What “No Child Left Behind” Means For America’s Educators

Teaching has never been an easy profession, but these days it is harder than ever. We are asking our schools and teachers to educate all children to meet high standards. To meet our ambitious goal of giving all our youth a first-rate education, our system and our teaching need to change. President Bush’s plan gives teachers and schools the tools they need to improve their instruction and to help their students succeed.

At the heart of the President’s plan for our schools is a promise to raise standards for all children. The President’s plan requires annual tests for all children in grades three through eight in the basic subjects of reading and math. Finally, the President is committed to promoting the very best teaching programs, especially those that teach young children how to read.

Raising Standards, Lifting Children
Children tend to perform to meet the expectations of adults. If expectations are low, children can miss their true potential. When expectations are high, progress can be amazing. Teachers should challenge children to read well, do difficult math, and excel in all subjects.

Under President Bush’s plan, states will set high standards in the core subjects. Well-crafted and thoughtful standards will explain in plain language exactly what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of each grade. Setting clear expectations for what teachers should accomplish each year can prevent misunderstandings and recriminations that arise when teachers, principals, and parents start with different expectations.

Annual Testing: Learning What Works
To get truly useful information that allows teachers to identify individual students who need help, we must test every child every year.

Today’s state-of-the-art tests can help educators identify the specific learning problems that a student may be experiencing. Because these tests are directly linked to academic standards, we can find out whether students are learning what they need to learn. These new tests do not simply measure basic skills; they measure important content knowledge, too. Each state must design tests that match what children are expected to learn.

A good testing system that takes test data and breaks it down by student and classroom, as well as by school and by school district, can empower teachers to tailor their teaching to their students’ needs. With tests aligned to state standards, the testing system can be designed to identify and then to help the children who are in danger of being left behind. Another benefit of annual testing is that it allows us to identify successful schools. Thanks to annual tests that are linked to academic standards, we can look at the progress each student at each school makes each year. We can consider where students are starting, as well as where they end up, and we can identify and reward schools that are helping their students make the most progress.

Using Data to Improve Instruction
Communities with high standards and challenging tests have teachers and school leaders who use achievement scores to identify specific objectives their students are, or are not, mastering. Teachers in these communities can then focus on filling in the gaps. Teachers analyze test score results to identify their own strengths and weaknesses. Test score data can also help schools, as a whole, to improve.

Doing What Works: Evidence-Based Reading Instruction
Teaching children to read is the most important thing our schools do. Yet, for too long, schools have been embroiled in bitter debates about how to teach this most basic skill. In recent years, scientists have evaluated good reading instruction and curricula to determine how to teach reading skills most effectively. The researchers tell us that 95 percent of all children will learn to read if they are taught using:

• systematic and explicit instruction in phonics, decoding,
comprehension, and literature appreciation.
• daily exposure to a variety of texts, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as incentives to read independently and with others.
• vocabulary instruction that emphasizes the relationships among words and among word structure, origin, and meaning.
• instruction in comprehension that includes predicting outcomes, summarizing, clarifying, questioning, and visualizing.
• frequent opportunities to write.

These guidelines have proven effective in even the toughest of classrooms. Many students once considered “hard to teach” are now reading confidently.

U.S. Department of Education
Office of the Secretary
Back to School, Moving Forward
Washington, D.C., 20202
www.nclb.gov/