Introduction

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was passed with great fanfare as an attempt to impose “a results-based accountability regime on public schools across the land” (Finn and Hess, 2004, 35). The law links the use of mandated tests to measure student progress in reading, math and science, coupled with consequences for schools and states that do not progress on these tests, to federal financial support for education in the states. Students attending consistently underperforming schools will be offered the choice to attend other more successful schools. The ultimate goal of the law is to close the achievement gap between children in all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups in reading, math and science. All students must be proficient in these areas by 2014. In short, it attempts to address issues surrounding different academic achievement levels prevalent in different social groups. It attempts to decrease stratification between groups.

If NCLB is designed to address academic stratification between students as its proponents imply, one can assume that all parts of the law will be dedicated toward reducing stratification between students. But the devil is often in the details. The law focuses solely on the academic purposes of schooling, ignoring the social and cultural purposes schools serve. Further, some aspects of the law, particularly mandated testing and school choice, may serve to heighten the level of social stratification between students. In other words, NCLB may have unintended, negative consequences beyond its stated goal of ensuring students’ academic development. It may fail to prepare children for the world they will face after school and it may increase stratification between groups.

The idea that American education increases stratification is not new. Collins (2000) for example, speaking from a conflict theory perspective, claimed that education serves to place people in particular job fields. Employers use educational attainment as a measure of potential employees’ motivation and social experience. Education can therefore be used as a tool to prevent or enable social mobility. Bowles and Gintis (2000) were also critical of the role education plays in social stratification. Schools do “…not add to or subtract from the overall degree of inequality and repressive personal development… (the school) serves to perpetuate the social relationships of economic life through which these patterns are set” (118). Education is a tool society uses to maintain current levels of stratification.

The Purpose of Schooling

NCLB is the culmination of a reform movement toward greater accountability in education espoused particularly by Neoconservatives (Neocons). Berliner and Biddle (2000) described the central ideas of Neoconservative educational theory, most of which are embodied in the law. For example, Neocons believe that schools have lost focus on instructing students in basic academic subjects, including reading and math, as they have focused on peripheral issues. To address that problem, Neocons advocate recommitting schools to academic excellence and instruction in basic skills. Further, they believe that schools should provide objective evidence of their accomplishments. NCLB addresses these concerns by focusing schools’ efforts on basic skills and ensuring schools provide objective evidence of their progress through testing students in grades 3-8 in reading, math, and science. The purpose of education, according to the Neocons, is simply to ensure students have the skills they will need to contribute to the economy. Hard working students will succeed, while those falling behind must be given assistance. NCLB is designed to ensure the same thing. President George W. Bush stated this most clearly when commenting on NLCB. He claimed “We need a new way of thinking. We must go back to the fundamentals of early reading and regular testing, local control, and accountability for results, clear incentives for excellence and clear consequences for failure…” (Gamoran, 2001, 148).

Turner (2000) provided a basis for the Neocon’s view of education, and ultimately NCLB, by describing the American education system as a contest mobility system in which elite social status can be obtained through an individual’s efforts. Education is like a contest in which many people compete for the prize of credentials, the human capital allowing access to higher social status and employment. NCLB focuses solely on those cognitive skills, the human capital, students acquire in school while ignoring students’ other needs, including the social and cultural capital individuals require to succeed.

By focusing solely on the academic skills deemed necessary for success, NCLB ignores other skills students need to succeed later in life. Reich (2000) believed that American children should be education as symbolic analysts. That is, to compete in the new economy, Americans require skills in abstraction, system thinking, experimentation, and collaboration. They must be able to discover patterns and meanings, to see the connections between seemingly unrelated areas, to try out new ideas and methods, and to work with people from a variety of backgrounds. NCLB does not provide for developing these or any other skills aside from those in reading, math, and science.

Bowles and Gintis (2002) argued that schools serve an important socialization function, one not addressed by NCLB. In their words, “schools prepare people for adult work rules by socializing people to function well and without complaint in the hierarchical structure of the modern corporation” (1). In other words, schools teach students how to be workers. Cognitive development like that NCLB measures is just one goal of education. To support this assertion, they review a variety of surveys asking employers what skills they look for in employees. Not surprisingly, the surveys show that non-cognitive skills, such as attitudes and work habits lead the list of desirable attributes. By focusing solely on reading, math, and science, on cognitive skills, NCLB ignores the primary attributes employers look for in workers.

The Impact of Testing on Stratification

NCLB requires schools receiving federal funds to test all children in grades three through eight in the areas of reading and math. Science will be added to the testing regime in the 2007-2008 school year. Test results are used to determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress toward the 2014 deadline. While students are not penalized for their performance on these tests, they may be offered additional academic support based on poor results.

Examining the effects of externally mandated testing on course selection, Schiller and Muller (2003) found that extensive testing requirements in high schools, like that required by NCLB in grade schools, increased differences in course taking patterns among students based on socioeconomic differences. Students from lower socioeconomic groups were less likely to take higher-level mathematics courses in high school. NCLB’s extensive testing might have a similar impact on students in grade schools by discouraging student interest in particular subjects.

If all students must pass the same tests in grades three through eight, schools will have to begin teaching all students a common core of material to succeed on those tests. All students will require the same opportunities to learn. In a review of academic tracking practices at 25 different middle and secondary schools, Oakes (2000) found that students from minority groups and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to be given the opportunity to learn than white students and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. The former are more likely to be enrolled in lower track classes. Teachers in these courses have low expectations for students’ success and teach lower level academic skills than taught in higher track classes. If all students must learn the same material, as NCLB implies, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may be at a disadvantage because they are not given the same opportunities to learn as other students and thereby be further stratified due to their poor academic performance.

Gamoran and Mare (1989) drew a similar conclusion, finding that tracking is responsible for an increased gap in academic achievement between high socioeconomic status students and low. However, in reviewing data from the High School and Beyond survey, they qualified that conclusion by claiming that tracking may compensate black students and girls for initial disadvantages they bring to the academic setting. “In short, current tracking practices produce less inequality between otherwise similar blacks and nonblacks and males and females than would occur if students were randomly assigned to tracks…” (1177).

Research on the direct impact of testing elementary school students, as NCLB requires, on stratification is not available. However, research on the impact of high-stakes testing for older students may shed some light on the topic. Evidence on the impact of high-stakes testing on stratification in these studies is mixed. Muller and Schiller (2000) concluded that policies linking students’ performance on tests to consequences for schools, rather than students, are related to greater socioeconomic stratification. Studying the impact of such tests on students’ high school graduation and higher-level math course taking practices, they found that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in states linking testing to consequences for schools rather than students were less likely to graduate and take higher-level mathematics courses than students in other states. Schiller and Muller (2000) found that testing systems that link consequences for poor performance to students rather than schools weakened the relationship between teachers’ low expectation for student success and high school graduation. Although their studies examined testing’s impact on secondary-school students, the testing system they describe as linked to the negative impact reflects the testing regime NCLB prescribes for grades 3-8. One can assume that linking student performance on the grades 3-8 tests only to consequences for schools, rather than students, may also increase stratification at the elementary level.

There is evidence that high-stakes testing, like that required by NCLB, does not have negative effects on student outcomes. Carnoy and Loeb (2002), studying the impact of accountability on student progress, found that states using high-stakes testing to measure student progress had greater gains on the National Association of Educational Progress (NEAP) 8^th grade math test than other states. Gains on the NAEP 4^th grade math test were not as significant in these states as on the 8^th grade test, but black students in particular saw significantly greater gains on the 4^th grade math test in high accountability states than in other states.

The assumption that all students can learn a common core of material and be expected to be proficient in that material is implicit in NCLB. McPartland and Schneider (1996) claim that a transition to a system like this must confront certain sociological issues. For example, not all students come to school ready to learn at the same level. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds often face particularly large academic deficits compared to their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. These authors advocate that measures of student achievement be based not just on reaching curricular standards, but on annual academic growth and progress. Judging student achievement solely by scores on standardized tests, as NCLB mandates, will put less able students at a disadvantage by not showing the true range of their academic growth.

School Choice and Stratification

Another component of NCLB to be considered is school choice. The law dictates that schools failing to make adequate yearly progress toward the 2014 goal in two consecutive years must offer students the choice of attending another public or charter school. Several writers cite increased stratification as a consequence of school choice, a consequence not addressed in NCLB. Astin (1992), Saporito (2003), Renzulli and Evans (2005), and LaCour (2002) each argue that school choice will increase stratification along racial and/or class lines.

Astin (1992) argues that school choice will redistribute students according to their levels of achievement. NCLB requires schools to offer choices to students but the law does not require schools of choice to accept all students who want to make such a choice. Schools can be selective in whom they admit under choice programs. Astin states that this selectivity will allow schools of choice to accept the most academically successful students they can. “Such students, in turn, tend to come from the wealthiest, best educated, and most advantaged families. The net effect of differential selectivity is thus to stratify schools according to the abilities and socioeconomic status of their students” (256). In other words, school choice programs may serve to increase stratification between students of different economic and academic backgrounds.

Saporito (2003) reviewed data from magnet school applications in Philadelphia PA, a system offering extensive school choice options, to examine changes in racial segregation patterns. When offered the option to remain in neighborhood schools or send their children to magnet schools, he claims white families were averse to sending their children to schools where they would be exposed to students of other races. The tendency of white families to avoid schools with high levels of nonwhites could not be explained by other schools characteristics, such as test schools or student safety concerns. In this case, the school choice program increased stratification along racial and economic lines. Renzulli and Evans (2005) draw a similar conclusion in a study comparing enrollment patterns in over 800 charter schools nationwide with enrollment patterns in traditional public schools located in the same communities as those charter schools. They find that as the level of racial integration in school district increases, the percentage of white students choosing to attend charter schools increases as well. When offered the choice, white students moved out of integrated schools into primarily white charter schools. In both these cases, school choice programs increased social and racial stratification in schools.

Blau and her colleagues (2003) argue the self-segregation described above puts white students at a greater disadvantage than other children. Since white students are less likely to attend schools with students from other races than nonwhite students, they are less prepared to compete in the new economy which demands not just academic skills, but intercultural skills . Further, since whites operate from a liberal point of view in which they expect others to live up to their expectations, they are less able to see others’ point of view. Nonwhites are more likely to live in a multicultural world than whites and to develop skills that will help them succeed in the new economy.

Approaching the question of school choice from an economic perspective, LaCour (2002) claimed that implementing a school choice program, particularly one based on vouchers, would transform education into a market driven service. LaCour sees market driven choice as only benefiting higher socioeconomic level families already able to send their children to private school as vouchers do not cover the entire cost of attendance at a private school. Students eligible for vouchers, but unable to pay the difference between the voucher’s value and the school’s tuition will be unable to leave their failing public schools. NCLB calls for vouchers to be issued to students when they require additional academic support that their school of origin cannot supply. While the vouchers LaCour discusses and those NCLB mandates serve different purposes, the former to pay tuition to private schools and the later to pay for supplemental academic services, a similar result may occur. Just as LaCour found that vouchers did not pay the entire cost of tuition at all private schools, NCLB’s vouchers may not pay the entire cost of the desired supplemental services. Families with greater financial resources will be more able to utilize NCLB’s vouchers to support their children than those with limited resources by adding to the value of the voucher.

Coleman (1992) disagreed that choice will increase stratification in schools. He believed “The movement toward choice is the first step in a movement toward getting the incentives right in education…” (260). The current system of school enrollment based solely on place of residence gives schools no incentive to improve and families no incentives to demand that improvement. The absence of choice in the current system does not eliminate stratification. Rather, it creates stratification based on race and financial resources. School choice programs would shift the basis of stratification to performance and behavior, forcing schools to improve and students to meet higher demands. Unfortunately, Coleman offers no data in his commentary on choice to support his conclusions.

Conclusion

By addressing only students’ cognitive development, their ability to read, compute, and understand scientific principles, NCLB ignores education’s other purposes and may fail to fully prepare students for life after high school graduation. Granted, the stated purpose of the law is not to prepare students for careers, but an assumed goal of education in general is to do just that.

Further, if the goal of the No Child Left Behind act is to combat unequal educational achievement between various groups of students, to decrease stratification between groups of children, two of its component parts may run contrary to that goal. While the evidence is not conclusive, studies have indicated that both high-stakes testing and school choice do as much to increase stratification, both along academic and socioeconomic lines, as they do to combat those issues.

No Child Left Behind will soon be reevaluated and presumably renewed. Federal legislators would be wise to more fully examine the purpose for and goals of education in America prior to reauthorizing the law. Changes can be made to ensure students’ needs are more fully met and issues like stratification are addressed in a new version of the law.

Reference List

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