Attainable Goals? The Spirit and Letter of the No Child Left Behind Act on Parental Involvement

Now in its third full school year of implementation, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has been drawing praise and blame. It has been praised for its goals of increasing all students' learning, requiring disaggregated data to monitor the progress of major subgroups of students, and having high-quality teachers in all schools. It has been criticized for overemphasizing the importance of standardized achievement tests, setting unrealistic time lines for clearly unreachable goals, and underfunding its requirements. Although most attention has been paid to NCLB's requirements for annual achievement tests and high-quality teachers, the law also includes important requirements for schools, districts, and states to organize programs of parental involvement and to communicate with parents and the public about students' achievement and the quality of schools. In this article, the author offers her perspectives on NCLB's requirements for family involvement; provides a few examples from the field; suggests modifications that are needed in the law; and encourages sociologists of education to take new directions in research on school, family, and community partnerships.