Study Says Ed Policy Favors Whites

President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act—and changes made in its implementation—benefit predominantly white school districts over those serving minorities, according to a University study released last Monday.

The study, conducted by the Harvard University Civil Rights Project, was written by Gail L. Sunderman, a senior research associate in K-12 education.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act aimed to improve national education standards by requiring that children in every subgroup, both racial and demographic, demonstrate progress each year on standardized tests in math and English. The failure of children to do so identifies the school district as one that needs improvement and can lead to penalties against that district.

“This report is part of a larger study on the No Child Left Behind Act,” Sunderman said. “We developed a study to look at how the law was being interpreted and implemented across the federal, state, and district levels.”

According to the study, the Bush administration has implemented a series of changes to the 2001 act in response to growing state and local opposition. Additionally, under different standards, a large number of schools and districts identified as needing improvement under the act were considered to be performing well.

Consequently, the study stated that the administration has allowed states to negotiate changes to the implementation of the act on an individual basis in order to reduce the number of schools identified as needing improvement.

The result is an inconsistent standard across the board.

“What one state negotiates is unrelated to what another state does,” Sunderman said. “You get no clear uniform standard across the country and the meaning of the law is being lost.”

States in the rural Midwest, for example, were given flexibility in meeting the act’s requirements because their school districts were a part of the Small Rural School Achievement program, according to the study.

However, this same flexibility does not apply to school districts that are a part of the Rural Low Income Schools program, which include poorer rural regions predominantly made up of minorities in the Southeast and Southwest, the study said.

Sunderman identified this inconsistent criteria as problematic.

“Thus, these policies tend to benefit districts that are less poor and are serving whites over those that are poorer and serving minorities,” she said.

Policies under the act favor school districts with smaller enrollment and school districts that are more homogenous.

“These standards are unrealistic and not based on any research,” said Gary Orfield, professor of education and social policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Civil Rights Project.

Subsequently school districts that serve many minority subgroups are at a disadvantage, according to the study. Not only are these districts more likely to be labeled as needing improvement, but they are also penalized accordingly.

“The enforcement is arbitrary and often counterproductive,” Orfield said.

But government officials disputed the study’s validity.

“It is a flawed study by people who are obviously unfamiliar with what the implementation process is and the way education policy works in this country,” said the Department of Education spokesman Chad Colby. The act did not put minorities at a disadvantage., he said.

“The fact is that there is an achievement gap among the races. You can see that in the National Assessment of Education Progress,” Colby said. “The purpose of No Child Left Behind is to close the achievement gap. That’s why we require assessments in grades three to eight and through high school.”

However, the researchers say that Congress needs to reexamine the act and its flaws.

“They need to have a broad discussion that brings in the educators and civil rights groups in order to determine what really is needed to be changed in these schools,” Sunderman said.

“Congress should save the good parts of the law,” Orfield said, “especially the information it provides...relying more on supportive resources than threats.”