NCLB Research Reports

US Government Accountability Office
Additional Assistance and Research on Effective Strategies Would Help Small Rural Districts
September 2004
This report looks at the impact of NCLB on rural school districts. What they found is that rural school districts are having a harder time offering the resources available to students and teachers. Students do not have easy access to libraries and internet and there are not the local resources to train teachers. The US Government Accountability Office recommends that more special assistance needs to be provided for rural school districts to help compensate for the lack local resources that are already provided in an urban area.

No Child Left Behind Act: Education Could Do More to Help States Better Define Graduation Rates and Improve Knowledge about Intervention Strategies
September 2005
Part of NCLB is to track graduation rates per state; the difficulty is that not all states calculate their graduation rates using the same methods. This report looks at the different methods used to determine graduation rates. It also looks at the accuracy of the methods in different states and the issue of state raising their graduation rates to better their average. By looking at all of these issues the US Accountability Office has a better understanding of a working method for calculation.