On January8, 2002, George W. Bush signed into law his signature domestic proposal, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act known in this incarnation as No Child Left Behind. Today, even as the eyes of the nation are largely focused on what will happen in New Hampshire, I want to take a moment to look back, to remind us of where we now are, to briefly examine what the impact has been and what the future may hold.
I will refer to several items in the news, the views of several key proponents of the law, including the President and the man without whom it would not have become law, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the most recent Court decision, and offer a few comments of my own.
I invite you to continue reading.
Yesterday President Bush spoke about NCLB in a Chicago school. The AP story on his appearance begins with a typical Bush expression:
President Bush said Monday that if Congress doesn't reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education law, he'll make as many changes as he can on his own.
Bush also said that if Congress does renew the law but weakens it in the process, he'd ''strongly oppose it and veto it''
From later in the story we read
Bush laid out what he said were some changes he would consider making administratively if lawmakers fail to act: ensuring ''that a high school degree means something,'' increasing flexibility for states and school districts, providing extra help for struggling schools, and devising an accurate system for measuring high school dropout rates.
And in response to Kennedy's complaint that the President failed to provide the money necessary to fund NCLB, a point made in his op ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post entitled How To Fix 'No Child', Secretary of Margaret Spellings, who traveled with the President, expressed her disagreement, noting that Federal education spending is up 46% since Bush took office, which while I note is true, does not address the issue of the additional costs now occurring because of NCLB, which have grown far faster than has the additional Federal assistance.
Sen. Kennedy still argues that the law is worth saving, a position with which increasingly those in education disagree. He believes there have been some successes, and argues
The stakes are high. At issue is a goal that Democrats have long embraced as a fundamental principle of our party -- opportunity for all Americans. Strengthening the nation's schools is essential for preparing our citizens to compete and win in the global economy. We in Congress have an obligation to parents, to teachers and, most of all, to schoolchildren across America to draw the right lessons from these past six years with the No Child Left Behind Act and put school reform on a stronger path for the future.
Kennedy offers a list of what he thinks is needed to make No Child Left Behind fulfill its promise:
But the law still needs major changes to bring out the best in all children. The process for rating troubled schools fails to reward incremental progress made by schools struggling to catch up. Its one-size-fits-all approach encourages "teaching to the test" and discourages innovation in the classroom. We need to encourage local decision makers to use a broader array of information, beyond test scores, to determine which schools need small adjustments and which need extensive reforms.
The act doesn't do enough to support teachers as the professionals they are by training and mentoring them and by placing good teachers in the schools that need them most. It fails to deal with the dropout crisis, which puts large numbers of young students beyond the reach of the American dream. It doesn't involve parents enough in helping their children succeed. It falls short in achieving smaller classes so that teachers can give children the one-on-one attention they need.
Most of all, the law fails to supply the essential resources that schools desperately need to improve their performance. We can't achieve progress for all students on the cheap. No child should have to attend crumbling schools or learn from an outdated textbook, regardless of where he or she lives. It's disgraceful that President Bush has failed to include adequate funding for school reform in his education budgets. Struggling schools can do only so much on a tin-cup budget.
And the issue of funding has again arisen legally. Today's NY Times is one place in which we can read about an important decision in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati:
School districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont joined with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, in their 2005 lawsuit. In it, they argue that Ms. Spellings had violated the United States Constitution in enacting the law by requiring states and school districts to spend local money to administer standardized tests and to meet other federal requirements.
The suit was built in part around a paragraph in the law that says no state or district can be forced to spend its money on expenses the federal government has not covered.
While the suit had been dismissed in District Court, the appellate panel, by a 2-1 vote,
sent the suit back to the lower court, arguing that a passage of the Constitution known as the spending clause requires Congress to give states clear notice of their financial liabilities when they accept federal financing that may fall short of the full costs of complying with requirements from Washington.
"Because we conclude that N.C.L.B. fails to provide clear notice as to who bears the additional costs of compliance, we reverse the judgment of the district court," the ruling said. It also noted that because the states had been required to spend state and local money to meet requirements of the federal law, their "injury has already occurred and is ongoing."
While that decision might hearten opponents of the law, and even supporters such as Senator Kennedy, I would not be surprised to find that opinion to be overturned should the case be reheard en banc or on appeal to the Supreme Court. Although I am not lawyer, I think all the arguments that the law is an unfunded mandate are clearly wrong. The requirements that lead to additional state funding that is not reimbursed are not a mandate, but rather a condition of aid. No state is required to accept Title I funds, to which those requirements are attached. Not having read the opinion, it is possible that the focus on the lack of specifity of the costs of compliance is a narrow enough issue to find the law flawed without having to address the specific issue of whether it is an unfunded mandate. But the Supreme Court in general is loathe to support a position that action is necessary unless there is real harm to a party, and given that no state has to take Title I money, they still might reason that regardless of the lack of specificity is not of importance: any state feeling burdened by it can simply choose not to participate in the Title I program. Given that the Federal government has never fulfilled its 40% share of special education funding under the mandates imposed by Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, the acronym for the special education program), to agree with the Circuit Court on this case would seem to open the door for additional lawsuits and major increases in the Federal share of K-12 educational spending, and I do not see 5 votes on the current Court for such a position.
As a classroom teacher and a sometimes writer on educational policy, I am afraid that I find myself in disagreement with Senator Kennedy. I believe the basic structure of No Child Left Behind is so badly flawed that it is beyond fixing. The provision that requires all students to be 100% proficient by 2014 in reading and math is ridiculous, and everyone knew impossible to achieve. Well before then schools would be found to be failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) towards that goal, and multiple years of such failure lead under the law to punitive measures the make the schools appear even worse, taking away from them the funds necessary to make improvements.
Senator Kennedy and the President both argue that there have been signs of improvement. I find this line of reasoning remarkably like the justifications offered by the President and people like Sen. McCain that the surge is working: they point only at those statistics which support their contention while ignoring the clear evidence of severe damage elsewere. They attribute any success to the actions they support even when there is clear evidence of decision and actions (or deliberate inactions) by others that also contribute to the picture for which they wish to take credit.
Test scores MAY go up, but that is not an indication that learning has improved. We are comparing apples and oranges rather than tracking the same students, and even were we to track the same students by using a growth model, that does not mean that we are measuring anything beyond improvement on test scores. The desire for simple metrics to "prove" success have lead to a distortion of what is being measured, something social science research has known about for year, and about which many notable figures have written.
And we have NOT in reality closed the gap. We may see in some cases schools with large numbers of minority or poor children whose test scores go up, but we usually see in those same schools a reduction of access to things like poetry, art, music, and even physical education - Linda Perlstein wrote cogently about this in her book Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade
It always saddens me when those in or seeking positions of leadership are unwilling or unable to admit their mistakes. That keeps our nation from being able to make the changes necessary to improve our situation. And it locks leaders into increasingly untenable positions that aggravate the situation their actions and decision purport to be addressing. I am afraid this is very much the case with No Child Left Behind. I am not surprised as the intransigence of the President: what I quote from the beginning of the story about his appearance in Chicago is of a piece with all of his actions - on the war, torture, signing statements . . . I am ver disappointed in Senator Kennedy, whom in general I greatly admire for his commitment to those in America less well off. And I fear that the position he is taking now merely delays the inevitable, the need to totally redo our basic educational law, which in its current incarnation is known as NCLB. In the interim, whether reauthorized with some modifications or with the clock on the destructive punitive sanctions continuing run as federal aid to education is funded through a continuing resolution, our students, teachers, and schools will continue to be damaged by this badly flawed law.
Some anniversaries are worth celebrating. On this 6th anniversary of the signing into law of No Child Left Behind, our nation would be far better served if we acknowledged that after 6 years it has become clear that the law needs to be replaced. Perhaps we can only hope that after the election a new president and Congress will move swiftly to ameliorate the damage that will in the meantime continue.
Peace.