Now that George W. Bush has signed the "No Child Left Behind" act, the flashbulbs have just about stopped popping, and the policy (and media) focus shifts back to terrorism and the economy, the education world will turn to the low profile but crucial matter of translating this thousand-page bill's dozens of programs and hundreds of provisions into schoolhouse practice. That sounds like a bureaucratic yawner but in truth it matters quite a lot. To avoid deadlock, Senate-House conferees punted some sticky issues to the Education Department to resolve: determining what constitutes acceptable state tests, by what criteria to approve a state's school accountability plan, what are "qualified" teachers, and how broadly to interpret a clause that lets schools avoid sanctions if their various pupil populations are making lesser gains than are required under the "adequate yearly progress" provision at the heart of the bill. With such sizable matters come reams of lesser issues whose handling will determine how much traction this legislation actually gains in millions of separate classrooms.
History offers no grounds for optimism that this will be done quickly or well. Congress habitually builds such long timelines into these measures that the most important changes need not even be made until someone else's term in office. (States have five years, for example, to comply with the new testing requirement.) The last time around, Bill Clinton's Education Department dawdled so long in implementing the 1994 education amendments that today - seven years later - most states still don't comply with some of its core provisions.
Such matters are traditionally entrusted to change-averse civil servants overseen by inexperienced political appointees who are watched closely by their masters lest they offend key governors or Congressmen or make it harder for the President's party in upcoming elections. (As the 2000 race gained momentum, the Clinton White House made the Education Department stop pressing California on education compliance issues.) Implementation thus becomes the stuff of interminable meetings, countless forms, endless delays, and multiple extensions and waivers, as very little changes in the classroom.
That fate could befall "No Child Left Behind." But Education Secretary Rod Paige and his team are gearing up for a very different approach. Indeed, they see this as their real debut - the White House staff having tightly controlled the legislative phase. Though quiet and self-effacing, Paige is a steely and astute leader whose strong will and administrative acumen made a big difference in Houston's sprawling school system. There he showed himself especially good at distinguishing areas where schools should be free to innovate from those requiring close central monitoring. If he and his able lieutenants at the Education Department approach states in a similar vein, they could reverse the ingrained, dysfunctional pattern of federal education officials, which is to meddle in all the small stuff while paying scant attention to the big issues, such as whether children are learning and rich-poor gaps are narrowing.
All this, however, is just the first act of a three-act education drama. After a brief intermission, the Bush administration and Congress must turn to "special" education - the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - which, after twenty five years, is in urgent need of top-to-bottom rethinking. The White House has appointed a blue-ribbon commission, chaired by former Iowa governor Terry Branstad, to sort through all this and make recommendations, and recruited a reform-minded New Mexican named Bob Pasternack to head this section of the Education Department. There's no dearth of ideas for bold changes, such as "voucherizing" special ed, as Florida has already done. But politics presses against any serious reform of this domain. Elected officials are wary of its swarming lobbyists, all claiming to be tending to America's neediest children even as they advance the interests of sundry "experts."
Act three of this drama involves higher education, whose massive federal subsidy programs come up for renewal two years hence. As with special ed, the policy challenge is to bring the "No Child Left Behind" mindset, with its emphasis on academic achievement and institutional accountability for student learning, to bear on America's sprawling higher education system. The federal role here, too, should shift from an obsession with inputs and services to a clear focus on results. But the politics of higher education also work against fundamental reform - and the status quo is buttressed by the widespread and carefully nurtured illusion that U.S. colleges are doing fine just as they are.
Plenty of other education challenges will punctuate the play's intermissions, including such low profile but consequential topics as Washington's handling of education research and statistics. As with special ed and higher ed, these would benefit from the impatient, results-minded focus that George W. Bush urged a year ago when he launched the education bill just signed. In the best of all possible worlds, that would turn out to be Bush's true education legacy: institutionalization in Washington of the view that what matters in a federal program is not what rules are followed, what services are provided or what's spent where, but whether young people are actually learning what they should from institutions that are accountable for such learning within their walls. This may be too much to expect. But what's a new year if not a time for optimistic resolutions.
This editorial is a condensed version of an article that appears in the most recent issue of The Weekly Standard. For the full version, see "Leaving Education Reform Behind," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Weekly Standard, January 14, 2002. (available to subscribers only)
