NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

ESEA: Myths versus Realities

Answers to common questions about the new No Child Left Behind Act.

No Child Left Behind User Guide

This guide provides user-friendly information on NCLB that parents and communities can understand and use.  This guide highlights key aspects of the NCLB law in user-friendly language helping parents and community use NCLB for advocacy.

No Child Left Behind Fact Sheets

These quick easy one page fact sheets provide vital information on key provisions of NCLB.

Primary Progress, Secondary Challenge

This report examines state assessment results in reading and math between 2003 and 2005 and finds that progress in raising achievement and closing gaps continues to be strongest in the elementary grades. 

Measured Progress

This report documents that student achievement in reading and math is rising in the elementary grades in most states, and achievement gaps are narrowing, but in many places, the pace of these gains must accelerate dramatically if all students are to meet state standards by 2014.

The ABCs of "AYP"

Raising Achievement for All Students -- A brief report detailing the basic principles and core requirements of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) - the accountability mechanism in No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This report is one in a series on implementing NCLB.

ABC's of AYP PowerPoint

Questions to Ask About NCLB 

Public reporting of school, district, and state data is one of the cornerstones of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This document lists the information the public is entitled to under NCLB.

What New “AYP” Information Tells Us About Schools, States, and Public Education

This report documents how AYP provides important new information about academic achievement in America’s public schools.  This year’s first-ever application of the AYP formula is providing the foundation for school improvement efforts in all 50 states by uncovering large achievement gaps, identifying schools that have made significant progress, and recognizing schools with high percentages of low-income and minority children meeting state proficiency benchmarks.

Implementing Key Teacher Quality Provisions

NCLB requires states to adopt minimum standards for who can be considered a “highly qualified” teacher, measure the extent to which the state provides such teachers to all students, and adopt goals and plans to ensure that all students are taught by qualified teachers.  This paper discusses the key teacher quality provisions in NCLB.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About Highly Qualified Teachers: New State Data

This report reveals that while some states made good faith efforts to report honest data, others fell far short.  A considerable number of states reported no teacher quality data at all, some states reported data that appears inconsistent, and many others failed to apply their own definitions of teacher quality before submitting their baseline data.  Consequently, the data provides a distorted picture of where states stand now, and what progress needs to be made.

In Need of Improvement: Ten Ways the U.S. Department of Education Has Failed to Live Up to Its Teacher Quality Commitments

A brief report criticizing the U.S. Department of Education for failing to make adequate progress implementing the crucial teacher quality provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject.

Technical Appendix

Interpret With Caution: The First State Title II Reports on the Quality of Teacher Preparation

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject, a practice known as out-of-field teaching.

TEACHER QUALITY

Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality
This report provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.

The Real Value of Teachers: Using New Information about Teacher Effectiveness to Close the Achievement Gap:

This report lays out an ambitious policy agenda, premised on an exhaustive review of the existing research on teacher effectiveness—often referred to as “value-added.”

Implementing Key Teacher Quality Provisions

NCLB requires states to adopt minimum standards for who can be considered a “highly qualified” teacher, measure the extent to which the state provides such teachers to all students, and adopt goals and plans to ensure that all students are taught by qualified teachers.  This paper discusses the key teacher quality provisions in NCLB.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About Highly Qualified Teachers: New State Data

This report reveals that while some states made good faith efforts to report honest data, others fell far short.  A considerable number of states reported no teacher quality data at all, some states reported data that appears inconsistent, and many others failed to apply their own definitions of teacher quality before submitting their baseline data.  Consequently, the data provides a distorted picture of where states stand now, and what progress needs to be made.

In Need of Improvement: Ten Ways the U.S. Department of Education Has Failed to Live Up to Its Teacher Quality Commitments

A brief report criticizing the U.S. Department of Education for failing to make adequate progress implementing the crucial teacher quality provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject.

Technical Appendix

Interpret With Caution: The First State Title II Reports on the Quality of Teacher Preparation

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject, a practice known as out-of-field teaching.

Good Teaching Matters: How Well-Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap

This report marshals findings from several recent large-scale studies of student achievement to argue that policy makers hoping to boost student achievement must attend, first and foremost, to issues of teacher quality - the quality of teacher preparation, recruitment, licensure, hiring, assignment and ongoing professional development.

Honor in the Boxcar: Equalizing Teacher Quality

Not Good Enough: A Content Analysis of Teacher Licensing Examinations

This report shows that many states grant teaching licenses without requiring that individuals demonstrate knowledge of the subject area that they intend to teach.

HIGH SCHOOL

Primary Progress, Secondary Challenge

This report examines state assessment results in reading and math between 2003 and 2005 and finds that progress in raising achievement and closing gaps continues to be strongest in the elementary grades.

Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground: How Some High Schools Accelerate Learning for Struggling Students
This report is the result of a careful, on-the-ground study into the practices of public high schools that serve high concentrations of either low-income or minority children and have a strong track record accelerating learning for students who enter high school below grade level. This study compares and contrasts the practices of these high-impact schools with similar high schools that have only an average impact on student performance.

Technical Appendix

The Power to Change: High Schools that Help All Students Achieve

This report chronicles the stories of three very different high schools that are getting strong results for minority students and students from low-income families. The report demonstrates clearly that some high schools are succeeding, even under challenging circumstances.

Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose
This Education Trust report highlights the inaccurate and unreliable way states calculate and report high school graduation rates and also rebukes the U.S. Department of Education for failing to exert leadership by demanding that states get honest about their graduation statistics.

On Course for Success
The Education Trust along with the ACT collaborated to write On Course for Success which provides examples of model high school courses that prepare students for the rigors of college and ultimately the work force.

Stalled in Secondary

This report provides readers with data that shows three years after the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, student achievement in secondary schools is lagging, and too few states are narrowing achievement gaps.

A New Core Curriculum For All: Aiming High For Other People's Children

This report findings from several recent large-scale economic and education studies to argue that educators and policymakers working to ensure that all students are prepared for success in work and in college must attend, first and foremost, to ensuring that students take the kinds of rigorous courses that research makes clear are necessary for such success.

All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching

This report offers the first available state-by-state analysis of the newest federal data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without a major or minor in the subject.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About High School Graduation: New State Data

This report highlights the need for states to better report their high school graduation data.  Ultimately, this data should result in greater awareness of how many students, particularly low-income and minority students, make it through high school.  A state-by-state analysis of graduation rates in all 50 states demonstrates that while some states seem to have seized this opportunity to provide an honest picture of high school graduation among their young people, many other states were lax in reporting complete and useful data. 

Ticket to Nowhere: The Gap Between Leaving High School and Entering College and High-Performance Jobs

This report documents significant gaps between the course and testing requirements for high school graduation and those for admission and placement in college.

Youth at the Crossroads: Facing High School and Beyond

HIGHER EDUCATION

Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equity in the Nation’s Premier Public Universities

This report sharply criticizes most flagship universities in each of the 50 states for limiting access to minority students.

Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities

This report sharply criticizes trends in federal, state, and college practices that discourage low-income and minority students from enrolling and graduating from college.

One Step from the Finish Line: Higher College-Graduation Rates are Within Our Reach

This report challenges the conventional wisdom about college-graduation rates by highlighting the strategies of some successful colleges and universities.

Choosing To Improve: Voices from Colleges and Universities with Better Graduation Rates

Offers a more detailed examination of the practices of these schools and outlines a growing body of research that tells us that what schools do matters a great deal -- from their efforts to keep new students engaged to their use of data to uncover obstacles to completion.

A Matter of Degrees
A new analysis reveals deep problems in the graduation rates at 4-year colleges and universities, but finds that some institutions do a much better job graduating some students than others.

FUNDING

The Funding Gap
This 2008 report documents continued injustice in state education funding patterns and for the first time shows how school districts serving high percentages of English Language Learners are shortchanged.

Technical Appendix
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The Funding Gap
This 2006 report documents the fact that poorer states receive less in education funding, while poorer districts within states receive lower funding, and that poorer schools within districts are under-funded.

Technical Appendix

The Funding Gap

This 2005 report documents the fact that, in most states, school districts attended by poor and minority children receive far less money than the districts that serve White and more affluent children.

Technical Appendix

The Funding Gap

This 2004 report documents how most states continue to shortchange poor and minority students by failing to fairly fund the schools they attend.

Technical Appendix

The Funding Gap

This 2003 study reveals that, in most states, school districts that educate the greatest number of low-income and minority students receive substantially less state and local money per student than districts with the fewest low-income and minority students.

Technical Appendix

The Funding Gap

This 2002 report documents large funding gaps between high- and low-poverty and minority districts in many states.

Technical Appendix  

The Other Gap: Poor Students Receive Fewer Dollars Gap

The first Funding Gap report, this analysis of state and local education dollars reveals substantial funding inequities in most states. Education Trust Data Bulletin. 3 pages.

EDUCATION WATCH STATE AND NATIONAL DATA

Education Watch State Summaries

Part of the Education Watch series, these NAEP Data Tables allow for easy state-to-state comparisons of scale scores for different groups of students. They include tables that look at student achievement and gap trends over time. 

Education Watch State NAEP Tables

Part of the Education Watch series, this report uses National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data to show which states are making the largest gains with minority students, which states are making progress moving students to higher levels of proficiency, and provides easy-to-read charts showing the progress each state needs to make to close the achievement gap.

African American Achievement in America

This brief two-pager documents the current status of African American Achievement in America, High-Performing Schools, and ways communities can help close the achievement gap.

Latino Achievement in America

This brief two-pager and PowerPoint documents the current status of Latino Achievement in America, High-Performing Schools, and ways communities can help close the achievement gap.

En Español

CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT

Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground: How Some High Schools Accelerate Learning for Struggling Students
This report is the result of a careful, on-the-ground study into the practices of public high schools that serve high concentrations of either low-income or minority children and have a strong track record accelerating learning for students who enter high school below grade level. This study compares and contrasts the practices of these high-impact schools with similar high schools that have only an average impact on student performance.

Technical Appendix

On Course for Success
The Education Trust along with the ACT collaborated to write On Course for Success which provides examples of model high school courses that prepare students for the rigors of college and ultimately the work force.

A New Core Curriculum For All: Aiming High For Other People's Children

This report findings from several recent large-scale economic and education studies to argue that educators and policymakers working to ensure that all students are prepared for success in work and in college must attend, first and foremost, to ensuring that students take the kinds of rigorous courses that research makes clear are necessary for such success.

Add It Up: Mathematics Education in the U.S. Does Not Compute

This report marshals findings from several large-scale studies of mathematics achievement – both national and international – to argue that improving mathematics achievement in the United States will require a coordinated K-16 approach involving both K-12 and higher education.

Ticket to Nowhere: The Gap Between Leaving High School and Entering College and High-Performance Jobs

This report documents significant gaps between the course and testing requirements for high school graduation and those for admission and placement in college.

New Frontiers for A New Century: A National Overview

Thinking K-16, Spring 2001. 24 pages.

Learning in Overdrive

Designing Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Standards 

This manual was written for educators who want to bring standards into their classrooms but are unsure of where to begin.

Smart Start II: Why Standards Matter

Education Trust staffers, return to the subject of elementary education in this update of their 1991 best-seller, Smart Start.

Shifting Gears: Standards, Assessments, Curriculum and Instruction

Shifting Gears: Standards, Assessments, Curriculum and Instruction 

Education Trust staffer, Eleanor Dougherty, offers practical hands-on advice to help educators align practice to standards.

Front End Alignment

This manual explains how to carry out standards-based school reform in a process involving teachers, higher education faculty, parents and business representatives.

Real Results, Remaining Challenges: The Story of Texas Education Reform:

For the Business Roundtable, Washington DC.

Education reform in Texas has attracted both fans and critics. In this report for the Business Roundtable, The Education Trust looks at the data to help readers separate fact from fiction about the effect of Texas’s policies on raising student achievement and closing gaps between groups of students.

Creating an Appetite for Change: Leaders' Perspectives on Promoting K-16 Reform Through Community Collaboration

Policy Studies Associates, Inc., Washington D.C., 2000. 28 pages.