Stuck in the Middle with NCLB

University of Chicago economists tell the American Enterprise Institute what many teachers and parents have long claimed: To make AYP targets, schools are hyper-focusing on boosting the test scores of “bubble kids” in the middle — at the expense of low- and high-achieving kids.

Education Week has all the details of researchers Derek A. Neal and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach’s study, which was based on Chicago Public Schools data [registration required]. AEI has their paper on its site [PDF].  Here’s a choice morsel:

Our results support the hypothesis that accountability systems based on the number of students who achieve a proficiency standard provide relatively weak incentives to devote extra attention to either students who have no realistic chance of becoming proficient in the near term or students who are already proficient. Proponents of NCLB may counter that NCLB mitigates any incentives to ignore less able students by requiring a 100% proficiency rate in all schools by 2013-14. However, it is not clear that this provision of the law constitutes a credible threat,  and even if one assumes that principals and teachers take the 100% target seriously, this feature of the law should make things worse for the current cohort of elementary school students who are far below grade level in math and reading. Schools must realize that many of their current students will be “off the books” long before their state plans require them to be near 100% proficient. Thus, NCLB provides no incentive to devote extra attention to an eighth grader who is currently reading at fifth grade level. In all likelihood, even the best efforts of teachers cannot bring this student up to proficiency in one year, and the student will usually be in a different school for ninth grade.

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