Learning from Roosevelt: No Child Left Behind and the Art of State Takeover

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2005
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
When President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation into law on January 8, 2002, he fundamentally altered the federal government’s role in America’s public schools. By mandating state testing for grades three through eight in math and reading, the Department of Education fashioned a common (if controversial) barometer for ranking schools. These rankings are crucial, especially for schools that receive federal money under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Title I schools constitute roughly 55 percent of the national system). For one thing, Title I grant money is now dependent on states’ annual school “report cards” that rate schools based on test scores. But even more crucially, schools that fail to show progress (as determined by each state’s particular system parameters) go through a federally mandated “action plan” intended to reorganize failing schools’ bureaucracies. Though federal contribution to the funding of Title I schools is nothing new, nationally enforced reorganization of school administrations adds a major, unprecedented wrinkle to the country’s educational organism.
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