Florida's A+ plan: ace over NCLB?A controversial study of Florida schools shows that choice provisions in the state accountability plan are more effective in raising student achievement than the federal No Child Left Behind act The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), commonly known as NCLB (IPA: /ˈnɪkəlbiː/), is a United States federal law that was passed in the House of Representatives on May 23, 2001 . In the first independent study examining NCLB's impact on student test-score performance, Harvard University Harvard University, mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college. Harvard College Harvard College, originally for men, was founded in 1636 with a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. researchers Martin R. West and Paul E. Peterson Paul E. Peterson is a leading scholar on education reform.[1] His work has largely focused on the importance of parental choice for improving school outcomes. He is Editor-In-Chief of Education Next show that Florida's fourth and fifth graders make modest but significant gains in reading and math if their school is at risk of becoming part of the state's voucher A receipt or release which provides evidence of payment or other discharge of a debt, often for purposes of reimbursement, or attests to the accuracy of the accounts. program. But Florida schools that were at risk of public-school choice provisions under NCLB NCLB No Child Left Behind (US education initiative) showed no gains. The report, The Efficacy of Choice Threats Within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments, however, stresses that the results don't measure overall effectiveness of either NCLB or Florida's A+ Accountability Plan. Since 2002, the state's fourth and fifth graders, on average, have improved on test scores. Critics have stated the report is only a one-year result and hardly evidence of serious science. |
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