Congress should rewrite No Child Left Behind to help schools improve, not punish them on Friday
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ter thirteen years, Congress appears poised to write a new law to replace the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The House is scheduled to vote on its version Friday, Feb 27. Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has held three hearings on the law and its leaders are negotiating to develop a bipartisan bill.
This legislation has sparked heated debate over issues such as the federal role in education, testing, and funding. But there has been little discussion about a core premise of NCLB: that schools should be accountable for student performance. All sides generally agree on that. Congress could advance school improvement substantially, though, if members look at accountability systems and encourage states to adopt data dashboards in place of the relatively simple measures of school performance states currently use.
Simply put, a data dashboard provides an array of information about school performance and practices, rather than a single number like a test score, to show whether a school is succeeding. This information enables educators to focus resources and attention on particular problems and, equally importantly, to monitor and address all issues that affect their own performance. Just as a driver fills up his tank before the gas gauge reaches “E” to keep the car functioning at its highest capacity, a school using a data dashboard can monitor school climate, say, and performance, and make improvements to ensure all students learn.
Related: The biggest losers in the No Child Left Behind rewrite
Data dashboards can help alleviate some of the shortcomings in accountability systems that have been in place in the wake of NCLB and the systems that states have implemented under waivers to that law. First, accountability systems tend to focus on a narrow range of indicators, principally test scores, and thus ignore factors that should be addressed to ensure all students learn what they need to succeed. And even in states that use multiple indicators, most combine them into an index or letter grade that masks problems rather than reveals them. For example, schools with low graduation rates still can earn high letter grades if an accountability system assigns little weight to graduation rates when compiling a school report card. With data dashboards, intervention would still be implemented when students, including those who are traditionally underserved, consistently demonstrate low achievement or graduation rates. But dashboards provide a more comprehensive view of what is happening within schools and allows educators and Congress should rewrite No Child Left Behind to help schools improve, not punish them on Friday - The Hechinger Report: