That on balance, the NCLB act has improved academic achievement in the United States

I negate "Resolved: That, on balance, the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 has improved academic achievement in the United States" for the following contentions: 1) Improvements cannot be causally linked to No Child Left Behind While, 2)Problems in academic achievement can be linked to the act's implementation Contention One: Improvements cannot be causally linked to No Child Left Behind. Dr. Ladner elaborates, "The interaction of the NCLB policies has created an incentive for states to lower testing standards in order to avoid federal sanctions. Researchers have reported a pattern whereby states lower passing thresholds and otherwise "dumb down" assessments to boost proficiency scores and avoid federal sanctions under NCLB." Essentially, the standards set by No Child Left Behind require schools to lower their testing standards so that schools can still receive funding. Thus, just reading state test scores doesn't actually demonstrate an improvement in academic achievement, it demonstrates a fundamental flaw of the Act which is that it lowers the amount of achievement required to meet false-proficiency markers. John Cronin of the Thomas Fordham institute elaborates, "The primary factor explaining improvement in student proficiency rates in many states is a decline in the test's estimated cut score. Half of the reported improvement in reading, and 70 percent of the reported improvement in mathematics, appear idiosyncratic to the state test. Virginia, often praised for its leadership in education reforms such as its statewide "Standards of Learning," reported that 73 percent were at or above "proficiency" in state reading—compared with their national testing figure of just 35 percent." States that lower proficiency markers to increase federal funding are widespread. However, markers like GPA, which are not subject to fluctuation in state standards, demonstrate NCLB's inefficiency in actually improving academic achievement. Chester Finn of the Thomas Fordham institute reports, "The average grade for state standards across all subjects was a disappointing "C-minus" in 2000 and remains so today. Two-thirds of the nation's K-12 students attend schools in states with C, D, or F-rated standards." At the point where students aren't performing better in the classroom, but are only performing better on state tests (due to them being dumbed down) it does not make sense to vote Pro. Contention Two: Problems in academic achievement can be linked to the act's implementation. Gershon Ratner, executive director of Citizens for Effective Schools writes, "By treating increasing test scores as the end in itself, the Act pressures schools to "drill and kill" students with test preparation, narrow the curriculum, and take other steps to artificially raise test scores. This needlessly and harmfully diverts schools' attention away from doing what needs to be done: making the difficult changes necessary to dramatically improve teaching and learning. To the contrary, what NCLB has widely generated is "teaching to the test," i.e., teaching a scripted, narrowed and dumbed-down curriculum concentrated on memorization of facts and the lower-level thinking skills needed to pass the standardized tests." As a result, academic achievement has faltered in the United States. The Center on Education Policy reports, "While average NAEP scores increased in math, it was at a much slower rate than in previous years. Results for grades 4 and 8 climbed dramatically in the 1990's but essentially flat lined from 03 to 05." NCLB testing can be attributed to these losses because it forces teachers to teach test-taking skills that are irrelevant to the higher order thinking skills necessary to actually perform on national tests. The impact is clear, students are not receiving necessary teaching and so they're faltering where they should be succeeding; rates of growth have dropped due to NCLB. In fact, according to Harvard Study, growth rates have either dropped or stagnated as a result of No Child Left Behind. Finally, as a result of this "teaching to the test", The Government Accountability Office reports, "The number of schools identified for needing improvement increased from about 8,400 in school year 2004-2005 to over 10,700 in 2006-2007." So instead of helping increase school performance, NCLB has rather increased the number of schools needing improvement. It is because testing scores in support of No Child Left Behind are inaccurate and skewed, while true measures of academic success demonstrate unfortunate problems with the teaching styles that stifle achievement that my partner and I urge you to negate. Next, onto my opponents points: His Contention One: Subpoint A: It's important to note that he quotes the Center on Education Policy, which says STATE test scores are the highest they've ever been. That EXACT same study states in the conclusions that, "increases in test scores cannot be causally linked to No Child Left Behind." moreover, the study only measured state test scores which, as I outline in my first contention, are subject to the dumbing down of state test procedures. Next, he talks about how test scores are the highest they've ever been. This isn't because of No Child Left Behind, students have been growing since the 90's, what we need to examine is if these growth trends have slowed or sped up due to No Child Left Behind. As I discuss in my case, both Harvard and the CEP confirm that these growth rates have slowed. This simply means that No Child Left Behind has hurt achievement by causing it come at a slower rate. Subpoint B: Actually, he says that they're increasing reading and math - which I agree on. However this means that they're taking time away from history and science, which is why the United States has fallen over 10 points on average on international science tests since the inception of No Child Left Behind. Most of this contention is on history and science, and while he gives quotes the data does not support this point. Next, the Department of Education study actually has to do with state test scores, and I've already explained the growth in those areas. Contention Two: The CEP study (Which he cites) actually says that the achievement gap shrinkage in many states was due to white students performing worse than usual. Moreover, this is only a small slice of the population (minorities), when we examine growth trends on the whole it is obvious that No Child Left Behind has stifled academic achievement by stifling the academic growth of students on the whole. Contention Three: He says that it has improved teacher quality, but that's not true. In fact, higher quality teachers do not even go to these lower quality schools. When AYP markers label a school as "Failing" it decreases the chance a teacher will go to that school by over 50%. As a result, the divisive line between high quality teachers and low performing schools has only grown wider since No Child Left Behind.