No Child Left Behind: DOE Releases Common-Sense Principles for Educators

In April 2005, Secretary Spellings announced a New Path for the No Child Left Behind Act—a set of common-sense principles and approaches to guide states as they measure their progress in meeting the law's important "bright line" goals. These goals include assessing all students in grades 3-8 and once in high school every year, breaking down results by student subgroup to help close the achievement gap, improving teacher quality, and informing parents of their options in a timely manner. Above all, they must lead to all students achieving at grade level or better in reading and mathematics by 2014.

The bright line principles of NCLB are as follows:

1. Ensure that all students are proficient by 2014 and set annual goals to ensure that the achievement gap is closing for all groups of students;
2. Set expectations for annual achievement based on meeting grade-level proficiency, not on student background or school characteristics;
3. Hold schools accountable for student achievement in reading / language arts and mathematics;
4. Ensure that all students in tested grades are included in the assessment and accountability system, hold schools and districts accountable for the performance of each student subgroup, and include all schools and districts;
5. Include assessments in each of grades 3-8 and in high school for both reading/language arts and mathematics and ensure that they have been operational for more than one year and receive approval through the NCLB peer review process for the 2005-06 school year. The assessment system must also produce comparable results from grade to grade and year to year;
6. Track student progress as part of the state data system; and
7. Include student participation rates and student achievement on a separate academic indicator in the state accountability system.

The NCLB results released in August by the Department of Education have led some educators to question whether the goal of having every child proficient in math by 2014 is realistic. The list of schools that failed to meet "adequate yearly progress" goals for 2007 showed numerous schools falling short of their testing targets.

Fortunately there are teaching and learning tools available in the market to help all learners have multiple opportunities in and out of the classroom to become proficient in reading, language arts, and mathematics.

PLATO Learning offers solutions designed specifically to support student learning, as well as to help equip the classroom teacher with best-practice techniques for presenting core concepts. For more information about PLATO Learning K–12 instructional solutions, visit www.plato.com.

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