Failure of No Child Left Behind

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2008)

A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.

...60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate
...The discrepancy between the official dropout rates, in the 2 to 3 percent range, and the actual rates can be attributed to the state's method of counting...
The study has been published in the peer-reviewed policy journal "Educational Policy Analysis Archives"