Professors, community members, grade school teachers and graduate students raised issues and questions about the legislation to Kress, a UC Berkeley graduate who played a lead role in the creation of the act.
The conference, which highlighted different views of the act, was hosted by the Graduate school of Education.
“(The event) was intended to bring to light various complexities around (the legislation),” said associate professor of education Bruce Fuller.
Signed into law in 2002, the act aims to ensure local and state accountability in the form of standardized testing and intends to give parents more choice in the schools their children attend.
The act is up for re-authorization by Congress in 2007.
Kress’s presentation cited the rise in test scores from 1990 to 2005 as proof that the standards-based reform movement, which inspired the act, is effective in raising test scores.
Kress said rising minority scores reveal the positive impact of the reform movement.
“I think there’s a lot of strong support for continuing and strengthening (the act),” Kress said. “In some respect that will involve fixes, in other respects it will involve going further in policies to improve teacher effectiveness, to strengthen secondary schools and to encourage greater college and work-place readiness.”
Panelist Goodwin Liu, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law, said Kress’s statistics did not prove the act was a major factor in academic improvement.
“Why is the black and Hispanic improvement curve more steep prior to the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act?” Liu asked.
Kress defended it as a work in progress, saying there were many improvements to be made.
“The system was totally broken when we found it in 2001,” Kress said.
A question and answer session revealed frustration and dissent from teachers and community members.
Audience and panel members expressed concern that test accountability causes teachers to teach to the test, stressing math and reading and ignoring other curriculum subjects.
Kress responded that districts have the freedom to make any necessary curriculum changes to be able to meet the test standards.
“Who’s keeping people from doing it? If it’s more successful, do it,” he said.
Panelist Kathryn Baron, a reporter for KQED Public Radio, expressed concern that the act does not address inequalities between schools.
“There seems to be something that we’re missing,” Baron said. “The quality of education between schools is still not good enough.”