August 30, 2005, 4:00 p.m.
Leaving Republicans Behind

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appeared in the March 8, 2004, issue of National Review.

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, Republicans ranked more than 20 points behind Democrats on which party best handled the issue of education. In 2002, Republicans were delighted to find that that deficit had vanished — thanks to President Bush's advocacy for his landmark education-reform plan, No Child Left Behind. Today, however, while the president's personal ratings still have him at the head of the class on education, his fellow Republicans have been left behind: Democrats once again enjoy a double-digit advantage on education, and the plan's bipartisan support didn't survive the Iowa caucuses. To curry favor with many unhappy school officials and the teachers' unions, Democratic candidates have been championing local control of schools and hammering the same reform plan they voted for. Ted Kennedy, whose crucial support made Bush's school-accountability proposal a reality, refuses to be accountable for its effects, angrily blaming Republican parsimony for shortchanging his vision. If opposition to the reform grows and the sweeping plan fails to deliver on its ambitious goals, Democrats will strengthen their advantage on education issues — and Republicans alone will be held responsible for the most unpopular regime Washington ever attempted to impose on our public schools.

The federal government has traditionally made only a relatively modest contribution toward meeting the state and local costs of education; it has thus been referred to as a "seven-percent investor" in an enterprise largely owned by others. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) plan leverages that investment to expand the federal role in education and impose requirements that affect every public school in America. With the admirable aim of boosting the achievement of all students, holding schools responsible for academic progress, and clearly informing parents about schools' comparative success, Washington now presides over a new system of state standards and transparent accountability.

THE HEAVY FEDERAL HAND

Conservatives were early critics of NCLB, objecting to its higher spending and federal mandates on local schools and to the absence of any provision for private school choice. They were in the small minority when the bill passed the House by a wide margin (381-41), with more Democrats than Republicans voting in favor of it. NCLB has not been met with the same overwhelming support back home and conservatives who voted nay are pleased that they did. Rep. Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, says, "I have no regrets at all. I'm still waiting to meet someone in my district who disagrees with that vote." A half-dozen states are considering refusing federal funds to avoid the reform's requirements, and local education officials are appealing to their congressmen for relief from the law's requirements. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, also opposed the bill and recounts a recent attack on the plan by Howard Dean that reminded him of what Republicans once said about education. "Michigan schools are a lot better off being run by people in Michigan than by bureaucrats like George Bush and Tom DeLay," Dean (no doubt angrily) told his audience.

Hoekstra points out that Dean's charge is far harder to counter than Democratic claims that the reform is under-funded: "In the last three to five years, Republicans have put more money into education than Democrats ever dreamed of putting into the Education Department." Under the Bush administration, federal spending on education has increased 48 percent. Overall school spending had already increased by 15 percent during the 1990s, from about $8,000 per pupil in 1990 to more than $9,200 in 2000 — with no discernable impact on student achievement. Still, even the president has come in for some direct lobbying on the need to provide higher funding for his reforms. When he recently appeared at a high school in Pennsylvania, the local superintendent sharing the stage chided him, "We want to thank you for the push, but we need a little more money." Bush replied that he thought the federal government was doing enough on funding and pointed out, "Most funding should be at the state and local level in order to make sure you've got local control of the schools."

But on this score, the law's critics on both left and right think it infringes too much on local prerogatives. NCLB requires states to test all students in reading and math each year in grades three through eight. The states design the tests and set the minimum proficiency levels. Targets for student proficiency based on the law's formula must be steadily met until the 2013-14 academic year, when all students must be proficient. Because, literally, no child is to be left behind, certain demographic subgroups, including racial and ethnic minorities and disabled children, must also meet the targeted goals. Schools can also fail to meet the requisite target, regardless of test scores, if fewer than 95 percent of students from any designated group take the test.

If a school doesn't make adequate progress for two years, more money is provided. If the school receives Title I funds for disadvantaged students, students in the failing school must be allowed to move to another public school in the same district. Progressively stronger sanctions for persistently failing schools include, after five years of failure, reconstituting the school and replacing its administrators and teachers. Teachers'-union rules remain in effect, however, so nonproductive teachers in failing schools could wind up simply moving to another school.

In creating a reform based on testing and accountability, Washington's landmark proposal was actually an exercise in playing follow-the-leader. In 1996, only ten states had adopted new testing and accountability reforms. By 2000, only 13 states didn't have some version of the reform in place. But the experience with these state reforms indicates that they are not accompanied by a repeal of the law of gravity. Paul E. Peterson, a Harvard researcher and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes that "accountability systems tend to soften over time. They get legislated like lions and implemented like lambs." In response to the opinion of Peterson and other skeptics, detailed in over a dozen essays in a Brookings Institution study, "No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Accountability," secretary of education Rod Paige says: "I have a prediction of my own. And that prediction is that we're going to hold the line against softer accountability." Paige is determined to resist a powerful trend. As the Brookings study explains, "Tough accountability has vague, general support from broad constituencies, but, as its coercive teeth begin to bite, the individuals and groups most directly affected complain bitterly. To ease political opposition, standards are lowered, exceptions granted, and penalties postponed." Under NCLB, complaints will be directed at distant Washington bureaucrats, with state officials, once on the defense about their own plans, now playing offense against federal officials.

GYRATING STANDARDS AND OTHER OXYMORONS

States modified their existing plans to meet the new federal requirements, grappled with the challenge of collecting test results on every student from each school, and made preliminary reports on their progress to the Education Department last year. (If states fail to comply with the law's reporting requirements, they risk losing federal education funds.) About 26,000 out of 93,000 schools were found to have failed to make "adequate yearly progress." For some Title I schools, this was the second year that goals weren't met. A survey of 41 urban school districts found that 18,000 students, fewer than 2 percent of those eligible to take advantage of the choice provision, transferred to another public school last fall. More than half of the 44,000 students who requested transfers were turned down. Although federal officials insist that every student eligible for a transfer "must have that opportunity," some states can be counted on to figure out a way not to comply. In California, for example, the state official charged with compliance confusingly argues that while a school district cannot use the excuse that no room exists in the preferred school, extra space need not be created; she advises her districts merely to "document that they made the effort."

Award-winning schools face a different problem when they, too, are found to be failing. State officials are embarrassed, and parents are left wondering whom to believe. Florida governor Jeb Bush bucked his state's teachers' unions and instituted a statewide test in 1999 that permits students in persistently failing schools to transfer to either another public school or a private school. He has been heralding the demonstrable increases in test scores: Florida's fourth graders score in the top ten nationwide in writing, and fourth and eighth graders post reading gains well above the national average. Last fall, however, Education Week reported that in preliminary NCLB results nearly 90 percent of Florida's public schools had failed to make "adequate yearly progress" in the previous academic year. And Florida is not alone: North Carolina, Kentucky, and Louisiana all had seen boosts in test scores under their state reforms — yet face having the majority of their schools found failing. Former Louisiana governor Mike Foster is still looking for a way to reconcile what he regards as his successful state reform with the demands of NCLB. "States still have some rights," the Republican has declared. "I have a lot of friends in Washington. If they don't give us some flexibility in the law, I'll tell you this: We won't go quietly."

The preliminary results under NCLB have varied wildly across the states. In Minnesota, only 8 percent of schools failed the grade. More than half the public schools in Delaware, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania failed. Writing in Education Week last fall, the former president of the American Educational Research Association explained the "staggering" differences in results among the states by pointing out that some states have lowered the scores necessary for students to be declared "proficient," making it far easier to show the requisite "progress" in future years.

State flexibility has also led to dramatic discrepancies in state performance when it comes to meeting some of NCLB's other demands. States are allowed to create their own definitions of what qualifies as a "persistently dangerous" school that students must be allowed to transfer out of in favor of a safer public school. According to an Education Week survey, Philadelphia has more dangerous schools than the rest of the nation combined; the District of Columbia (where officials are planning to replace the current platoons of private security guards with police officers following a recent fatal school shooting) and 44 states reported no "persistently dangerous" schools. Under New York's standard, a school with 1,000 students must have 30 or more weapons incidents for two years in a row to get labeled.

BLAME THE REPUBLICANS — AGAIN

At once flexible and stringent, NCLB attempts to corral recalcitrant state officials by refusing to accept the typical excuses for the demonstrably poor state of too many of our schools. But Washington's will is no match for the commitment of local officials to protecting their turf and comfortable tenures. If a state's public officials are determined to impose and enforce tough requirements on their schools — as Governor Bush is in Florida and Governor Bush was in Texas — they don't need federal pressure to demand accountability. If local officials lack the energy and resolve to make fundamental reforms, Washington's demands will be subverted despite the resolve of such proven reformers as Secretary Paige and Deputy Secretary Eugene Hickok. Unless the Education Department plans on becoming an omnipotent national school board, states must be permitted significant flexibility. School systems not prepared to be held accountable will exploit the flexibility to avoid unpleasant consequences, as some of the preceding examples demonstrate. For these reasons, conservatives believe, the education issue presents a classic example of why all national problems don't have federal solutions. Already, state officials have taken to blaming President Bush's reform plan for any and all local problems. Public-school parents are left confused: Despite the national evidence on the lack of student achievement, and the national alarm first raised 20 years ago in A Nation at Risk, they continue to give high grades to their own schools and generally trust their local teachers and officials.

Republican congressmen are being schooled in how to explain and defend NCLB, armed with polling data that show public support for its aims. But professional educators are the most directly affected constituency, and congressmen are no match for school officials complaining about the intricacies of curricula, testing, and teacher quality. Parents' attitudes toward accountability, beyond their support for the abstract notion, are frustratingly ambivalent. Many have even joined teachers and principals in arguing for less stringent testing under the previous state-level reforms.

The success of No Child Left Behind will depend on whether the objections being raised mark a difficult adjustment period that will pass, or are signs that the plan is unable to win the level of local support it must in order to work. With Democrats positioned to join state officials in blaming Republicans for any dissatisfaction with the law, the most permanent accountability feature of the reform could be a failing grade for the GOP on education.

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