Over the past two years, the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) has made such extensive compromises in implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)that the law's legitimacy is in serious question. In response to growing state and local opposition to the law, political and professional criticisms of its requirements, and the…

This study offers systematic trend analyses of NAEP national and state-level public school fourth and eighth graders' reading and math achievement results during pre-NCLB (1990-2001) and post-NCLB (2002-2005) periods. It compares post-NCLB trends in reading and math achievement with pre-NCLB trends among different racial and socioeconomic groups…

Every year, across the country, a dangerously high percentage of students disproportionately poor and minority-disappear from the educational pipeline before graduating from high school. According to a study released by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (CRP) and the Urban Institute in 2004, only about 68% of all students nationally…

This policy brief provides information for practitioners and policymakers on how the NCLB requirements affect LEP students and their schools and explores some of the unintended consequences of the legislation. Although both Title I and Title III of NCLB apply to LEP students, this brief focuses on the accountability provisions outlined in Title I,…

A third of a century ago the schools of the South became the most integrated in the nation, a stunning reversal of a long history of educational apartheid written into the state laws and constitutions of the eleven states of the Confederacy and the six Border states, stretching from Oklahoma to Delaware, all of which had legally imposed de jure…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) teacher quality provisions recognize both the importance of teacher quality for improving student achievement and the unequal distribution of teachers across districts and schools. But the question of how to achieve the goal of a high quality teacher in every classroom is complicated because of the challenges of…

This report examines the changing nature of segregation and integration in a society that has now become far more profoundly multiracial than it was in the past and explores some of the connections between segregation by race, segregation by poverty, and unequal opportunity. It has several basic goals--to help people understand some of the…

This report examines a decade of resegregation from the time of the Supreme Court's 1991 "Dowell" decision, which authorized a return to neighborhood schools, even if that would create segregation, through the 2001-2002 school year. It goes beyond previous reports by Harvard's Civil Rights Project to study the impact of resegregation in…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) alters federal-state relations by expanding the federal role further into a primary function of state and local governments and raises questions about how federal, state, and local policies interact--that is, conflict or reinforce each other. Early indications suggest that states are differently…

This report examines how state policymakers designed their accountability systems to meet the NCLB Title I requirements and the implications of its provisions for schools with large numbers of low-income and minority students. The authors conducted their study in six states--Arizona, California, Illinois, New York, Virginia, and Georgia--which are…

Expanded schooling options for disadvantaged children is one of the four major principles of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), representing the theory that competition will produce better educational opportunities for disadvantaged students and improve the performance of low-performing schools. Under NCLB, school choice is the first in a series…

This report examines the implementation of No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) supplemental educational service provisions in eleven urban districts--Mesa Public Schools and Washington Elementary District Schools, AZ, Fresno Unified School District and Los Angeles Unified School District, CA, Chicago Public Schools, IL, Buffalo Public Schools and New…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is the most significant and controversial change in federal education policy since the federal government assumed a major role in American education almost four decades ago. In many ways, it is the most startling departure in federal educational policy in American history. It is hard to imagine that…

This document reports on the findings from the "No Child Left Behind: The Teacher's Voice" survey, which grew out of the national study on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Since there is much in NCLB that is aimed at teachers, the authors wanted to know what teachers think about the law and how they, and their schools, are…

In an increasingly competitive global economy, the consequences of dropping out of high school are devastating to individuals, communities and our national economy. At an absolute minimum, adults need a high school diploma if they are to have any reasonable opportunities to earn a living wage. A community where many parents are dropouts is…