District Responses to NCLB: Where is the Justice?

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has provoked more controversy than any previous education legislation in recent decades. Our conceptual analysis was guided by three questions: What do we see happening in the schools? What does the law seem to mean in terms of accountability to different people in the schools? Where is the justice in these actions and meanings? Drawing on the accountability literature, we develop a two-dimensional framework for comparing models of accountability that we use to understand the range of responses to NCLB. Based on our secondary analysis of data we have collected in schools, we propose five metaphors that represent district response-types, illustrate the metaphors with vignettes created from conversations we have heard in districts that represent each response-type, and analyze what we perceive is happening in district schools as a result of NCLB. Next we explicate what the law and its implementation appears to mean to the players in the schools. Finally, we consider the justice, that is, the moral rightness or fairness and equity, of these actions and meanings.

Notes

1. These questions are drawn from those raised by Fred Erickson in a paper entitled Arts, Sciences, and Scientism in Qualitative Research, presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 21, 2003.

2. Retrieved on June 6, 2005 from http://dictionary.oed.com/

3. This discussion of lateral accountability is drawn from work of the Accountability Task Force of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University, Providence, RI 1996–97, especially discussions held during the Lateral Accountability Conference of June 20–22, 1997.

4. The Tri-State Consortium is a network of high-performing districts in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut that evaluate student performance in their schools with mutually agreed-upon standards and rubrics. The reports from evaluative visits can serve regional accreditation purposes.

5. This section draws upon our thinking in Leading Dynamic Schools: How to Create and Implement Ethical Policies (2008). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

6. Clearly this premise is subject to criticism, but to critique the premises of the law is not our purpose in this article.

7. Some of these studies resulted in publishable studies, others were protected evaluations.