In Defense of No Child Left Behind

Continuing from my previous post…Does using federal money to drive education reform work? I am inclined to say yes, in large part because of my experience with No Child Left Behind.

When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law in January 2002, I was halfway through my first year teaching in a high school on Chicago’s west side. I was a Teach For America corps member, and had committed to teach in an under-resourced school for two years in support of the organization’s creed: “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” Along with 100 other corps members working across the city, I quickly found out that the idea of all children doing well in school was not as widespread as it should have been.

To borrow a phrase from my advisor at UVa, most of us were in “crab bucket cultures.” Apparently, when people go crabbing they don’t need lids on their buckets because if a crab attempts to escape, the others will pull it back down. Similarly, when we entered our schools with hope and enthusiasm and high expectations for students, attempts were made by many of our colleagues and supervisors (both young and old) to pull us down into the negative cultures that existed there.

In the middle of that first year, I was told by the dean of students that one of my students, who had gotten into a bit of trouble one day, had “no redeeming qualities.” This 14-year-old student was in honors classes, was the best reader in the freshman class, and showed kindness and love to his classmates and teachers despite being picked on and having a challenging home life. None of that was considered; he simply was labeled a “bad kid.” At an English department meeting later in the year, I introduced a plan to teach Great Expectations as the final unit for my honors reading class. The assistant principal and department chair both dismissed this idea, explaining that the students would not be able to handle the novel and that I should use the series of Bluford books (written at a 6-8 reading level) the school had purchased. My colleagues readily agreed: Charles Dickens was just “too hard for these kids.” The irony of using this argument to shoot down the idea of teaching a book called Great Expectations was lost on them. These examples are representative of the daily struggles we faced in schools where “these kids” were discounted, almost from the moment they walked in the door. (In case you’re curious, I let the class vote on whether to go with Dickens or the Bluford series. They chose Dickens, and my great expectations for them were realized when they grasped the material.)

Back then, Teach For America teachers stood out because of our high goals for students and the relentlessness with which we pursued them. We were different—not from all of our colleagues, but from a good portion of them. As NCLB was implemented across the country, though, things started changing. I saw this firsthand during five years of research and consulting with 44 schools and 50 school districts in 9 states and Washington, DC. While conducting site visits and interviewing hundreds of stakeholders—teachers, principals, parents, community members, school board members, district officials, and two state secretaries of education—I heard and saw shifts in attitudes and practices. Teachers started talking about ensuring all kids mastered the material, through benchmark testing and individual remediation plans, and the derogatory reference to “these kids” was used less and less. And administrators worked with a sense of urgency to help teachers support struggling students, with many of them telling me that no child left behind meant no child left behind. (Karin Chenoweth, author of “It’s Being Done”: Academic Success in Unexpected Schools and How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools, wrote an interesting op-ed in 2007 about NCLB and its impact on her daughters’ educations.)

In fall 2008, after NCLB had been in effect for six years, I came back to Chicago and began teaching in a low-performing school on the city’s south side. I was one of 10 Teach For America corps members and alumni there, but on our faculty it was hard to tell who was who. Many more people were speaking the language of high expectations and doing the work that would lead to increased student achievement.

Although some of the provisions needed tinkering, and the funding wasn’t what it was supposed to be, I believe the No Child Left Behind Act changed our education system quickly and for the better, especially with regard to attitudes toward minority students, poor students, and students struggling academically. Without sanctions and rewards that involved lots and lots of federal dollars, I do not believe these changes would have occurred.