Ten years ago this week, Pres. George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law, marking a new era for elementary and secondary education in the United States. On this anniversary, it’s important to check in, assess where we are, and chart where we should go. Margaret Spellings, secretary of education under President Bush, recently stated, “Like it or hate it, the law has been a game-changer.” Much has been accomplished due to NCLB, notably an illumination of our education problem-areas, but there is still a lot of work to be done going forward.
The most notable success of NCLB has been the vast amount of data we’ve collected. Student performance, particularly for disadvantaged students, now matters and has become the focus of national and state education policies. The debate shifted from focusing on inputs to focusing on student academic outcomes. Parents are no longer in the dark about how their child performs relative to their peers or how their school stacks up against others in the state. For the past decade, educators and policymakers have been held accountable to parents, students, and taxpayers for increasing or not increasing student performance.
Along with the data came opportunities to do something about the results. We now know what groups of students are underperforming and what schools they attend. Many of these underperforming schools have increased student performance in reading and math and those that consistently fail to make academic gains have been restructured to bring in new leadership to boost academic performance. Children attending low performing schools can now receive free tutoring to help them reach grade level and parents can choose to send their children to a public charter school or higher performing public elementary or secondary school if their school consistently fails to improve. Parents were given numerous options, previously unavailable to them, to help increase their child’s academic performance.
However, it is not a perfect law. No law ever is. Two thirds of 4th- and 8th-grade students are still not performing at the “proficient” or “advanced” level in reading and math and only 75 percent of American students graduate from high school on time. Sadly, the data are worse for minority students, students with disabilities, and students who are English-language learners. The law’s adequate yearly progress accountability requirements are considered burdensome to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. So, where do we go from here?
Many have called for a repeal of NCLB and President Obama has proposed that only the worst performing 5 percent of public schools be held accountable and subject to consequences for poor academic performance. But pursuing this path is a disservice to future generations and taxpayers who are footing the bill.
Changes do need to be made to NCLB to make it less complicated and easier to implement, so that American students can compete with other nations in this global economy. The U.S. needs to regain its position as the best educated in the world. Suggested reforms that keep the numerous benefits of NCLB intact include allowing states to use a grading system based on NCLB data to determine which schools need the most help and which schools do not. Teachers should be recognized and paid better if they teach in low performing schools and increase student academic achievement, in contrast, the law should make it easier to get rid of teachers with poor student performance. Also, there need to be more choices for parents with students in low-performing schools like private and charter schools and the option to transfer to higher performing public schools in another district. In addition, we should stop punishing schools and districts if all of their students do not meet the established academic targets yet they achieve significant academic gains in each student group. Finally, the law should rein in the Secretary of Education’s power over states that force them to adhere to his specific policies in exchange for waivers to the law’s accountability provisions.
The accomplishments of NCLB must not be lost in the name of providing more flexibility to states and reducing the federal role in education. The past decade has illuminated where our problems are and given us the tools to help improve those schools, provide choices to parents, or restructure or close altogether poorly performing schools. In this next decade, we should proceed forward, not backward, and amend NCLB to ensure states, school districts, and educators are still held accountable for increasing student performance, narrowing the achievement gap, providing choices to parents, and rewarding teachers who raise student achievement. Our students deserve that much.
— Douglas Holtz-Eakin is president of the American Action Forum and Sally Lovejoy served as the Chief House Committee staff negotiator for the No Child Left Behind Act.
One problem with NCLB is that it punishes punishment.
If a school has too many discipline problems, it fails under that measure. The school can "succeed" by eliminating punishment it would otherwise hand out. Students aren't suspended in many places, not because they stopped misbehaving, but because the school cannot afford to punish them.
That's like measuring crime in each state by counting the number of people in jail, and punishing states for incarcerating lawbreakers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe NCLB has become a thing in itself. Its complex set of performance metrics is nothing more than food for the bureaucratic mill. A decade later and a trillion dollars later little has changed. Math and science remains a specialty for foreigners, despite the incremental improvements in test scores. The tests are the only thing that count. And many schools have figured out a way to game the system. Some have even been caught cheating. This was all predicted. Bush et als. pushed a longtime Progressive dream - centralized control of public education from the Beltway.
All of the so-called improvements come with a price tag that boggles the mind.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe all knew that NCLB was essentially a trade of money for set standards, and as soon as the money flow started, the standards would be ground down to nothing. This article successfully fails to mention the money involved, so it has been airbrushed out of the picture.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMissing from this analysis is any mention of one of the worst unintended consequences of NCLB: the shift in focus and resources away from middle- and high-performing students toward only low-performing (or "not proficient") students.
That the quality of an educational system is judged by how its least talented students perform is taken as a given. Should it be?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's more than fair point.
Let's say we had 50-states enact NCLB (where it should have been enacted in the first place), I think states setting minimum standards and accurately measuring performance of the schools relative to those standards is a good thing, even though - as you point out - it will focus, perhaps disproportionally, resources on those students who are least likely to excel.
The problem is that for any society to survive, there has to be a minimum amount of literacy. When we see cities like Baltimore and Detroit only graduating a quarter of all students, with about the same percentage actually being functionally literate, that's an enormous - perhaps existential - problem. So, I think an argument can be made that it's alright - in that kind of situation - to marshal as many resources to those who can't even read even though excellence at the very top would likely suffer as a result.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"In this next decade, we should proceed forward, not backward, and amend NCLB . . . ."
In other words, ignore the unconstitutionality of the federal government's meddling in education. In other words, more of the same.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRemember, folks - Ron Paul is a crazy extremist! Trust only Real Republicans like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney!
Only Real Republicans are guaranteed to expand the federal government by at least 5% every year!
[This announcement brought to you by The Beltway Republican Establishment.]
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree that the Dept. of Education is unconstitutional and a fool's errand. The brutal reality however, is that we are a nation of fools. If a GOP candidate, after winning the nomination, made the elimination of the Dept . of Education the centerpiece of their campaign, that candidate would lose 53-47 (at least).
Why? Women vote. Since the enactment of the 19th Amendment, we have seen an increasingly paternalistic federal government. That's not a coincidence. This dynamic has been exacerbated since 1964 when the Democrats enacted Phase II of their destroy the nuclear family agenda.
Women want to be taken care of (sorry women, it's biology). In the absence of a husband and father to their children, they'll take the next best thing: The federal government.
This is why the DoE, and so many other ridiculously ineffective (and unconstitutional) federal programs are not going away. Perhaps at best, they can be reduced. That's the political reality.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Women want to be taken care of (sorry women, it's biology). In the absence of a husband and father to their children, they'll take the next best thing: The federal government."
Say WHAT? Your family must have a bunch of wimpy women in it, because in half the families I know (city, country, small town, no town), it's the women who provide the starch in the family trajectory.
Notice I said 'in half the families I know'? Taking charge isn't an X or Y chromosome thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy aren't you also indicting the men who want someone, anyone, to take responsibility for their children, as long as it's not themselves?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy children have not been left behind. Then again, I'd sell my blood plasma, if it came down to it, to keep them out of the public school system.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Margaret Spellings, secretary of education"
There's your first problem. There should be no national SecEd.
"The most notable success of NCLB has been the vast amount of data we’ve collected."
Wow. That says a lot about the failure of the program right there. The *biggest* success is a bunch of data?
"Parents are no longer in the dark about how their child performs"
Which shouldn't be the issue, should it? How they (and others) stack up against an objective standard is really the proper metric. And, that shouldn't be a national, government-imposed standard.
"Children attending low performing schools can now receive free tutoring"
I call baloney on "free". They can get tutoring that *others* pay for.
"and parents can choose to send their children to a public charter school or higher performing public elementary or secondary school if their school consistently fails to improve."
I call baloney on this, too. Can kids in DC go to the school of their choice? Yeah, right.
"However, it is not a perfect law."
The problem isn't how perfect a law it is - it's the existence of the law at the federal level in the first place.
"The law’s adequate yearly progress accountability requirements are considered burdensome to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle."
To conservatives, because the law is based on a Lake Wobegon idea: all the kids are above average! We can make *every* kid meet standards! It's inherent in the name of the legislation: No Child Left Behind. I hate to tell you this, but there will *always* be kids left behind.
"But pursuing this path is a disservice to future generations and taxpayers who are footing the bill."
Continuing on as we are is the "disservice" to taxpayers *and* the future generations of taxpayers.
"the law should make it easier to get rid of teachers with poor student performance."
You're going to have to get rid of unions for that to happen, chuckles.
"Also, there need to be more choices for parents with students in low-performing schools"
Wait, didn't you just tell me how great the law was because it gave parents aaalllll these options if their kid is in a low-performing school?
"In addition, we should stop punishing schools and districts if all of their students do not meet the established academic targets yet they achieve significant academic gains in each student group."
See, here's that whole Lake Wobegon thing again. What if the school is maxed out on performance? What happens when there is (for those who live in the real world) no more room for progress?
"Finally, the law should rein in the Secretary of Education’s power over states"
If you end it there, I believe that agrees almost with my very first point.......
"The past decade has illuminated where our problems are"
Yes, they are where most of us already knew they resided: government and unions, and their tendency to walk hand-in-hand.
"In this next decade, we should proceed forward, not backward"
So, you're saying we should insist on "progress"? Hmmmm, which set of values have I heard insist on that term over and over. Don't think it was conservatives.
"Our students deserve that much."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, our students deserve a whole heck of a lot more.
Enjoyed the Fisking. Not much I could add to that.
I'd be very happy if NCLB would simply go away. While our high performing schools continue to tout their high test scores (especially for everybody but my WASPy white kids,) my very intelligent children still sometimes struggle to master some basic foundational concepts because we're moving too fast in order to be ready for those tests come Springtime.
Where do I go to get reimbursed for the math tutor I had to employ last summer?
When my son was in 5th grade, it became obvious that he hadn't completely mastered multiplication like he should have in 3rd grade. I had a conversation with his teacher. The upshot: "Yes, we know we're moving too fast and yes we should be spending more time on rote memorization and mastery. But we have to cover what's on the CRCT, and we can't risk our "School of Excellence" rating."
He'd been acing the tests every year. 98th percentile on almost everything. And yet he still struggled with the times tables through 12.
We're still trying to work off that deficit. Luckily there's still a little time before high school.
And don't get me started on the busybody letters they force the teachers to send once your child misses a few days of school. Thanks to NCLB, even the Advanced Placement kids get treated like potential truants with deadbeat parents.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are correct in that schools now neglect the basics. I went to Catholic schools growing up were we drilled with facts early on. Now my children get a few word problems in math each day. Often these problems require basic skills that they haven't been taught yet. One would get a problem requiring multiplication before being taught multiplication. My 7th grader just got an assignment that requires basic algebra, but hasn't been taught algebra yet. Instead the teacher suggests solving the problems by using word gimmicks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSuggestion: private/parochial school.
Yes, it costs money, but a good parochial school is quite modestly priced and worth every penny. What is more important that your child's education?
If you are truly poor, there are scholarships.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr homeschool. I don't move my son to the next lesson until he can consistently demonstrate proficiency in the current one. The schools, private or public, don't have that luxury.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd they REALLY don't have the luxury while under Federal Control. (Some private schools do, too, btw.)
We're fortunate (though I hate using that word, really; we're engaged, we've made good choices, and we care) that we can afford options that will make sure our children are well educated.
But back on topic, if NCLB is hampering GOOD schools (and ours are very good in this part of the city - as good or better than many private/parochial in the area, with music programs to rival performing art schools; that's important to us, as both of my children are musicians) then why should I, as a small gov't conservative, support it? Especially since I'm paying for it no matter what I do.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne big problem with education is the constant, relentless importation of poor Latinos across the border, who for historic reason, exhibit poor academic performance.
Reduce immigration and you will immediately see improvement in US public education.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNCLB, the child of the unholy union of George Bush and Ted Kennedy. How could any conservative, even a "compassionate" one, expect that to work?
And btw, I believe -- please correct me if I error -- that Reagan promised in the run-up to the 1980 election to get rid of the department of education, maybe one or two others. But it didn't happen.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSaying NCLB isn't "perfect" is like saying the hindenburg flight didn't go exactly as planned. The act has been a disastrous federal takeover of public education. Schools are buried under political bureaucracy wih almost nothing to show for it. Sure, there needs to be more accountability in public education. That doesn't mean that self-interested politicians should try to micromanage my classroom from Washington.
The way to fix public education is simple, and it's a solution that no politician wants to hear: get government out of the classroom and give schools back to the parents. THAT'S how you fix No Child Left Behind.
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