No Child Left Behind’s school performance metrics may bepunishing disadvantaged school districts and students

In 2001, Congress enacted the No Child Left Behind Act, with the aims of improving student’s academic achievement and closing the achievement gap between high and low achieving students. In new research, Vladimir Kogan, Stéphane Lavertu and Zachary Peskowitz assess the impact of the measure’s school and district performance metrics. They find that changes in the measure’s ‘adequate yearly progress’ metric meant that disadvantaged schools districts which had actually seen improvements in student achievement were less likely to pass a school tax levy, starving these districts of the resources needed to educate low achieving students.