Top Students Said to Stagnate Under NCLB

By Debra Viadero

While the nation’s poorest-performing students have made academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the brightest students appear to be languishing for lack of attention, according to a report released today by a Washington think tank.

“People have been complaining ever since NCLB passed that focusing resources on the bottom students would come at the expense of high-achieving students,” said Tom Loveless, one of the authors of the report. “There hasn’t been any Robin Hood effect, but the high achievers haven’t been gaining, either.”

Titled “High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB,” the report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation draws on national test-score data and results from a nationwide survey of 900 public school teachers in grades 3-12 to paint a portrait of a generation of high achievers left to fend for themselves as schools and teachers shift their time and resources toward educational strategies aimed more at bringing the bottom up than on raising achievement for all children.

The data show, for instance, that from 2000 to 2007, the scores of the top 10 percent of students essentially held steady on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading and math. The scores for the bottom 10 percent of students, meanwhile, rose by 18 points on the 4th grade reading test and 13 points in 8th grade math—the equivalent of about a year’s worth of learning by Mr. Loveless’ calculations. (One exception to that pattern was in 8th grade reading, where low-achieving students' scores declined and the achievement gap widened slightly.)

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