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No Child Left Behind Helps Math Scores But Not Reading ANN ARBOR, MI (Michigan Radio) - The No Child Left Behind Program has boosted math achievement but not reading, according to a new study.

Researchers hope the study will help Congress decide what to do with the sometimes controversial program.

NCLB is intended to help the U.S. catch up with academic achievement in other countries - as well as help low-income and at-risk kids catch up to their peers.

In math, the program is helping.

University of Michigan researcher Brian Jacob co-authored the study. He says No Child Left Behind had "significant and positive" effects on fourth and eighth grade math scores, and especially on the scores of low-income kids in fourth grade.

That could help Congress decide whether to "end, or mend" the program.

Says Jacob, "I think in my mind, (it's) reason one shouldn't scrap it completely."

But reading scores were not improved by the program.

The study also found no evidence that No Child Left Behind encourages teachers to "teach to the middle", as some critics have suggested.

"What we found was not just improvement on average," says Jacob. "The very bottom kids were improving and even some of the higher kids, 75th, even the 90th percentile, seemed to be having some benefit from NCLB."

Jacob says children learn to read at home AND at school, but they learn math mainly in school. He says that may explain the program's failure to improve reading scores.

He says other national programs in the past couple of decades have also failed to boost reading scores.
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