier and those that are
poor. Poor schools have no capability to hire highly qualified teachers with the limited funds they
receive from the federal government.
Ethical implications of No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act has been praised for some of its positive attributes, such as
increasing accountability, school choices, narrowing the definition of research, and enhancing
quality and distribution of teachers. There has been faster growth in achievement, especially for
states that had introduced the law. However, there are those who feel that something is not right.
When learning by students and teaching by educators is measured nearly entirely by test scores,
the dynamic of classrooms must be intentionally focused on whatever it takes to optimize them,
and Teaching to the test, the strategy adopted by many teachers in US classrooms as a result of
NCLB, eliminates the freedom of an educator to spend any classroom time or energy in anything
that will not appear on a standardized test taken by his or her students" (Kim & Sunderman,
2005, p. 7). This makes learners only to be given prescribed information. On the other hand, it
makes a teacher or instructor to be only a disseminator of the information that is prescribed. This
limits critical thinking, creativity, and proper exploration of subject matter. Teachers are not able
to act as the leaders of the study. Autonomy of teachers is a very important subject matter. It
should be protected and respected by the educational system.

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Beneficence, which is the function to do good is challenged by the implementation of the

No Child Left Behind Act. So as to able to know what type of good has come from
implementation of the program, one will have to look at the groups that have been affected.
There are reports after the implementation of the program; the underachieving schools improved
their test scores. This automatically means better teaching and learning. However, the focus of
test taking is only directed to certain subjects, hence marginalizing others which are not
appearing on the tests. The skills that are needed to take the tests properly are not the same one,
which would support other learning measures. Some of these learning measures are critical
thinking, music, art, understanding of social studies, scientific logic, and other fundamental
things once emphasized in the classroom. Focusing the learning of learners on something that is
limited is not appropriate. This is because they do not get to benefit much as those other learners
with more diverse and richer curriculum.
The role of norming in creating bias
The act No Child Left Behind has brought in the use of standardized tests with minority
examinees. The central issue is that this brings out different results from one group to another,
for example, one ethnic group to another. The law makes the test design or how results are used
or interpreted to be unfair. Certain groups of learners are disadvantaged compared to others, such
as on the basis of learners who are fluent in some cultural traditions or customs, learners who are
not proficient in English language, learners from low-income backgrounds, and learners of color.
The population of learners is becoming very diverse in many public schools. This makes the tests
that are being administered to assume a central role when it comes to determining the success of
learners and access to various opportunities. The question of biases in the norming has grown,
and a question regarding how to eliminate it has become something of great importance. Test

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biases arise from norming. This brings in the issues of fairness. A question that has been asked is
whether the social applications of test results have effects, which unfairly disadvantages or
advantages a particular group of students. Norm-referenced tests have been found to bias. This is
because the norming process is not exact representative of samples of the groups to be tested.

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References
Jennings, J., & Rentner, D. S. (2006). Ten big effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on public
schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(2), 110.
Kim, J. S., & Sunderman, G. L. (2005). Measuring academic proficiency under the No Child
Left Behind Act: Implications for educational equity. Educational Researcher, 34(8), 313.
Ryan, J. E. (2004). Perverse Incentives of the No Child Left behind Act, The. NYUL Rev., 79,
932.