No Child Left Behind: Why Race-Based Achievement Goals Violate the Equal Protection Clause

Abstract

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed in 2002 under President George W. Bush with the goal of increasing reading and math proficiency for all children in the United States by 2014. However, as time progressed, meeting this goal appeared improbable. Many states reacted by using waivers to set race-based achievement standards, differentiating proficiency goals among student subgroups,2 including racial minorities. This note argues that race-based proficiency goals violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. While race-based achievement goals may serve a compelling state interest in promoting educational proficiency, ultimately these goals are not narrowly tailored to achieve that interest and thus fail strict scrutiny. In part, these race-based goals are not narrowly tailored due to the potential negative psychological effects they cause minorities, particularly African and Latino Americans. Race-based standards act as state-approved stamps of inferiority on particular minority groups, which will likely have detrimental effects on their self-esteem3 and performance on 4 standardized tests. Part I provides a short history of NCLB, including some of the educational problems Congress targeted and the states' methods of implementing NCLB. Additionally, Part I explains how states have used waivers to escape their students' inevitable failure to meet NCLB's complete proficiency and also discusses the rise of race-based achievement goals by presenting arguments for and against these goals. Part II argues that race-based goals violate the Equal Protection Clause because they are not the narrowest means of achieving NCLB's proficiency requirements, which I support with psychological studies on African-American students. Lastly, Part III briefly introduces many equally-effective alternatives to race-based achievement