A DELPHI STUDY OF TEACHERS’ AND PROFESSIONALS’ PERCEPTIONS REGARDING THE IMPACT OF THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LEGISLATION ON SECONDARY AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the perceptions of secondary agriculture teachers and education professionals of Illinois regarding the potential impacts of the No Child Left Behind legislation on secondary programs. The Delphi technique for obtaining group consensus was employed to accomplish the stated objective of the study. A panel of 20 agriculture teachers and in-service education professionals were purposively selected to serve as the expert participants in the study. The panel received a series of four mailed questionnaires including a free response question, a Likert-type questionnaire, and two questionnaires indicating levels of agreement with specific themes. The impacts of the No Child Left Behind legislation as identified by secondary agriculture teachers and education professionals were: the certification of provisional agricultural teachers, core academic accreditation, budget constraints, loss of agriculture teachers, decrease of agricultural courses taught, loss of Perkins funding, loss of state career and technical education funding, elimination of career and technical education programs, career and technical education courses being raised to same level as core academic credit, students being discouraged to take agricultural courses, and more application of core academics in the agricultural classroom.