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No Child Left Behind?
A Faculty Response to President Bush's Education Bill

Harvard Graduate School of Education
August 1, 2002

About the No Child Left Behind Act

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, opening a new chapter of education history in the United States. Developed by a bipartisan team of legislators, the act mandates that states establish tough new academic standards, improve teacher quality, and create safe schools, among other measures. It also allocates a surprising $26.5 billion to public K-12 education a 20 percent increase over last year.

Despite decades of attempts to foster educational equity, big barriers remain: the achievement gap between students of color and white students has widened since 1988; although violence has been on the decline, 37 percent of American students still report the presence of gangs in their schools; and debates still rage over school vouchers and charter schools, both of which divert funding from public school systems.

Can President Bush's bill address these and the many other complex dilemmas inside America's public schools? Will the plan benefit the students it seeks to serve? Will the act help or hinder student learning? These are the questions we posed, with one expert opinion from our faculty on an aspect of the bill featured here.

Dimon Professor Pedro Noguera is a faculty member in the Administration, Planning, and Social Policy area at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on urban schools, youth violence, and race relations. Here, he responds to the act's proposal for creating safe schools.

Americans want safe schools, and President Bush's recently approved No Child Left Behind Act offers new opportunities to reduce the threat of violence in schools. The act's main proposal calls for school districts to adopt community service programs for students who have been suspended or expelled from school, the creation of two new research centers to devise strategies to increase school security, and grants for new mentoring and drug and alcohol abuse initiatives.

Interestingly, most of the schools that have experienced the most deadly incidents are located in middle-class, suburban communities rather than in the inner cities, where reported incidents of violence tend to be highest. The unpredictable nature of school violence makes it hard to know if the act will deter future outbursts or lessen public fears.

Nonetheless, there is a noticeable absence of any new effort to address the impersonal climate present in many schools that contributes to growing student anonymity and alienation. Research on school violence has shown that a lack of meaningful contact between adults and students in schools prevents school personnel from identifying those students who are at risk of engaging in violence; it also prevents them from knowing when violent incidents are likely to occur. Moreover, the act does not ask schools to make sure that students who are removed from school for disciplinary reasons are placed in supervised settings.

In my own experience, it is rare to find a school that critically examines its disciplinary practices to ensure that it is effective in deterring problem behavior and not merely pushing out troubled and needy students. It is also rare to find a school that works to increase safety by increasing contact between adults and students, rather than by increasing its number of security guards and metal detectors. The act does not encourage schools to do either of these things, so it remains to be seen whether the public's desire for greater safety will be fulfilled.