I plan on writing a bit more in-depth about my reaction to the CALDER conference on emerging findings about the efficacy of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) , but I didn’t want to go too long without a post here and thought I would throw up some initial reactions.
First off, I haven’t read any of the papers, we only saw the presentations by the authors. The papers will be made available in the coming weeks. This was a bit frustrating because without reading the papers it is often hard to give substantive feedback. I can report what the findings are, but I can’t really analyze how confident I am in the findings because I don’t know enough details about the data used and the methods used to estimate trends from that data.
The other important note from the conference was that there was no research done that either a) incorporated GIS to study the impact of NCLB on different geographic areas or b) highlighted the impact of NCLB on rural schools. I understand the pull of urban districts to researchers–they are conveniently located close to major research universities, it is easier to get a large n sample from them, they are often willing to allow researchers access. However, the fact remains that fifty percent of the schools that are affected by NCLB are not in urban areas. So, if we do a good job of understanding how NCLB affects urban districts we have (at best) solved half of the puzzle. As far as I could tell no one is exploring this fruitful area for more research.
Finally, I would say that the tone of the conference suggests that overall NCLB is doing some good. School performance (on standardized test scores) is slowly improving and more attention has been placed on the achievement gap than under previous legislation. However, if NCLB is the most effective program for achieving this is a question that remains to be answered. What could work better? What students should we focus on? How should we incentivize that focus? These and many other questions remain unanswered from the first wave of research into the subject.
The Urban Institute did a great job hosting the event. The food was nice, the conference ran smoothly, and overall I got a lot out of it. More on just what else I think soon–I just need some time to digest the meat of the conference and take a look at some of the papers.