There is no doubt that the American public wants public schools to be accountable for the performance of all students. “Passing the buck cannot continue when it comes to our children,” a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, parent said. “There should be no reason why our children are graduating without the necessary skills to be productive members of society, and far too many are.”

The underpinning of accountability under NCLB is the disaggregation of data on the performance of certain groups of students—by income level, those with disabilities, limited English speakers, and racial/ethnic status. While the PEN survey indicated a majority endorsed the disaggregation of data (53 percent), educators are slightly more
in favor than non-educators. As an official of Chicago’s Community Renewal Society put it:
“ Probably the best thing NCLB has done is shed light on the fact that there are many schools that have labored under the misconception they’re the greatest places to be, when they’re actually not serving large sectors of their population.”

One problem that surfaced in the hearings, however, is the stigma attached to a group of
students seen as more responsible than others for a school's failure to meet its Adequate Yearly Progress goals. The group most often singled out is children with disabilities.

Parents of children with disabilities and their advocacy groups are often conflicted over the
testing requirements and the results revealed as part of a school’s disaggregated data report. They have been zealous about attaining inclusion for children with disabilities, and holding higher academic expectations for them. Such efforts may be threatened when children with disabilities must attain what most of those testifying described as “unreasonable” test scores. On one hand, parents support higher standards for their children. On the other, they find the new accountability policies to be, at times, inappropriate and unfair. Also, not only are the children and teachers demoralized, they fear being excluded—again. A Boston parent who works with the Federation for Children with Special Needs was unsure about the impact of NCLB. He welcomed the increased cooperation between regular and special education teachers, but he “cringed” at what might happen if he used the choice option to transfer his child to a higher performing school. He asked: “Will the leadership in a higher performing school really honor a school
choice request from a family from an underperforming school if the student has a disability? Will the students with disabilities be left behind at under-performing schools? Once enrolled in another school, will the teachers really welcome students with disabilities into the general curriculum?”

With the statistical prospect that few
schools in the whole country eventually will be able to meet their AYP goals, disaggregation
of data presents some problems not yet faced
by policymakers. Gretchen McDowell, representing the Illinois PTA, endorsed standards and tests aligned with them, but
she anticipated a dilemma ahead. “If the expectations for some groups seem
unrealistic to parents and the general public,” she testified at the Chicago hearing, “then the force of not meeting AYP will be lost. If
everyone is said to be failing because of a subgroup, even schools that the public understands to be succeeding with a vast majority of their students will pay less attention
to their AYP status.” A Buffalo, New York,
parent raised the prospect of another
dilemma. She lamented that the NCLB
testing policies were not being used to determine successful schools and practices
that could serve as models for struggling schools. If disaggregated data reporting ultimately will cause most schools to miss
AYP targets, “Where will the models come from?,” she asked.

While the use of test-based disaggregation
of data is important, much more troubling to most of those who testified is the overall dependence on test-based accountability
under NCLB.

State assessment systems have existed at
least as long as the minimal competency
testing of the 1970s. Also, more than
two-thirds of the states subjected themselves
to comparisons of achievement as participants
in the National Assessment of Educational Progress for more than a dozen years (all are required to do so now under NCLB). The 1994 ESEA revisions stimulated many states
to develop or revise assessment systems supposedly more aligned to their standards.

Still, the punitive consequences of testing results under NCLB shocked the public education system throughout the country. On the plus side, they probably stimulated the first national debate about assessment policies from a grassroots point of view—that of
students, parents, and communities. At the PEN hearings, people were taking an initial
step at influencing policy by reaching a consensus about what they do not want in an assessment system.

Students recognized the limitations of current tests easily. All students do not do their best on traditional tests, pointed out a Philadelphia high school student, who was accustomed himself to such tests as the SAT. He urged the use of portfolios as alternatives. A Los Angeles high school student supported testing, as did all the students, but a single test, he said, should not be used to indicate a school’s performance. The quality of the education at a school “also comes down to the kind of community services students do, their engagement in extra-curricular activities.” One of his fellow panel members added: “Some of my friends are really just amazing in what they can do with their time and how they manage it, but their test scores are just the opposite of what they can do.”

Parents also argued for more sophisticated assessments. A New York City parent who has formed a math education advocacy group said the assessments being used by the state for reading and math “need an utter overhaul. To talk about third through eighth grade test performance at this point…is meaningless. We can’t begin to glean from them what we need to in terms of student achievement.” A community witness in Pennsylvania contended that the country has experts who can develop tests that measure student progress in terms of writing samples, creativity, and problem solving. “Let’s use the
brains that we have as adults,” she said, “and create some effective measurements that will (produce) the kind of graduates we need….”

Many parents and community groups wanted test results to be used more for diagnosis—determining student and school weaknesses and strengths—and less as the basis for punitive actions. Even though there was strong support of accountability and having more data available, no one said schools were using the test information to change priorities or practice. If it was happening, it was invisible to them. If the data show low performance by race or economic status, “then let’s do something productive and positive with it,” said a San Antonio parent. Use the information to identify the problems instead of create wider disparity, she said. “Let’s not just say: ‘Oh. Okay. Well, you know, those Latino kids over here are not doing well, and they're not going to get any more funding unless they improve their scores’.”

A representative of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, as well as witnesses
in Massachusetts, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania, believed NCLB would be more
effective if it were used to stimulate local accountability and local assessments. Local
values are being left out of the NCLB process, said the Chicago lawyer. “If, for instance, a local community really values citizenship as something to be learned by the time children graduate, then that would be built into judging whether or not the schools were meeting their goals and functioning successfully,” she explained. Moreover, because of the tests used in Massachusetts, said a representative of the Boston Private Industry Council, “community engagement takes a back seat,” and many skills valued by employers, such
as critical thinking, are not being assessed.

Survey results showed that on average, educators and non-educators both feel that a single annual test cannot assess student body performance. This trend is mimicked with regard to the ability of such a test to assess individual student performance. The charts below show beliefs among all respondents (educator and non-educators) regarding administration of a single test:

A teacher in Brooklyn was assigned a
self-contained classroom of 32 eighth graders six
weeks before citywide exams, and told to teach exclusively test prep materials until the exams. “The principal, fearful that their status as a most improved school would disappear, blew common sense to the wind, forcing students and staff to engage in
meaningless repetition of facts for six hours a day in
the same room for six weeks,” a colleague reported. “
Not surprisingly, the school’s scores did not
dramatically improve.” A Philadelphia high school
student said the focus on testing and narrowing of the curriculum turned off students who already lacked
self-confidence as learners. Such school policies only made them feel worse, he said, especially when they were told that the test would determine their future. “
A lot of students weren’t coming to school,” he said,
“ and there was anarchy when it came to attendance at the test.”

This was the kind of story told over and over again,
mostly by students who saw opportunities for real learning subsumed by low-level drills. Students
reported an insidious process going on in their schools—intense test prep teaching that guarantees students will become disengaged from academic learning, so teachers and administrators respond with even more of the same. “The tests completely have
taken over the school,” observed a Columbus, Ohio, student, “but if you look deeply, students haven’t really learned anything. So, the school is failing, in a way.”
The testing mania, said a graduate of the Los Angeles schools, now a student at Georgetown University,“ is getting in the way of true teaching.”

Faced with an unacceptable number of schools not meeting AYP goals, some states have lowered their standards and/or taken full advantage of revised regulations to reduce the number of schools needing improvement. Any increase in schools meeting AYP
goals probably will be temporary because the rule changes are a one-time fix—and the progress targets
are getting tougher. Not as well publicized are effects
in classrooms and on policies that states were developing. A California teacher and parent from a rural area east of Sacramento said educational leaders in his home district realize that achieving 100 percent proficiency is “nonsensical.” They had been enthusiastic about the state’s accountability system and were working hard to meet its quality standards, until NCLB was implemented. “They could all see that they would never be able to have 100 percent of students proficient,” said the parent, “ and so now they focus on short-term results. They just want to make sure that this year things look a little better than they did last year.”

Teachers informed a businesswoman
from Sacramento, California, who had taught
a Junior Achievement program for five years which focused on hands-on learning and practice in teamwork, that there is no time for such things anymore. Project-based learning, teachers said, does not fit “ with the other stuff we have to do to make sure that the academics are met.” A fellow panelist and author of a book on parents' rights in California’s public schools has found that the only time the window is open for enrichment, applied learning, and parent contributions is a few weeks at the beginning and end of the school year. “Otherwise, it's just preparation for tests…They won’t let you in for anything.” A senior at Bedford (Ohio) High
School complained that “a lot of our classes have been turned into only test-oriented classes.”

Many parents believe the costs associated
with more testing undercut school
improvement plans and basic programs, even though the full impact of the cost of increased testing will not be known until the 2005-06 school year when testing in math and reading
in grades 3-8 becomes mandatory. Still, the NCLB environment is considered
responsible for some of the funding woes.“
We have suffered irreparable damage with
teacher loss, courses cut, crowded
classrooms, and lack of adequate supplies,” testified a western Massachusetts parent.

Students in several sites were upset that Advanced Placement and honors courses
had been sacrificed to focus on remedial work for low-performers. At almost every hearing, parents or advocates testified about the loss
of enrichment and other supports for gifted children because of the change in priorities.
A pediatrician testified that she was unable
to get diagnostic services for her dyslectic but gifted student patients because they were considered likely to do well on tests. Resources were diverted, instead, to more severely disabled children for test preparation.

Students who have dropped out or are barely hanging on—but have found a way to work toward high school graduation through alternative schools—feel vulnerable under NCLB. One of its accountability measures looks at the number of students who graduate from high school “on time.” Some alternative schools, which often give struggling students more time to finish, will have trouble meeting this requirement, as well as adequate
yearly progress goals applied to an enrollment that constantly turns over. No one was more eloquent on the issue than an alternative school student from San Antonio:

Even though the U.S. Department of Education has eased some regulations
on assessing children with disabilities
and English-language learners, the
basic requirements remain. Witnesses disagreed with them philosophically. An Erie, Pennsylvania, grandmother whose young granddaughter had to take a grade-level test instead of one aligned to her Individualized Education Plan pleaded with the hearing officers to understand what that means.“ Setting standards that are impossible for these children to achieve only sets them up for failure,” she said. “You can never know unless you have special challenged children how heartbreaking it is to watch them struggle to succeed.” She and witnesses in almost every state asked for alternative tests that encompass the goals in IEPs, which would allow students to be evaluated on the basis of individual progress. Also, the students should be allowed to fulfill state testing requirements using the same kinds of accommodations regularly available to them in classes.

The assessment of English language learners is equally inappropriate, according to the testimony.
Not only are the available tests inadequate, the
testing policies ignore what is best for the children.
A former teacher in Chicago explained that English-language learners are being assessed with tests normed on monolingualpopulations, and even if specially designed tests for these students are
used, they should be limited to diagnostic
evaluations and not applied to high-stakes decisions. Regular standardized tests in academic subjects actually assess learners’ abilities in the English-language, not what content they know, ignoring the possibility that they may have content knowledge in another language.

Hispanic parents and advocates for Hispanic
students often spoke proudly of language and
culture as being self-identifiers for students and families. For many, NCLB seems to have hastened efforts to minimize the importance of the family language and dim hopes for bilingualism in
education.“ We know from research that dual
language programs are the best bilingual programs
for all children and especially for the language
minority children,” said a San Antonio parent.
“ No Child Left Behind is running roughshod over
those programs. We're going to early exit
transitional programs, which we all know are the
worst thing that we can do to our language minority kids.”

Immigrant students are unfairly being held
responsible for not doing better academically and
are being pushed out of the school system, charged the director of the New York Immigration Coalition. Instead, it is the school system that has failed them. Because of the requirements, she explained, “they
are now being counseled as early as 10th grade that they are never going to make it and that they should just go and get a GED. Of course, there are no GED programs available to them. Guidance counselors are telling them to go and find a Spanish language GED program. It is a joke that any of these programs are actually available for them, even it they were an appropriate option.”