Recent reports lamenting poor test scores seem to suggest returning to the good old days of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The New York Times recently led the way, reporting, Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline.’
Bring NCLB back? When did it leave? Isn’t it a big part of why public schools have problems and students do poorly?
There’s no mention of the failure of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in the report. Why? Common Core had a huge impact on public education. The negative effects of NCLB and its Democratic counterpart, Race to the Top, along with CCSS, still haunt America’s public school students.
The authors make the mistake of focusing primarily on test scores and factors such as screen usage, while overlooking the inner workings of years-long, harmful policy effects. Both Jan Resseger and Diane Ravitch have described their concerns.
Here are some problems surrounding NCLB, what it did and continues to do:
Ignores Child Development
NCLB started kindergarten pressure, and now children jump a grade, according to a 2016 University of Virginia study. Teachers and parents repeatedly acknowledge how hard kindergarten has become. Seventy percent of children exhibit difficulties.
Where’s the reconsideration of expectations that are too high? When more is expected of children and development is ignored, some will still succeed, but many more will fail. Adding pressure to learn destroys the pleasure of learning. Children could shut down and may never get back their learning momentum.
Instead of raising expectations, there should be a stronger focus on child development at every age.
Pushes Heavy Phonics
NCLB still negatively affects how children are taught to read. Reading First (RF) is not the name but the Science of Reading (SOR) seems much the same with many of the same people profiting.
RF became the signature reading program, the cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. With a $6 billion price tag (a billion per year for six years), it promised “scientific proof.”
The claims were that every child would read by third grade. States had to apply for federal grants. Reading First centered around phonics. It became a scandal and the results showed that children learned decoding skills but did not do well with comprehension.
Now states sign on to the SOR with millions going to mostly unproven online programs. They don’t seem to be working well.
Makes Test Taking Punishing
For years, parents and teachers begged to reduce testing because they saw the harm in it. They fought back with United Opt Out, but it was hard to sustain such a fight.
It’s well understood that schools in lower socioeconomic areas are where students struggle the most. But tests shuttered those schools, forcing students into crowded conditions. Tests also were used to unfairly evaluate teacher performance. Cheating scandals dominated the news.
Still today, little consideration has been given to class sizes. Recess continues to be reduced or eliminated. Third grade continues to be the year of retention, proven to be harsh on children.
Ask parents who remove their students from public schools today, and my guess is many will say they hated testing. NCLB policies drove them out!
Destroys Teaching
NCLB has been unsupportive of professional teachers, raising their salaries, promoting alternative groups like Teach for America, Relay, and TNTP who rarely have teacher qualifications. All of these groups follow the plans of corporate school reformers and still impact public schooling.
While professional teachers had to jump through hoops to prove they were Highly Qualified, a ploy to disparage real teachers who already met certification requirements, those with five weeks of unclear training, stepped into classrooms pretending to be experts.
Currently, many well-meaning young people enter TFA out of college because they can not find jobs in their chosen careers. TFA looks good on resumes, like joining the Peace Corps, making America’s educational system look like a charity.
TFA locates mostly in public schools in lower economic areas. Some eventually lead school districts and state education programs!
Eliminates the Arts and More
With NCLB , the focus on raising standards and high stakes testing in reading and math drove the arts out, especially in lower socioeconomic schools. The arts were already often underfunded.
And that wasn’t all students lost.
Schools focused on meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on those reading and math tests, so their schools wouldn’t close. Elementary students received less instruction on subjects like geography, history, civics, and the sciences.
AYP is no longer used, but a 2024 Education Week report, Social Studies and Science Get Short Shrift in Elementary Schools. Why That Matters, show how students still overly focus on reading and often spend much less time on other valuable subjects.
Promotes Technology Over Teachers
NCLB initiated the push for “anytime, anyplace, anywhere learning,” and K-12 educational technology spending skyrocketed. In federal grants it’s annually estimated at $30 billion! Now the focus is on AI. NCLB is technology’s friend and pushed it’s use over teachers.
It’s reported that there are currently 700-800 online charter schools.
During the pandemic, school reformers initially seemed to think online learning would be a favorable byproduct of Covid (See:
Pricey online reading programs both to train teachers (replacing colleges of education?) and to instruct students continue to be gobbled up across the nation. Many are meant to teach the Science of Reading.
Many educators and parents have known about this push for technology in schools since NCLB for years.
Hurts the Democratic Party
Democrats were once the education party, but when Senator Edward M. Kennedy stood next to President George W. Bush as he signed NCLB, it marked the Democrats’ acceptance of Republican education policy.
One area Democrats opposed was school choice. Now they’re caving to that, too, even when they know parents who already send their children to private schools will get funds. Or that money often goes toward buying frivolous items. When school choice is on the ballot, it’s voted down.
Arne Duncan and the Democrats for Education Reform (DEFR) have embraced choice. Duncan blames public schools, as if he had nothing to do with how they are run today. Add New York Governor Kathy Hochul to that list.
Democrats complained about some corporate influence but signed on with others. They’ve hardly fought hard to protect children’s data; in fact, except for a few, they rarely discuss all the problems facing teachers and students.
Dems support charter schools, creating two systems, are fine with alternative fast-track teachers, and have done little to curb high-stakes standardized testing or the excessive funding for tech over the years.
____
If only NCLB had worked to lift America’s democratic public schools and support public school teachers. Instead, it continues the focus on A Nation at Risk a manufactured crisis to end public schools.
Bring NCLB back? This is a ploy to continue to destroy public education. Don’t be fooled.
References
Miller, C.C., Paris, F. & Mervosh, S. (2026, May 26). Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline.’ The New York Times, Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.html.
Schwartz, S. (2024). Social Studies and Science Get Short Shrift in Elementary Schools. Why That Matters. Education Week, 43(20).
Right on the money. Lots of warnings were issued at every level. Poorly conceived. Poorly executed. We continue to pay the price, young people especially.
And now, two generations of educators and policy makers, raised up under NCLB are waiting for some kind of next “big bang’ to fix everything as NCLB said it would. Wrong. We must innovate locally, defy the status quo, and build mental model prototypes that really work. We abandoned that work due to NCLB. Time to get back to it. Policy makers and ” think tanks” have NOTHING to offer us.
This is very true. As time passes, new parents accept what has been handed down to them. I see this with kindergarten expectations. Many parents demand that their children read before first grade; if not, the teacher has failed, and their child has reading problems.
I am so sad for the children in preschool and K who are receiving decoding direct instruction and don’t yet understand what reading is about.
Here in California, lifelong public educators and progressive champions are leading the charge for structured literacy.
Look at Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a veteran public school teacher who spent 16 years in the classroom while championing landmark progressive legislation for domestic violence survivors, foster youth, and immigrant communities.
When advocates like her are leading the way, it’s clear this isn’t about bringing back NCLB—it’s about finally executing an evidence-based approach that protects children from failed private equity experiments.
Groundbreaking data from the California Reading Coalition proves this out.
By utilizing standardized metrics to isolate variables, they compared like-subgroups to like-subgroups across hundreds of districts, focusing squarely on our state’s most vulnerable student populations.
The findings are devastatingly clear: balanced literacy has fundamentally failed them.
In fact, the Coalition’s Curriculum Report revealed that districts using Heinemann’s Lucy Calkins curriculum disproportionately cratered into the lowest-achieving quintile statewide—even though many of those districts actually served fewer high-need students.
While I appreciate the critique of NCLB’s legacy, this post completely misdiagnoses the corporate capture of our classrooms.
You frame the ‘Science of Reading’ as the primary corporate profit machine, while entirely ignoring the massive private equity empire that built, sold, and sustained ‘balanced literacy’ for decades.
Case in point: Heinemann—the publisher that made billions smuggling unproven three-cueing techniques into thousands of schools—is owned by Veritas Capital.
This is the exact same private equity giant whose portfolio simultaneously spans hypersonic missile design, nuclear-weapons research, and IT systems for ICE.
Talk about a lucrative play on government-dependent markets.
The ‘balance’ these mega-firms sold us was always a corporate illusion.
In practice, countless ‘balanced literacy’ classrooms relegate explicit phonics to a standalone add-on app that students are left to look at on a screen in the corner of the room while teacher-led time relies on unscientific guessing strategies.
The push for structured literacy isn’t a corporate NCLB retread; it’s a necessary grassroots rejection of a lucrative status quo that has failed millions of children.
Certainly, there are individuals around the country like the Assemblymember you mention, who are working on helping the homeless and immigrants and more. I applaud their efforts.
But what you leave out is important. Around the country public schools are closing. The push is for school choice despite the fact that it has been voted down repeatedly. This is what NCLB and even Reading First was about. Disparaging teachers with the eventual replacement of them with screens.
And you don’t seem to understand all the programs making millions, maybe billions, on the Science of Reading. Maybe you should read the writings of Rachael Gabriel who is a real reading researcher with a background in it instead of Emily Hanford who is not. https://rachaelreadingpolicy.substack.com/p/contracting-with-letrs-has-always
I’ve already addressed Heinemann. That you won’t consider the great authors published through them, shows how cultish and biased you have become when it comes to reading. I can’t speak to their recent takeover, nor am I an apologist for it.
SOR has been in the classroom for a long long time now, yet the scores don’t seem to be going up fast. And don’t cite the states that use retention, because real researchers know how that works.
You’re blaming balanced literacy for screen usage? Do you not know the many online programs that are SOR that states have been purchasing? Amplify is one. iReady another, and there are many many more.
Also, Three Cueing is a strategy. It should never be used alone, nor would competent teachers use it that way, but the obsession over it is both remarkable and harmful. I know parents who are worried about words and pictures.
Drop me a note again, Brian, when you have to start paying for what used to be free public education
Nancy, respectfully, I already pay.
That’s the entire point.
When a curriculum fails to teach children to read, the cost doesn’t disappear. It shifts onto families — onto parents hiring tutors, reteaching decoding at the kitchen table, paying for private assessments after schools insist everything is fine.
The families least able to do that are the ones hurt most. That is the real equity issue.
Which is why the old framing no longer holds.
Balanced literacy wasn’t a grassroots resistance to corporate reform. It became one of the most successful commercial curriculum ecosystems in modern American education — built on proprietary leveling systems, recurring assessments, consulting contracts, coaching pipelines, and subscription-like district dependence.
The private equity backstory predates Veritas by decades. In 2002, a consortium including Bain Capital, Blackstone, and Thomas H. Lee Partners acquired Houghton Mifflin specifically because curriculum adoption cycles offer something Wall Street loves: government-backed, recurring institutional revenue. By 2007, debt-leveraged financing had absorbed Harcourt and Heinemann under one roof — and the flagship balanced literacy products followed immediately after.
Districts weren’t buying books. They were entering operational ecosystems.
So “SOR companies profit” doesn’t really work as a rebuttal. The balanced literacy ecosystem was heavily monetized, aggressively marketed, and deeply consolidated under private equity.
And “competent teachers wouldn’t misuse three-cueing” is not a defense of a system. Systems are judged by how they perform at scale, under ordinary conditions, across large populations. If an approach repeatedly leaves children weak in decoding — especially vulnerable children — that is a systems problem.
Blanca Rubio isn’t a hedge-fund operative.
She’s a veteran public school teacher who spent 16 years in immigrant communities before entering public office. The California structured literacy movement is being led by people exactly like her: classroom teachers, dyslexia advocates, civil rights organizations, and progressive lawmakers who looked at the outcomes and concluded something wasn’t working.
The data isn’t ambiguous. The California Reading Coalition’s research shows districts using Lucy Calkins disproportionately clustered in the lowest-achieving quintile statewide, even controlling for student need.
That doesn’t vindicate every excess of NCLB. It doesn’t make every SOR product good. But it does mean the old story — that balanced literacy was simply the humane alternative to corporate reform — is increasingly hard to sustain against actual outcomes.
At some point, insisting the framework bears little responsibility starts sounding less like educational skepticism and more like institutional self-protection.
Parents already know. They paid for it themselves.
You’re combining so many issues here. I did not criticize Blanca Rubio and never said she was a hedge fund manager. I said I applaud her.
I don’t promote reading programs. Most teachers I have known use a combination of strategies and methods. But teachers should learn how to teach reading at a reputable university.
As I have stated before Heinemann has published many books that have provided teachers with great reading ideas and practical reading strategies that are effective. You have repeatedly ignored me when I state this. Nancie Atwell, Kylene Beers, Donald Graves (writing) and many more.
I’m also tired of hearing about Lucy Calkins. I never used her program, but she has admitted she didn’t focus on phonics enough. Where’s the information about Amplify that started with Rupert Murdoch? Finally, iReady is getting attention after years of parental complaints being ignored. There are dozens of other online programs being purchased by states that are unproven. Why don’t you look at those for a change?
You’re arguing with me, a teacher who chose to work with students with reading problems, and I taught a bushel load of phonics. I’ve repeatedly said it is important, and some children miss it when they should get it, but I also know it is being over-used. Seidenberg said as much recently, and pushed on children much too early. I know children who would have shut down with so much Direct Instruction in kindergarten. Your daughter apparently needed more, but I have no idea how to evaluate her school or what she had difficulty with.
California and the country for that matter has been saying the education system isn’t working for over thirty years! Read the writings of Stephen Krashen who has written much about reading in your state. They will keep saying this until public schools are all online charters or expensive private schools that Americans will have to pay for. That’s my prediction.
Here you go. Maybe this will keep you busy, Brian. Check out how many states have purchased these programs. They are all about selling stuff. https://nancyebailey.com/2022/11/29/connecting-big-business-with-the-science-of-reading-replacing-teachers-and-public-schools-with-tech/
Also, I appreciate the Reading League started by caring parents but I sometimes disagree with the programs they appear to support. Here are a few.
https://nancyebailey.com/2023/10/17/wheres-evidence-from-the-reading-leagues-corporate-sponsors/
And this popped up tonight. Not everyone is so happy about education in CA. https://ethnicstudiescouncilatuc.substack.com/p/the-end-of-education-is-here?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e233_tv2_tp1_a1demoo415t2z1&fbclid=IwY2xjawSEb85leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFHWENQd1NLY0MxZlM4Umd4c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsIwFhM9jxYeder5-4fkYCVkvfYEC6Huw_TVjPvO-15WuC_VgKYbUybzWe2k_aem_D846UThGLrQoG_6-5hGWrA&triedRedirect=true
Nancy,
I think we’re finally getting to the heart of our disagreement.
You say I’m combining many issues. I would argue that all of these issues are connected by a single question:
How do public institutions determine whether they are succeeding or failing?
What continues to trouble me is not your criticism of particular programs, companies, tests, or reforms.
It is your consistent skepticism toward nearly every form of evidence that might be used to evaluate them.
Several years ago, when I shared firsthand observations from my own district, my own community, and my own experience as a parent, your response was simple:
“Sorry, Brian. I cry BS.”
That exchange has stayed with me.
Not because I was offended, but because it revealed something important.
I was not citing a vendor study.
I was not citing a hedge fund.
I was not repeating a talking point.
I was describing what I was seeing with my own eyes.
Parents lined up outside tutoring centers.
Families paying privately for services schools were not providing.
District-level outcomes that looked very different once demographic factors were examined.
Yet even that evidence was dismissed.
Since then, I have watched the same pattern repeat itself.
Parent observations are questioned.
State-level analyses are questioned.
Testing is questioned.
Evidence standards are questioned.
Accountability systems are questioned.
Implementation studies are questioned.
Eventually one has to ask: what evidence would actually count?
Because if parents do not count, if outcome data does not count, if state analyses do not count, if implementation reviews do not count, and if controlled studies do not count, then what remains besides institutional authority and professional judgment?
That is where I believe public education becomes vulnerable.
Not because teachers are bad people.
Not because public schools are bad institutions.
But because institutions that are not accountable eventually become accountable primarily to themselves.
You often point to poverty and inequality.
I agree those matter enormously.
But I think you unintentionally make my argument for me.
Affluent families do not passively accept instructional failure.
They buy alternatives.
They hire tutors.
They pay for assessments.
They pay for intervention.
They move districts.
They choose private schools.
They purchase a second education.
I know because I did exactly that.
When I became convinced my daughter was not learning to read adequately, I didn’t write a blog post. I wrote checks.
I wrote checks for assessments.
I wrote checks for tutoring.
I wrote checks for intervention.
Eventually, I wrote checks for private school.
Why?
Because the public school system I trusted repeatedly refused to be accountable.
When I raised concerns, I was reassured.
When I asked questions, I was reassured.
When I pointed to outcomes, I was reassured.
And when those reassurances turned out to be wrong, it was my family—not the institution—that paid the price.
I discovered something important: accountability suddenly appeared the moment I became the customer.
The tutor was accountable because I could stop paying.
The intervention provider was accountable because results mattered.
The private school was accountable because I could leave.
The child still learned to read.
The family simply absorbed the cost.
The family without those resources cannot.
Which means ineffective reading instruction is not merely an educational problem.
It is an inequality amplifier.
Wealth does not eliminate reading failure. It privatizes the solution.
The affluent can often route around institutional failure.
The poor cannot.
Which means instructional quality matters most for the children with the fewest alternatives.
So when advocates dismiss outcome data, reject accountability measures, or resist evidence standards, I worry they are unintentionally protecting a status quo whose costs fall disproportionately on the families least able to escape it.
The children most dependent on public schools are precisely the children who can least afford for those schools to be wrong.
And this is why I think California has moved so decisively in this direction.
Leaders such as Blanca Rubio, Kareem Weaver, and Todd Collins did not arrive at structured literacy because they are enemies of public education.
They arrived there because they concluded that poor children deserve the same evidence-based instruction that affluent families can purchase for themselves.
That is not an attack on public education.
It is an argument that public education should be accountable to the public.
And without evidence, oversight, measurement, and accountability, I do not see how that is possible.
Brian, I’m sorry you were offended by my calling your statement B.S. I should not have said that, and I apologize.
For starters, please look up all those individuals you mentioned and their connection to Amplify and digital instruction. For years, my concern has been the replacement of teachers with tech and the data collected on children. There’s little independent proof surrounding Amplify and other online programs. One of the most popular posts on my blog is by Betty Casey from Tulsa Kids about Amplify. https://nancyebailey.com/2020/01/24/problems-surrounding-amplifys-core-knowledge-language-arts-to-teach-reading/
You say public schools are not accountable. Assessments and scores have pushed so-called accountability in public schools for years! Those schools are constantly scrutinized, as with the NAEP results. Many public schools have closed. Testing is necessary, but not punishing tests that shutter schools rather than improve them. Which is why parents started an opt-out movement years ago.
I’m not sure why you decided your public school was not addressing your daughter’s needs. As a parent and teacher, I have had my share of issues with public schools too. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be improved and well-funded. I have also been offered positions in two prestigious private schools to work with students with LD, and I was under the assumption that if my students did not make progress, they would be dismissed. I thought they were good schools, but I did not take those jobs for a variety of issues. Public schools, however, the ones I’ve worked in, never rejected any student with learning problems.
Remember when I mentioned hearsay and anecdotal information? I have no assessment information on how private schools are doing other than what parents believe. Parents like to believe that what they pay for will work. Or if the media says it works, it must. Research I have read has shown that private schools are no better than public schools when you consider selectivity. Most private schools reject students they don’t want, as I noted.
Also, Senator Bill Cassidy’s wife has a charter school for students with dyslexia, and for years it had an F rating noted by The Times-Picayune. Students did poorly, but parents still believed in the school despite not moving the needle with student progress. Senator Cassidy would brag that their school was an example for public schools. Talk about B.S.
I read a report the other day that public schools may look very different next fall due to the push for choice. Many are closing due to a lack of funding and absenteeism. I predict that once that happens, vouchers will be next to go, and all parents will pay for unregulated schooling, likely cyber. If you’ve got money and can get your children into a quality private school, good. If they accept them. Many children with learning difficulties could be rejected, especially if they have behavior issues. It isn’t truly choice if the school rejects your kids.
My next post will be about the Science of Reading and online instruction. I hope you’ll read it.
Your diagnosis is way off. I worked in two districts in my career. I Charlotte-Mecklenburg we went whole hog into Reading First at the turn of the century. Our test scores kept going down and we re-segregated from a district o 18 Title 1 schools to 105. In Huntsville, Alabama we were all about phonemic awareness and putting a device in every students lap. We experienced 7 straight year so decline.
The problem is that we keep focusing on reading strategies while ignoring the realities of inequality. Any school above the 75th percentile in family income scores well above the median NAEP results. Those below do not. The mistake we make is that we aren’t willing to invest in the public schools at the level that would be required to enhance student opportunity for all. Take a deep dive into the data. It’s about the money.
Bingo! This is exactly what troubles me about the Science of Reading and ignoring the many variables that make teaching difficult. I wish they would put some of that energy in ensuring that ALL schools have school libraries.
Thanks, Paul.
Paul,
I actually think you’re making an important point about inequality.
I just draw a different conclusion from it.
If wealthier communities consistently outperform poorer ones, we should ask why.
Part of the answer is obvious.
Parents with resources don’t simply accept failure.
They buy alternatives.
In California, this is an open secret.
When public schools fail to teach reading effectively, affluent parents hire tutors.
They pay for assessments.
They pay for intervention.
They pay for educational psychologists.
They move districts.
They choose private schools.
They supplement.
They compensate.
They purchase a second education.
I know because I did exactly that.
The child still learns to read.
The family simply absorbs the cost.
But what happens to the family that cannot write those checks?
What happens to the child whose parents cannot afford a reading specialist, a private assessment, a summer intervention program, or private school tuition?
That child remains dependent on the quality of instruction provided by the public system.
Which is why I find it so strange when poor reading outcomes are used as an argument against accountability.
To me, they are an argument for accountability.
Bad reading instruction is not merely an educational problem.
It is an inequality amplifier.
The affluent route around institutional failure.
The poor cannot.
Wealth does not eliminate reading failure. It privatizes the solution.
Which means instructional quality matters most for the children with the fewest alternatives.
So when advocates dismiss outcome data, reject accountability measures, or resist evidence standards, I worry that they are unintentionally protecting a status quo whose costs fall disproportionately on the families least able to escape it.
If inequality is the concern, then ensuring that every child receives reading instruction grounded in evidence should be one of the first priorities, not one of the last.
The children most dependent on public schools are precisely the children who can least afford for those schools to be wrong.
And this is why I think the political landscape has shifted so dramatically in California.
The push for structured literacy isn’t coming primarily from conservatives, business groups, or outside reform organizations.
It is increasingly being led by classroom teachers, dyslexia advocates, civil-rights leaders, and progressive policymakers.
Leaders such as Blanca Rubio, Kareem Weaver, and Todd Collins have helped build a broad coalition around a simple proposition: children deserve reading instruction that is transparent, accountable, evidence-based, and effective.
That is not a rejection of public education.
It is an attempt to strengthen it.
And increasingly, that is becoming the progressive consensus in California.
This article is SO on target, and the biggest disgrace of all of that KNOWLEDGEABLE Educators apparently have very little input into our Nation’s policies on Education. It’s very clear that certain entities like Testing companies, Technology and other money-making enterprises hold the power.
The biggest question is why aren’t there more Political entities willing to challenge the circumstances described in American Education? So much of our future – that of our Children and the Nation’s welfare and much of the World’s depends on Education.
Amen, Pamela, and thank you for your comment. Teachers have been gaslit.
So few teachers are aware that at the time of NCLB, the Bush family and the McGraw family (publishers of education materials) had been business partners for some 80 years. The business of education indeed!
Neil Bush started Ignite!
Jeb started the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which had the unfortunate acronym FEE – now called ExcelinEd.
Here’s an oldie but goodie link:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2006/08/mcgraw-hill-bush-graft-and-twig.html
Great point, Christine. I think this is a real problem. That younger parents and teachers are not aware of this history. If their public school is not functioning well, they might not be aware of what’s behind it.