Last week I began to "debate myself" about the No Child Left Behind act, covering five NCLB issues that make me, and many others, ambivalent about this ambitious undertaking. [http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=21#125]That was not the end of it. Five more issues warrant pro-con examination.
Just Three Subjects?
The focus on reading, math, and science is right on target. They're the curricular core in every state and ought to be the center of instruction in every school. They're the subjects with the greatest consensus about what's important for all children to learn. They're the subjects where states have worked hardest to set standards. And they lend themselves to fairly reliable testing.
No, they're not the whole curriculum, nor should they be. In fact, other subjects are where schools may best distinguish themselves from the pack - an art and music magnet, say, or a Spanish immersion charter school. But it's clear that every school ought to cover the same core skills and knowledge in these basic subjects, and clear that states should focus their testing and accountability systems on these three. Let community pressure, educator professionalism, and parental demand see to the rest.
It's a fantasy to say schools are welcome to add history, art, music, or geography to the NCLB subjects. If there's any certainty in education, it's that what gets tested is what gets taught. Schools will focus on the things they're accountable for. All of NCLB's pressure is concentrated on reading and math and, a few years hence, science. It doesn't even talk about writing, history, or geography. In theory, a school could meet all its requirements and still graduate students who couldn't compose a paragraph, find North America on a map, or identify Abe Lincoln. With all the attention placed on a school's performance in just three subjects, nobody will even notice if the rest of the curriculum gets short shrift. And it doesn't help to say, "We'll get to these other subjects later." What about the millions of sixth graders who will pass through while we're waiting? This could lead to the worst curricular distortion ever.
Why Those Draconian School Interventions?
Forcefully intervening in failing schools is the only way to ensure that they change. Sure, it's prescriptive, but that's what accountability means. Otherwise, what's to keep unsuccessful schools from staying as they are? Somebody needs to trigger palpable, even unpleasant reforms in faltering schools and districts lest they continue to gyp children of a proper education.
Who is that somebody? Public schools in America are creatures of their districts, and districts are creatures of their states. So, unless you can picture a vast army of federal interveners fanning across the countryside, districts will have the responsibility to fix broken schools and states will have to deal with faltering districts. NCLB is prescriptive, yes, but it gives districts and states leeway to fit the cure to the disease.
Get real. Most failing schools are failing because districts let them get that way. It's no surprise that dismal schools are concentrated in dismal districts. If districts knew how to fix their schools, they would have done it already. Nor is it likely that a state with dozens of faltering LEA's will have the know-how or horsepower to set them right - even if the states weren't facing major budget crunches, which makes it hard to bring in a bunch of turnaround experts. What's more likely is that most failing schools and districts will stay that way because nobody in authority has the capacity or know-how to set them right.
The Precursor to Vouchers?
Giving kids the right to exit - or take some of their Title I money to private providers - is better than keeping them trapped in failing schools. If schools remain immune to repair, and particularly when the children most directly affected are poor and minority, we must do something to give them a break. Letting them go to better schools seems obvious-as does letting them use federal money to seek compensatory services from competent private providers. Let children learn from schools and programs that can do right by them.
In any case, this is a very limited program, a far cry from the Florida-style "exit voucher" approach that President Bush first proposed. Under NCLB, choice is restricted to other public schools within the same district. And only a fraction of a school's Title I money can be redirected into "supplemental services" from state-approved providers. It's a reasonable, cautious, limited approach to choice.
It's certainly limited and cautious, but it's already showing signs of not working. How foolish to confine a child's options to schools in the same district. We saw last fall that many failing Title I schools are in districts with few good schools for students to turn to - and most of those are bursting at the seams. Worse, the LEA is responsible for organizing and publicizing the choices. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. It's not in a district's interest to help students change schools and thus no surprise that many districts delayed, obscured, and otherwise minimized families' opportunities to exercise their rights. If Congress is serious about letting children exit bad schools, it needs to put someone in charge other than the operator of those schools - and the choices need to be real.
Teacher Quality
The key ingredient in an effective school is the quality of its teachers. NCLB's authors were smart to specify "highly qualified teachers" in every classroom and to create a timetable for getting there. Otherwise, the neediest kids will continue to get the worst teachers, and states and districts will keep on filling classroom slots with warm bodies instead of people who know their subjects and are effective instructors. Sure, it'll be a challenge for states to comply. But here, too, the point is to trigger change. This is the one school "input" that NCLB is prescriptive about, but it's hard to argue with it. America has a lot of terrific teachers but needs a whole lot more of them if we're going to meet the achievement demands of NCLB.
This is another of those sound impulses that leads to a nightmare of regulation and homogenization while ignoring reality. School systems don't want to hire unqualified teachers, but they have to hire from among those who apply. So the people who end up teaching in the most troubled schools - with honorable exceptions, yes - are apt to be those with the fewest alternatives.
If we didn't have uniform salary schedules and bargaining contracts, and if the federal government wanted to pump in billions more for teacher salaries, this marketplace might be altered for the better. But nobody is offering more money. Laying down additional regulations won't change a thing, except maybe aggravating existing teacher shortages.
Excess Behaviorism or Needed Overhaul?
The whole point of NCLB is to change results by altering behavior - in schools, educators, students, etc. - so it's appropriate that its prescriptions are "behaviorist," with rewards and punishments, sanctions and interventions, in pursuit of this needed overhaul. If behavior doesn't change, results won't change and we'll still be at risk twenty years hence. Nobody likes to alter their accustomed ways, however, so we must expect dissent, resistance, and grumbling. But the underlying premise is that the status quo isn't working and so we must do whatever is necessary to leverage the reforms that will actually boost outcomes.
American education didn't become the way it is because of mean-spirited people trying to keep kids ignorant. It's a layer cake of differing priorities and local idiosyncrasies. It's a vast, decentralized enterprise involving thousands of institutions and millions of people. It doesn't change quickly and won't change just because a few folks in Washington think it should. At the very least, you would think, if the feds were going to push for all these changes they would put up the money needed to make them. But funding isn't the key concern. What's most troubling is the hubris and na??vet?? of folks in Washington - the insistence that all kids and teachers and schools must act in the same ways and produce the same results on the same timetable, even though every situation is different.
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Americans will doubtless debate NCLB for years to come. Meanwhile, it is the law of the land and we must do our best to comply with it. Perhaps it will work as intended. Nobody doubts that its intentions are noble.
