No Child Left Behind in Art?LAURA H. CHAPMANIn June 2004, three out of fourpublic schools in Florida failed tomeet a new federal standard forschool improvement, includingone arts school that had earned"A" ratings on statewide tests for fourconsecutive years (Shanklin 2004).How can so many schools, including"A" schools, be failing?The answer: the No Child Left BehindAct of 2001 (U.S. Congress 2001). Theact is reshaping public education in theUnited States. In this article, I identifykey terms and regulations in the law andindicate how it is related to the compan-ion Education Sciences Reform Act of2002 (U.S. Congress 2002). At the close,I consider the impact of NCLB on ourschools, including our best ones.Early reports about the NCLB lawwere confusing. In pursuit of moreinformation, I downloaded the wholelaw and have since focused on under-standing the vision of excellence that itpromotes, the implications of thisvision, and their relationship to largerpolitical currents. The law also hasmany implications for arts education,but I find it difficult to see how thesecan be positive. Although I am not alonein that judgment, it is also important torecognize that NCLB earned substantialbipartisan support in Congress and thatneither political party, at present, pro-poses major changes in it.In theory, the law articulates the ideathat all students can learn far more thanteachers may currently expect of them.NCLB is intended to close achievementgaps among students. It requires thatschools use teachers who are well qual-ified in the subjects that they teach andseeks greater engagement of parents inmonitoring the quality of the schoolsthat their children attend. Nevertheless,the thrust of the law is punitive. In seek-ing improvements, it deploys moresticks than carrots.The Alphabet Soup:NCLB, ESRA, and AYPAccording to the U.S. Department ofEducation Web site, NCLB is "based onfour basic principles: stronger account-ability for results, increased flexibilityand local control, expanded options forparents, and an emphasis on methods thathave been proven to work."' NCLB has aparallel in other, less publicized legisla-tion, the Education Sciences Reform Actof 2002 (ESRA 2002). The two laws areclosely related. In funding educationalresearch, ESRA says, federal officialswill seek scientific proofs of effective,low-cost, user-friendly, and replicable"best practices" in education. The bestpractices, identified by ESRA's criteria,must be used for school improvementsundertaken with funds from NCLB.If NCLB stresses back-to-basics with avengeance under the guise of excellence,ESRA offers an image of scientificresearch as "secular, neutral, and non-ideological." This is a position at oddswith the uses of research in human affairsand particularly at odds with No ChildLeft Behind (for example, Berliner andBiddle 1995, Ewen 1996).In matters of school management, forexample, both NCLB and ESRA use theidea of continuous improvement inorganizations (Demming 1982), recast-ing it as "adequate yearly progress"(AYP). This means that schools mustproduce annual increments in test scoreson statewide tests. The goal is to ensurethat 95 to 100 percent of students score"proficient or above" in reading, mathe-matics, and science by 2014. As thehumorist Garrison Keillor might put it,the goal is to ensure that "all the chil-dren are above average" (1985).In subtle and not so subtle ways,NCLB creates the illusion of not intrud-ing on local decisions about schoolswhile using incentives and mandates tomicromanage them. For example, thelaw says that "core academic subjects"include foreign languages; civics andgovernment; economics; arts; historyand geography; English/language arts,mathematics; and science. At the sametime, only the last three subjects aretreated as vital in many sections of thelaw. The law offers incentives for teach-Vol. 106, No. 2, November/December 2004ing "traditional American history, apartfrom social studies," and thus keeps at adistance multicultural and critical per-spectives (Title II). In relation to foreignlanguage, the law actually specifiesminutes and days per week for instruc-tion in elementary schools (Title V).Although states are responsihle forinterpreting the law under guidancefrom USDE, federal control of publicschools moves forward with NCLB andwith an authoritative role for ESRA indeciding which practices may he usedfor school improvement (Manzo2004a). Indeed, NCLB is the most com-prehensive federal effort to microman-age puhlic schools in United States his-tory. Because every puhlic school islikely to he affected hy the draconianrequirements of the law, arts educatorsshould understand key provisions of it.(Figure 1 offers a brief history of trendsbearing on NCLB and what the lawrequires until 2014).Some Key Terms In NCLBNCLB is a massive document filledwith legalistic language and layers ofparts, sections, and subparts. In a sidebarbelow ("Summary of Titles in NCLB"), Iindicate the structure of the law and com-ment on selected topics. Some key termsin NCLB are delineated helow.Best practices. "Best practices" aredefined as (a) aligned with national andstate standards for achievement, {b)"scientifically proven" to be least costlyand with best outcomes, and (c) "ahle tobe applied, duplicated, and scaled-up"for wide use. Scientific proof means thatevidence for best practices comes fromexperimental research, with randomassignments of students to "interven-tions," not qualitative research alone(ESRA Title I, Olson and Viadero2002). The goal is a limited set of off-the-shelf teaching methods, guaranteedto work and available from a USDEaffiliated Web site, "What Works," athttp://www.w-w-c.org/.Standards. Each state is required tohave the same achievement standardsfor students in puhlic schools. The stan-dards must identify what studentsshould know and be able to do at fourlevels: below basic, basic, proficient.1994. National and state standards for most subjects were established under the Goals2000 project. These standards, in tandem with NAEP definitions of proficiency, becomereference points for aligning tests, curricula, and instruction to the standards (Council ofChief State School Officers 2002). Under the Elementary and Secondary Act, schoolsreceiving Title I funds administer statewide tests in mathematics and reading three timesduring a K-12 span. Compliance was uneven. Even so, these scores count as a haselinefor NCLB compliance.2001-02. NCLB is passed. Prior scores in reading and