Student achievement in Tennessee has increased since No Child Left Behind went into effect, but the national law might not be the reason, experts announced today.

“It is not possible to make direct link between test scores ... and No Child Left Behind,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy. “In schools, there are so many things going on — state reforms, local reforms, NCLB. You can’t isolate out the effects, and there’s no control group because NCLB affects all children.”

The center, a private, nonprofit organization that analyzes educational reforms, released this morning the results of a study looking at six years of test data across all 50 states.

Although there were far more instances of achievement gaps narrowing between student groups, Mr. Jennings said, in Tennessee, that gap widened for both poor students and black students in elementary reading test scores

State test data is used by the federal government to mark progress under No Child Left Behind.

In general, reading and math achievement went up in most states, according to the report, with larger gains in elementary and middle school test scores.

For complete details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.

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