Achievement Tradeoffs and No Child Left Behind

Abstract

Despite speculation that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001’s (NCLB) finely tuned attention to improving academic opportunities for traditionally low-performing students and student subgroups compromises educational opportunities of high-performing students, there is limited empirical evidence that NCLB actually inhibits the progress of high-performing students. Consequently, ideological predispositions have dominated public interest in distributional effects under NCLB. A Student X Subject general linear model with school and Year X Grade fixed effects is estimated to isolate whether a school, based on prior year’s performance, has targeted resources to (a) students in a failing subgroup, (b) students in a failing subject, and/or (c) students failing math on a failing subgroup in Idaho. There is strong evidence that NCLB’s threat of sanctions increased incentives for schools and school districts to elevate learning opportunities for traditionally low-performing students and student subgroups, but that the increased performance by traditionally low-performing students and student subgroups did not occur at the expense of traditionally high-performing students. It appears that Idaho’s response to NCLB is one of improved efficiency and not achievement tradeoffs, in that traditional public schools in the state did more with the same level and distribution of resources as in years past.