An Update on No Child Left Behind and National Trends in Education

Abstract

In this article,

From Dewey to No Child Left Behind: The Evolution and Devolution of Public Arts Education

“…Yet this current era of accountability has challenged Dewey's student-centered principles by entrenching accountability's arguments of incentives, efficiency, and narrowly defined competency. As a result, arts education is not regarded as possessing the same importance as the foundational core courses being tested in Texas and nationwide (Chapman 2007). Texas's recent modifications to their educational code in H.B.…”

“…Although the accountability era did not halt nationwide arts education in America, it is readily apparent that the focus of NCLB is somewhere other than the arts (Chapman 2007). Although equal billing of arts education with other areas of education appears to pervade the standards, testing, and accountability discourse, this parity certainly does not exist in the underpinning reasoning associated with its stakes.…”

“…In 1965, a new federal agency emerged to represent and promulgate the arts' interests. At times powerful, at other times less so, but always integral to the arts in the modern era, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), especially in its earliest years, became for many the symbolic location for the arts and arts education policymaking in America (Bauerlein 2008;Chapman 2000). Public funding from the newly created NEA and state arts agencies, coupled with continuing financial support from major foundations and individuals accelerated and sustained the growth of arts-producing organizations (Zakaras and Lowell 2008).…”

“…The United States Office of Education (USOE) supported research and curriculum projects in the visual, literary, and performing arts between 1963 and 1968. These projects generated arts education policy concepts and framed the arts as a subject for curriculum-based instruction (Chapman 2000). The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1963) published a lengthy report stressing the necessity of arts programs for all schoolchildren and focusing on the importance of designing and allocating art spaces in schools in which such programs could be delivered.…”

Evaluating the Effect of No Child Left Behind on U.S. Music Course Enrollments

“…The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) generally is regarded as the strongest U.S. federal regulation of the nation’s education policy, an area that historically has been the provenance of the 50 states. In the ensuing decade between its enactment on January 7, 2002, and the effective end of the NCLB era when the U.S. secretary of education began granting waivers from the law to states that adopted other school reform policies on February 9, 2012 (Hu, 2012; Rich, 2012), the law’s intents and effects have been both championed and criticized in the popular press (e.g., Dillon, 2006), in think-tank reports (e.g., McMurrer, 2007; Peterson & West, 2003), and in academic position papers (e.g., Beveridge, 2009; Chapman, 2004, 2007; Colwell, 2005). The scientific record also includes several evaluations of NCLB’s effect on student achievement (e.g., Dee & Jacob, 2011; Lauen & Gaddis, 2012; Lee, 2006; Lee & Reeves, 2012; Wong, Cook, & Steiner, 2009b), although the results from these are generally mixed.…”