The Dougherty Group specializes in assisting all interested stakeholders servicing the K-12 Learning Community specify, design, develop, and deploy NCLB tools and administrative solutions that enable districts to ensure that their schools are NCLB-compliant and their students, teachers and administrators are successful.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2001, represents a bi-partisan education reform plan for that contains the most sweeping changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) since it was enacted in 1965. It changes the federal government's role in kindergarten-through-grade-12 education by asking America's schools to describe their success in terms of what each student accomplishes. The act contains the President's four basic education reform principles: stronger accountability for results, increased flexibility and local control, expanded options for parents, and an emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven to work.

NCLB Attributes

Empowerment, accountability, increased flexibility, imporved quality of instruction are the four fundamental tennants comprising the new NCLB legislation.

Empowerment from the standpoint that States / Districts / Schools have more flexibility and local control in the: 1) Creation of their own standards for what a child should know and learn for all grade levels. These standards must immediately address: Reading / Language Arts and Math, with Science to follow in 2005 - 2006 School year; and 2) The specification of the metric for measuring Adequate Yearly Progress for all students.

Accountability from the standpoint that once the learning standards are in place, Schools / Districts / States must begin to test (assess) all students progress towards mastery of those standards with tests that are aligned to the standards and report their progress towrds meeting the fiver performance goals established by the NCLB Act:

1) By 2013-2014, all students will reach high standards, at a minimum attaining proficiency or better in reading/language arts and mathematics.

2) All students with limited English proficiency will become proficient in English and reach high academic standards, at a minimum attaining proficiency or better in reading/language arts and mathematics.

3) By 2005-2006, all students will be taught by highly qualified teachers.

4) All students will be educated in learning environments that are safe, drug-free, and conducive to learning.

5) All students will graduate from high school

Every School / District / State will be expected to make adequate yearly progress toward meeting state standards. This progress will be measured for all students by sorting test results for students who are economically disadvantaged, from racial or ethnic minority groups, have disabilities, or have limited English proficiency.

School and district performance will be publicly reported by means of 'District and State Report Cards'.

If the district or school continually fails to make adequate progress toward the standards, then they will be held accountable!

Increased Flexibility from the standpoint that as well as increased local control as to how federal funds are allocated; parents will have increased options for helping their children if they are enrolled in schools that fail their annual 'Report Card' and are chronically identified as in need of improvement. Starting in 2002 - 2003, Parents with a child enrolled in a school that has been identified will now have the option to:

1) Transfer their child to a better performing public school or public charter school and at the District's expense; and 2) Utilize federal education funds for what are called "supplemental education services." Those services include tutoring, after school services, and summer school programs.

Improved Quality of Instruction from the standpoint that the key thrust of NCLB is to ensure that educators are 'qualified' and the teaching methods reflect 'Scientifically-based' instructional methodologies.

Educator quality will be improved by ensuring instructional staff are properly credentialed and receive timely professional development support on proven, scientifically based instructional strategies that will enhance student performance.

In order for Schools / Districts to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act and be compliant with it's guiding principles, districts will need powerful, standards-based 'open' decision support learning systems and / or Student Information Systems (SIS) that contain robust yet 'easy-to-use' data analysis tools and will also integrate all student data repositories throughout the School / District.

NCLB and Data Driven Learning Decisions ...