District Responses to NCLB: Where is the Justice?

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has provoked more controversy than any previous education legislation in recent decades. Our conceptual analysis was guided by three questions: What do we see happening in the schools? What does the law seem to mean in terms of accountability to different people in the schools? Where is the justice in these actions and meanings? Drawing on the accountability literature, we develop a two-dimensional framework for comparing models of accountability that we use to understand the range of responses to NCLB. Based on our secondary analysis of data we have collected in schools, we propose five metaphors that represent district response-types, illustrate the metaphors with vignettes created from conversations we have heard in districts that represent each response-type, and analyze what we perceive is happening in district schools as a result of NCLB. Next we explicate what the law and its implementation appears to mean to the players in the schools. Finally, we consider the justice, that is, the moral rightness or fairness and equity, of these actions and meanings.

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