Assessment Policy and Politics of Information

No Child Left Behind POlicy

This article
Focus on current political attention to No Child Left Behind Assessment Policy (NCLB) And the degree to which political discourse analysis illuminates the implementation of the policy It also provides a snapshot of a dynamic set of political trends that impacting assessment policy

No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

Federal efforts to remedy persistent gaps in student achievement results in comparisons among majority student performance and group of minority, low income, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Evidence of lower performance for this group were captured under National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

 Since 1969 National Centre for Education Statistic (NCES) administered NAEP as a nationally representative test of student achievement. Late 1990s political discourse about federal allocations to elementary and secondary schools focused on NAEP results and remedies to addresss gaps using the ESEA or also known as Improving Americas School Act.

 1994 The existing version of ESEA required that the states establish curriculum standards in academic subject and assessment and accountability system by 2001. Several states were not ready to implement standard-based assessment and accountability system by 2000-2001 school year so the reauthorization was attached more to four students group with historically lower achievement.

 When more attention given to these groups, the reauthorization of ESEA in 2001, become known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act

NCLB
Mandates that states have an accountability system that includes annual assessment of state-set standards in math, reading and science, grades 3 through 8 and continued testing in those subjects at the secondary level.

 States also needed to define accountability through indicators of Adequate Yearly Progress for four groups of students for whom achievement exhibited historical lags. The provisions for AYP depend on connections among assessment, standards and accountability calculations.

Issues
As a consequence of NCLB, some argue that standards have dropped in those states that had adopted educational accountability system prior to NCLB Also, the distinction between curriculum standards and performance standards seems obscure even to some professional educators, much less to students, their parent or the general public AYP requirement also added complexity to states accountability and assessment system

 Policy makers and implementers turn to experts for insight but historically, the general public ignores expert advices Some of this public suspicion or ignorance of expert advice stems from complexity. In turn the complexity of decision conditions will shape experts advice politically. Using political discourse analysis permits insight into the degree to which assessment expertise engage NCLBs political discourse.

Method
Many method supports analysis of political discourse. The most direct form is using media content analysis, focuses on public media associated with the social construction of political agenda. Sources from Education Week, LexisNexis and Washington Post were used

Result Summary
The political discourse reveal by this analysis of selected newsprint media focus on NCLB assessment policy revealed dominance of the discourse by political and professional elites. Only 10% of quotes and attributions are from the assessment expert. Only in a rare instance that assessment experts promoted policy direction such as expansion of accountability models and formative and summative testing

The End