No Child Left Behind: gifted children and school counselors.(No Child Left Behind Act of 2001)

A gifted-education researcher discusses the potential effects of No Child Left Behind on gifted children and adolescents as well as implications for those who counsel such children in public schools. With the primary purpose of stimulating thought, discussion, and action, she addresses the marginalization of gifted and other at-risk children in the current educational climate and provides recommendations for school counselors.

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After working in education for 20 years as a teacher, coordinator, and professor, I attended my very first parent-teacher conference as a parent. My daughter attended kindergarten, and I was eager to learn about her performance in school. Her teacher had taught kindergarten for more than 20 years and had a magical way of making her class of 22 five-year-olds feel comfortable and happy. When it came time for our conference, I pulled the primary-sized chair up to the primary-sized desk and sat across from the woman who was my daughter's first teacher. She calmly explained that my daughter was doing just fine in school, and then proceeded to report how my daughter had performed, based on the state standards identified for kindergarteners. She told me that my daughter could count to 10 and that by the end of the year, according to the standards, she would be able to count to 100. I quietly asked if she had ever asked my daughter to count to 100 and was told, "No, that standard isn't expected until spring." She went on to explain that I had nothing to worry about because my daughter had met all the standards. In other words, the teacher was communicating that she had done her job. Never mind that my daughter had impressive mathematical skills prior to kindergarten. The teacher had not checked out her existing skills or knowledge. Her job was to address the standards as dictated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001).

In fact, my daughter could count, add, subtract, and explain fractions and negative numbers among other benchmarks that did not exist in the state standards for kindergarteners. She asked me one day, "Would it be a tragedy if a person spent an entire day on the planet and didn't learn anything new?" I had to agree. As a second grader she continues to ask when she will be given some hard work. However, I wonder how many more years she will still want hard work.

In my daughter's new school, all of the students who scored poorly on the state test were encouraged to enroll in a 6-week course that met every day before school prior to the fall testing. This course concentrated on preparing the students for the state test. Her school is touted to be a high-quality, blue-ribbon school, yet all curricular information sent home to parents emphasizes that everything done in school relates to the overarching state standards and to what is tested on a yearly basis.

In another school that I visited, the principal had a consultant work with her staff for 2 days on "Strategies for Increasing Your School's Test Scores." This consultant explained to a group of concerned inner-city, teachers that they need not worry about the students who scored in the bottom quartile or about the students who scored in the top quartile, because the students in the middle had the power to improve the most. She encouraged the teachers to give these "middle" students the most attention if they wanted to improve their scores. In effect, the district and administration used taxpayer dollars to give the teachers permission not only to leave behind the lowest-scoring children, but also to ignore the highest-scoring students.

These examples provide little hope for students who may need extended, accelerated, or enriched curricula, or for the teachers who might be willing to provide such modifications for their students. NCLB (2001) is, in effect, creating a climate of controlled learning and sending a message to administrators, teachers, students, and parents that the school's job involves teaching to the standards--nothing more and nothing less. When students meet the standards, the schools have met their obligation to "educate."

I begin with these examples because, in the wake of NCLB (2001), students across the country in countless districts and classrooms experience the same quiet marginalization of their prior knowledge, and consequently of their future potential, as the standards have become the educational target. In fact, Johnson (2005) recently described a new law in Texas that rewards students who have shown proficiency on the state test with 2 weeks off from school (during the school year) while teachers concentrate on preparing the other students for the test.

In the following sections, I will address the effects of NCLB (2001) on educational practice and the subsequent marginalizing effect of these practices on the education of gifted children. For each issue raised, I will recommend actions that school counselors, as leaders and advocates, can take to help school districts meet the needs of students already identified as gifted and, equally important, students who, with appropriate educational opportunities, might emerge as gifted. Because NCLB mandates testing in major subject areas for students and using test results to determine if groups of students, teachers, and schools perform at proficient levels, schools have placed major emphases on testing, preparing for the tests, and aligning curricula, programs, course offerings, and support services with the tests. These efforts may he detrimental to overall educational processes, not only for high-performing students, but also for students from at-risk groups for whom NCLB purports to deliver quality educational opportunities (Gentry, in press). Most of these identified effects relate directly to the emphasis on testing and accountability resulting from NCLB.

EFFECT #1: FOCUS ON ONLY WHAT IS TESTED

A focus on only content tested leads to curricular reduction and an emphasis on test preparation, with test performance itself seen as the educational outcome. This focus on content raises the question of whether the tests accurately and fairly measure what they purport to measure: student achievement.

Curricular Reduction

Under NCLB (2001), districts must show adequate yearly progress on state assessments, which have been aligned with state standards. As a result, areas not assessed by the high-stakes tests have been eliminated by many districts--for example, electives, music, art, elementary science and social studies, foreign language, gifted programs, and even elementary recess (Amrein & Berliner, 2002: Clarke et al., 2002; …