Story Archives of 'No Child Left Behind'

191 schools in New Hampshire are in need of some form of improvement, according to the recent release of Adequate Yearly Progress reports as required under the federal No Child Left Behind Law. Two school districts, Manchester and Rochester, were pegged as needing "corrective action" and will have the state education department play more of a direct role in helping them to improve. We'll see what these results mean for the Granite State as well as how well NCLB is working for our schools and school districts.

President Bush's signature domestic achievement, The No Child Left Behind Act, turned five this year in January and is up for reauthorization in Congress. We'll look at what kind of response this major education reform effort has had over the years and where it stands now in terms of being reauthorized, including new legislation just introduced by more than 50 Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate that would allow states to opt out of the testing mandates and could have a major impact on the law. Laura's guests are Michael Sentance, Secretary's Regional Representative for Region I of the U.S. Department of Education, based out of Boston and Grace Nelson, Coordinator of Public Education and School Support for the National Education Association of New Hampshire.

Across the state this month, students in grades three to eight are taking the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP test.

The NECAP is the result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires yearly testing.

The test is designed to determine how well schools are teaching….and students are learning.

But even before the scores are in, one school in Nashua is preparing to be labeled a failure.

NHPR correspondent Sheryl Rich-Kern has more.

With educators needing to complete yearly school progress reports, yearly student reports, and personalized student plans, some worry that too much accountability is leading to too little educating. We'll look at when school accountability is an effective educational tool and when it becomes a bureaucratic burden. Laura's guests are Michael Sentance, Secretary's Regional Representative for New England for the U.S. Department of Education, and Charles Ott, a program director for the Strafford Learning Center in Somersworth and a former school superintendent. We'll also hear from Neal Kurk, State Representative from Weare and a member of a National Conference of State Legislatures Task Force that studied the No Child Left Behind Act, and Ross Weiner, policy director for The Education Trust, an education advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

The long-awaited NECAP scores are in.

If you don't have a child in school or aren't an educator, NECAP stands for the New England Common Assessment Program.

It's a standardized test that's designed to help track a student's progress through his or her public school career.

Such testing is required by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Under the law, pupils in grades three through eight are tested each fall in reading and math.

Fifth- and eighth-graders are also tested in writing.

New Hamphire's Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy described the state's scores to NHPR's Mark Bevis.