In January 2002, the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB) was signed into law. NCLB set new standards for educational achievement in elementary and secondary schools, and provided additional resources to schools to ensure that these new standards would be fulfilled.
Rep. Levin believes that as the federal government sets high standards for our schools and evaluates outcomes, legislators in Washington must also live up to their end of the bargain and provide the resources they authorized when they voted for NCLB. The performance of the federal government is funding NCLB has been extremely disappointing and Rep. Levin has fought to increase resources for our schools. This year, the President’s budget falls $15.4 billion short of the funding commitment made in NCLB to K-12 education. Since NCLB was signed into law President Bush has underfunded the law by a startling $55.7 billion.
Under NCLB, states have developed grade-appropriate tests in reading and math, and will start testing in science by the end of the 2007-2008 school year. These tests, along with how their results should be interpreted, are then approved by the Department of Education. Test scores are translated by states into determinations of a student’s ability in a subject. Students who demonstrate the necessary capacity in a given subject area are deemed “proficient” in that subject. NCLB requires that all schools have 100 percent of their students testing at the proficient level by the end of the 2013-14 school year. In the meantime, NCLB requires schools demonstrate increasingly higher levels of proficiency – this is referred to as Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP. States base their initial targets on test scores from the 2001-02 school year, and then increase those targets in steady intervals so that 100 percent of students are proficient within 12 years.
Test results must be broken down by four subgroups – poverty, racial and ethnic group, students with disabilities, and students with limited proficiency in English – for individual schools as well as entire school districts. In order for a school or school district to meet AYP under the NCLB requirements, each of those subgroups, as well as the student population as a whole, must meet the state's annual target for the number of students who need to perform at the proficient level. Schools failing to meet AYP face penalties of increasing severity.
NCLB also established minimum qualifications for all teachers. The law requires states to ensure that all public school teachers in core academic subjects (math, English, science, government, arts, history, and foreign language) are highly qualified by the end of the 2005-06 school year. Overall the law defines a fully qualified teacher as one who has a bachelor’s degree, is fully state certified, has demonstrated competence in the subject by completing sufficient academic course work, or has passed a state subject-matter examination.
Rep. Levin is working with the State of Michigan and local educators to determine if the problems experienced with NCLB can be addressed through implementation or if they require change to the original law. The Department of Education has already announced several "implementation" changes which added some flexibility to testing requirements for limited English proficiency students and "highly qualified teacher" requirements. For more information on what Michigan is doing, visit the Michigan Department of Education’s website
