No Child Left Behind is a partially funded federal mandate that requires standardized testing of all students in U.S. public schools.

NCLB requires absolute level performance
-All schools have 12 years for their students to reach a certain proficiency level
-Academic growth is not an issue, just proficiency level
-How do states set this proficiency level?

Starting with 2002 (year 0), each state looks at all public schools within that state, and rates them from the highest proficiency to the lowest proficieny. The school that falls at the 20th percentile is the marking school for year 1, or the 2003 school year. All schools within that state must score at or below the proficiency of the 20th percentile school in order to not be considered failing.
 
______100%
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|_____20%
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Almost automatically, all schools below the 20th percentile fail for year 1.

According to NCLB, students in all U.S. schools must be considered proficient by the year 12. This correlates to the year 2014. This means that, according to the chart above, all schools must at least be at the 100th percentile by 2014. This is a daunting, and quite possibly impossible, task.

 

 

Schools with students that are not considered proficient are considered failing schools. This can be for individual schools or entire districts.

The following are the consequences for school failure:

After 2 years of consecutive school failure:
- Schools must submit an improvement plan
- Students are given the option to change schools within the district, if there is another school to switch to. If they choose to change schools, individual student Title I funding goes with them to the new school.

After 3 years of consecutive school failure:
- Schools must provice after school programs, such as tutoring, which must be free for students of low socio-economic status
- Students are given the option to change schools

After 4 years of consecutive school failure:
- School must change their course of action, such as changing their curriculum
- Students are given the option to change schools

After 5 years of consecutive school failure:
- The school must be completely restructured, with new staff, if it would like to remain a public school
- The school can be turned in to a charter school. If this option is chosen, the charter school may keep the former public school's staff
- The school can be turned over to a company to run it as a private school

After 6 years of consecutive school failure:
- Our federal government has no plans for that.

**Please note: All consequences are unfunded, even though NCLB is a partially funded federal mandate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Information from this page was obtained from Professor Melissa Comber's Political Science 191 class at Allegheny College on September 27, 2005.