Going from B to AHow to fix the No Child Left Behind Act.
Posted Monday, Sept. 24, 2007, at 12:54 PM ET
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StumbleUponAlthough rarely spoken about, what unites many critics is the sense that it just isn't fair to ask so much of schools. You see this view on the right, in the Weekly Standard's new cover article trashing NCLB. Andrew Ferguson concludes that achievement gaps are grounded in the neighborhood and the home, in "facts, every one of them, beyond the reach of any education reformer." And you see it on the left, in the work of the Economic Policy Institute's Richard Rothstein, who argues that social class causes inequities that schools cannot overcome.
In the seminar room, you can argue for months about whether poverty creates an obstacle or an absolute barrier to student achievement. But in the real classrooms, some schools teach poor kids far more effectively than others—and those schools are exactly the ones that set clear and high expectations for themselves and their students. Yet such expectations are precisely what these critics resist.
In one of politics' wonderful ironies, the best hope to rescue George Bush's proudest domestic accomplishment now rests with two of his fiercest critics, Miller and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. Bush hasn't helped himself any: His failure to fund NCLB has undermined the law's support; his scandal-ridden education department has lent credence to the silly idea that the law is a plot to destroy public education; and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' comparison of the law to Ivory soap ("99.9 percent pure") has made the whole operation look unserious.
Miller recently put out a draft bill that takes a strong stand on some issues, like encouraging pay reforms. But on the key issue of standards, the bill offers only a modest financial incentive for states to move to high ones. That funding will be overwhelmed by the bill's central demand for 100 percent proficiency by 2014. The best approach would be national standards set high. Short of that, a better one, as reform hawks at the Education Trust urge, is to offer states an out from the 2014 deadline if they adopt higher standards themselves. We don't need speedy fake accomplishment; we need substance. Watch what the committee bills, expected as early as this week, have to say on this.
By all means, Congress should fix the unintended consequences of NCLB. But lawmakers should not undo the central consequence the law intended and the critics dislike: the demand that schools do better by the kids they fail.
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