Driving change: a progress report on urban school districts' efforts to execute the mandates of No Child Left Behind

Education Next, Summer, 2004 by Michael Casserly

The leadership of America's large urban school systems supported the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as the legislation was heading to the House and Senate floors because of its intent to improve performance and close achievement gaps. But at the same time city leaders were wary, for the bill contained something seldom seen in federal education law: sanctions. Public schools that did not make "adequate yearly progress" faced an escalating set of consequences.

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For starters, students in schools with two consecutive years of inadequate gains in their test scores must be offered the opportunity to transfer to another public school. After three consecutive years of inadequate gains, schools must also provide their students with "supplemental services," such as after-school tutoring. Two later stages of sanctions, "corrective action" and "restructuring," apply to schools that have not made adequate progress for several consecutive years. At these stages, the consequences can range from firing staff to closing down the school.

These accountability measures are intended to spur higher academic performance and to provide children in underper-forming schools with better opportunities. The measures are also punitive in the sense that schools and school districts face both additional administrative burdens and increased expenses if they do not make sufficient progress.

Local school districts are two years into the implementation of the law, enough time to start asking how they are doing. To investigate their progress, the Council of the Great City Schools conducted a survey of its 60 member urban school districts and requested data on two of the measure's accountability provisions: choice and supplemental services. Results from the 46 districts that responded as of November 2003 suggest that urban districts are implementing the requirements in these two areas, but are confronting a number of challenges as they do so.

Varying Results

During the 2003-04 school year, 498 schools in the 46 cities that participated in the survey were required to offer their students the opportunity to switch to a higher-performing school because of two consecutive years of inadequate progress. Another 510 schools were required to provide their students with supplemental services. Finally, 471 schools were identified for corrective action and 215 for restructuring. Altogether, schools that were at one of the various stages of school improvement composed 21 percent of all schools and about a third of all Title I schools in these cities. Among these 46 cities, eight cities were in "district improvement" status because their schools had not made satisfactory progress systemwide.

The number of schools in various stages of school improvement varied dramatically from city to city. For instance, Philadelphia has 194 of its public schools, about 74 percent, in one stage of sanctions or another. Likewise, more than half the schools in Chicago and Buffalo are in various stages of the school improvement process. By contrast, cities like Austin and Dallas have no schools being sanctioned.

For the most part, these disparities do not reflect genuine differences in student learning. For example, schoolchildren in Boston and San Diego perform similarly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, yet 31 percent of Boston's schools are in the improvement process, compared with just 18 percent of San Diego's. Instead, the disparities are the result of Congress's decision to let the states define their own standards of performance.

Public School Choice

The choice provision of No Child Left Behind is proving to be one of the most difficult parts of the law for urban schools to implement. Participation rates are low, though increasing somewhat. Some 1.2 million students in these cities were eligible to transfer to another public school during the 2003-04 school year; 44,000 requested a transfer; and 17,900 actually moved (see Figure 1). Nonetheless, this was more than triple the number of transfers from the previous year.

City officials, community groups, and others suggest a variety of reasons why the number of transfers has been low so far. Some parents do not want their children taking lengthy bus trips or riding public transportation. Some parents prefer having their children close to home. Some received information about their children's eligibility and options too late to make a good decision. Some parents may not have gotten their first choice of school. Some do not consider the available options any better than their current situations. And some are frustrated by complicated application procedures. No one factor appears to explain the lack of movement.

The main method of communicating with parents was through the mail; all 41 districts that were required to offer transfers sent letters to parents informing them of their options. Twenty-two districts supplemented the mail with website information, newsletters, flyers, phone calls, parent and community meetings, advertisements, or media announcements.