In early January of 2002, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 into law after an amazingly short eight months of deliberation time in the House of Representatives. The NCLB Act was education reform legislation that endeavored to improve individual students\u2019 outcomes by means of setting very high goals and using state-wide standardization of testing to attain more clear-cut results. However, in its requirements of homogenized education, the NCLB Act is lacking in its consideration of the so-called \u201cachievement gaps\u201d in education, regarding race, income, and special education needs. The state of Connecticut provides a unique context in which to demonstrate how the NCLB Act exacerbated these achievement gaps.<\/p>\n
Average Yearly Progress\u23afAn Accurate Indication of Progress, or an Educational Divide? <\/strong><\/p>\n At the core of the NCLB Act was the concept of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), a binary statistical parameter which is an indication of a school\u2019s annual \u201cstatus\u201d: if its test scores were higher than those of the previous year, it \u201cmade the cut,\u201d so to speak, and made Adequate Yearly Progress. However, if its test scores are unimproved, it fails AYP standards. Schools that fail AYP for more than one year face federally mandated improvements which increase in severity as AYP failures accumulate, ranging from forced redevelopment plans to turning the school over to federal or private control.<\/p>\n In Connecticut, specifically in the Greater Hartford Region (GHR), educational disparities have always been thoroughly studied and combated. The GHR has long been a hotspot of educational negotiations, particularly given its turbulent history of school districting, stark suburbanization and white flight, and very clear concentrations of wealth. Richard Blumenthal, then the Attorney General of the state, has called Connecticut \u201cthe national leader in the effort to improve educational achievement, close achievement gaps, and increase accountability.\u201d To attain its schooling goals, the state developed the Connecticut Mastery Tests, which Blumenthal called \u201ca tool which has been strengthening educational quality and narrowing accomplishment disparities.\u201d<\/p>\n Please examine the two interactive maps below. The first map shows the each district\u2019s percentage of schools that are below \u201cproficient,\u201d a score set by the state\u2019s Department of Education after a careful consideration of Connecticut\u2019s demographics, teaching methods, and local curriculum at the end of the 1998-1999 school year. The second map shows the number of AYP failures in each district in the ten-year period since the NCLB Act\u2019s legalization, from 2001 to 2011; since AYP failures are cumulative, the map essentially shows each district\u2019s \u201crating\u201d at the year 2011. Both maps use the Connecticut Mastery Test as for scores, since the Act allows each state to devise its own standardized testing procedure; Connecticut retained its Mastery Tests. Although the two maps use two different types of academic failure variables, they have been calibrated to the same scalar range; thus shading is comparable between maps as an indication of the magnitude of failure.<\/p>\n Percent of Schools Below Proficient by District 1999<\/strong>
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