Still Children Left Behind?

The BIG news this week was the release of data from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Also known as "The Nation's Report Card," NAEP is the only national standardized continuing assessment. It assesses the performance of students aged 7, 12, 14, and 17 in reading, math, science, writing, US history, civics, geography, and the arts.

Given the tremendous investment in NCLB over the past six years, a positive change in student performance, including a narrowing of the achievement gap between students of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, would have been expected. But, no. Instead, as the Education Trust pointed out in a quick and dirty analysis published on the day the Department of Education released the report, reading achievement in our nation's high schools has actually declined since 1998 and there is a similar trend in science achievement. And the large achievement gap between students of color and white and Asian students still exists in similar proportions as it did in the pre-NCLB era. Ironically, these findings were released simultaneously with the Department's 2005 High School Transcript Study, which reported, among other things, that more students are enrolling in higher-level courses and the average GPA is on the rise (appoximately a third of a letter grade higher than in 1990).

So, what gives? The Education Trust staff point a finger at disparities in teacher quality, pointing out that high-minority, high-poverty schools have lower teacher quality than their peers. Their point is well-taken, given the research to date that supports the strong relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. There is a growing momentum to address this issue of teacher quality. Look at, for instance, the recent report of the Commission on No Child Left Behind that called for improving the effectiveness of teachers. And the President's FY08 budget included a huge increase in funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund program, which encourages school districts and States to develop "innovative performance-based compensation systems that reward teachers and principals for raising student achievement." Improving teacher quality will be a significant issue in this and coming years.