Poll: No Child Left Behind did not improve education
By Rachel Lowry, Deseret News
More Americans — 29 percent — believe education is worse because of the No Child Left Behind Act than those who believe it is better off (16 percent).
Another 38 percent said the act of Congress that changed the federal government’s role in public schools by focusing on student achievement has made no difference, according to a Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll.
“Such ambivalence probably gives the Obama administration broad political latitude to modify NCLB through executive fiats, such as the recent decision to grant states waivers from meeting the law’s key benchmarks,” Gallup noted.
A random telephone sample of 1,012 adults, ages 18 and older, living across the U.S. and the District of Columbia, was conducted Aug. 9-12. The poll found that 17 percent were too unfamiliar with the law to rate it.
Congruent with Gallup’s findings in 2009, the poll found that lower-income Americans were evenly divided in their opinions of NCLB, while middle and upper-income Americans viewed the act negatively. Twenty-two percent of adults in households earning less than $30,000 a year are more likely to believe the law has made public education better, while 15 percent did not.