September 26, 2007--No Congressman Left Behind

There’s decent news and not-so-decent news: the latest results from the annual nationwide testing of student achievement shows that for fourth graders, math and reading scores continue to rise, but that reading test results at the eighth grade level continue to be flat while math gains are still modest. (See linked article from the NY Times.) This news comes at a time when the No Child Left Behind legislation is up for reauthorization. Recall, it was the initial bill approved by Congress, acting in a bipartisan way, and signed by President Bush during the first few months of his initial term. Ah, how that seems like forever ago. Which is not to say that NCLB was at the time not controversial. The anti-testing establishment, Fair Test among others, rose to oppose it since it required annual achievement testing in all public schools at every grade level. They claimed that with the proliferation of high-stakes testing teachers would dumb-down their lessons and, at the expense of more authentic kinds of teaching, would spend too much class time prepping kids for the exams. And the national teachers unions opposed the bill because of its accountably features—using the test results, every single public school in the U.S. would be expected to reach mandated achievement goals and, if they were unable to do so, after a number of years, parents would have the right to remove their children from failing schools and enroll them in others that were meeting the NCLB goals. In addition, unless school districts utilized approved curricula and teaching methods they risked losing federal funding. But in spite of this assault from the very powerful Democrat-supporting teachers union lobbyists, Senator Kennedy and Congressman George Miller had the courage to say that business as usual was not getting the job done, especially for low-income and minority students, and they helped shepherd the bill through both houses. That was then and this is now. Now, the Democrats control all of Congress and, as the reauthorization works its way along, the previous opponents of NCLB see another opportunity to sack its testing and accountability provisions. They are making the same arguments as six years ago but are now also saying that, based on the national test results, it is a failure. Whatever gains are showing up, in the words today of the American Federation of Teachers, “were rising faster before No Child Left Behind was enacted.” Ted Kennedy, though, is basically hanging tough, saying that the results are “encouraging.” I say “basically” since a number of key internal aspects of the reauthorized version of the legislation are in danger of being whittled away under pressure from the AFT and others. Three examples: The current bill requires “universal proficiency” by 2014. This is undoubtedly an unreachable goal but nonetheless helps keep school districts’ feet to the fire. Many in the education establishment would like to see that deadline relaxed or even eliminated. As one way to reduce the use of reading and math proficiency scores as the sole criteria to measure individual school’s progress toward the NCLB goals, the reauthorized bill may ultimately include language that would allow schools to use so-called “multiple measures” when assessing student achievement—a complex formula would grant elementary schools a 15 percent credit and high schools 25 percent through which they could offset poor reading and math results by claiming they were making other kinds of academic progress. And, as a way to reduce the federal Department of Education’s role in holding schools and districts accountable, Congress, again, pressured by the unions and state education commissioners, Congress is considering adding a 15-state pilot program to NCLB which would, in effect, allow the states themselves to determine if their schools are doing well. Taken together, if written into law, this would clearly be back to the future. Or a version of allowing the fox back into the proverbial chicken coop.