Failing Grade
A bad education bill.

By NR Editors
From “The Week,” December 31, 2001, issue, of National Review

resident Bush delivered on his top domestic priority by winning congressional approval of a 1,200-page bipartisan education-reform bill. The actual improvement of the schools looks to be a little longer off. The bill requires states to assess student progress annually in the lower grades, and from time to time during high school. Annual spending on some 65 federal programs is boosted from $18 billion to $26 billion. A modest provision, which would have allowed seven states broad flexibility in spending federal funds, was dropped from the final bill. There are no federal rewards or sanctions based on the assessments, but all students are expected to be proficient in basic subject matters in twelve years. As the legislation went through Congress, the standards for proficiency were weakened: The originally proposed standards would have exposed most of the schools in Texas and North Carolina as failures, and these are the very states that proponents of the bill uphold as exemplars of reform. The only effective reform of our schools is likely to come from choice and competition-a lesson that Bush and Congress, by embracing phony reform, have underscored.