Estimating the Effects of No Child Left Behind on Teachers’ Work Environments and Job Attitudes

Abstract

Ten years into the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a growing body of research seeks to assess the law's impact on American public schools. Much of this work rightly focuses on effects on students, with evidence suggesting that NCLB has resulted in small but positive effects on student achievement, particularly in math (e.g., Ballou & Springer, 2011;Dee & Jacob, 2011). Although research into the mediating factors driving this achievement growth is nascent, it is unlikely that NCLB could affect student learning without affecting the learning environment, including instruction. The logic of accountability underlying the law suggests as much: Providing measures of student outcomes pegged to established standards and enacting consequences for poor performance should give schools incentives to find ways to improve, including changing teachers' approaches to teaching (Manna, 2011). Indeed, studies find that NCLB has led teachers to devote more classroom time to core subjects, spend more time searching for better instructional strategies, and, perhaps less productively, "teach to the test" (Dee, Jacob,

Music teacher stress in the era of accountability

“…In understanding the potential implications for other regions in the United States, one must proceed with some caution. While NCLB has affected all states, consequences have been felt differently depending on whether NCLB presented new accountability reforms (Grissom, Nicholson-Crotty, and Harrington 2014;Reback, Rockoff, and Schwartz 2014).…”

Identification of Elementary Teachers’ Risk for Stress and Vocational Concerns Using the National Schools and Staffing Survey

“…The similarity of the SASS to variables investigated in CARD research allowed us to replicate of the classification strategy used to place teachers in the three Appraisal groups: Demands, Balanced, and Resourced. Both the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 SASS surveys 1 were used in this study because there is some evidence that increased high-stakes testing and accountability brought on by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has led to increased stressors and demands on many teachers (Berryhill, Linney, & Fromewick, 2009;Grissom, Nicholson-Crotty, & Harrington, 2014). Utilizing the 2000 and 2008 surveys provided information about teachers' perceptions of classrooms, both before and after implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act.…”

“…Surprisingly, however, we found scant research using the SASS to evaluate the role of stress in teacher dissatisfaction or intention to leave the field. Grissom et al (2014) used the SASS data to investigate teacher work environments across several administrations of the SASS and defined teacher demands as the number of hours in the week teachers spend working and support from the school, but did examine teacher resources. Interestingly, they found that while teachers' reported weekly work increased 2 hours between 2000 and 2004 (just before No Child Left Behind was enacted), work hours leveled off between 2004 and 2008.…”

Show Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts

“…Ironically, after years of research establishing a decades‐long decline in the academic aptitude of new teacher hires (Corcoran, Evans, and Schwab , ; Hoxby and Leigh ), a study by Goldhaber and Walch () estimated a slight turnaround in this pattern of declining aptitude noting that there have been small improvements in the academic ability of new teacher hires in the United States precisely during the time in which state and local governments have been ratcheting up these aforementioned performance management reforms. Although their observation is not causal, the correlation warrants more research into the ways in which accountability and evaluation reforms influence the quality of employees sorting across government agencies (e.g., school districts) and into government work itself (see also Grissom, Nicholson‐Crotty, and Harrington for a good example of research investigating the effect of performance management reforms on teacher job satisfaction and commitment).…”