Katherine Mangu-Ward penned a super essay in the March 29 Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/003/881iitwp.asp) that accurately describes NCLB's virtues, acknowledges its shortcomings, responds thoughtfully to several oft-voiced criticisms, and skewers everyone in sight for their bad behavior in recent months. This includes the Education Department's election-year "compromises" on several regulatory items; John Kerry's (and Ted Kennedy's) outrageous grand-standing on the funding issue; and the National Education Association's relentless campaign to turn this bold and demanding results-based law back into "the same old federal-aid-to-education programs they're used to, but with more money attached."
Why has the Bush team let itself be pushed into a defensive crouch? Mangu-Ward notes that "taken individually," the recent regulatory compromises "may be sensible tweaks to an enormously complicated law. But taken together, they could signal that Bush has decided to stand down and move into damage control mode."
It's beginning to look that way. A friend who recently heard a senior Education Department official talk about NCLB before a big school board audience termed it "the worst of both worlds. He didn't defend the things he needed to defend, and his effort to exhibit the flexibility that he thought would be applauded was only understood by a tiny fraction of the audience, and they didn't appreciate it. NCLB is on the chopping block, and before we know it, Congress will cave in to what they think is the Constitutional God-given right to educational mediocrity." It's a damn shame if the administration caves first.
Yet vigorously defending NCLB's core precepts and focus on standards and results doesn't mean stubbornly insisting that its every paragraph is working perfectly. We can already see that some of the dreams and compromises of 2001 will never produce the desired results - and that some of their unintended consequences are worrisome. This is no surprise, nor is it shameful. (Reread Mike Kirst's excellent commentary on how long it took, and how much fine tuning was required, before the simpler provisions of ESEA circa 1965 were being implemented as its authors had hoped. See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=129#1610.) But the solution will entail more than tweaking the regs. It's also going to involve statutory amendments. Nobody on Capitol Hill or in the White House is ready to hear that, and perhaps we cannot realistically expect them to be before the election. So it's time for some responsible outside organization quietly to convene the folks who want NCLB to succeed - forget the NEA - to begin crafting a short list of high-priority amendments that can debut after November 2 and perhaps be taken serious by the 109th Congress. Meanwhile, expect tons more NCLB demagoguery, braggadocio, craven compromise, and grandstanding between now and Election Day.
