EVENTS

Date:	Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Time:	11:00 AM -- 12:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

September 2004

No Child Left Behind: Mend It, End It, or Let It Work?

Widely noted to be the most important legislative effort in education reform for decades, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is not only a hot issue for the upcoming presidential election but an important matter for education experts as well. At a September 14 AEI conference, panelists discussed the initial results gathered from the policy's effect and its influence on school children, educators, and districts.  Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at AEI, hosted the event and presented their latest analysis of the NCLB program. Panelists included Joel Packer of the National Education Association, Michael Petrilli of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement, and Ross Weiner of the Education Trust.

Frederick M. Hess
AEI

NCLB is primarily seen as a "Bush bill" due to its strong support from the administration and its emphasis on accountability, but NCLB is an amalgamation of ideas from left, right, and middle and endeavors to make use of previously learned lessons that federal statutes do not work because of their good intentions but because they are sensibly designed and make measured use of mandates and incentives. In that spirit, Checker Finn and I suggest in our recent book Leaving No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) that NCLB should be pushed back towards the tight-loose formulation that gave birth to the education accountability movement and that has revolutionized modern management.  Today, NCLB is too prescriptive about means and too hands-off about ends.  This "flexible" arrangement is likely to encourage state officials to flout the spirit of the law while nominally complying with its letter.

Reform suggestions:
1) NCLB is today too lenient about the skills and knowledge that students must acquire and too prescriptive about calendars, state improvement targets, and school sanctions. We suggest that there is a reasonable level of nationwide agreement as to what children should learn in reading and mathematics.  Federal lawmakers should take advantage of that consensus.

2) The performance of schools and districts should be judged primarily on how much students are learning while in school--not on the absolute level of student achievement.

3) NCLB should replace its all-or-nothing adequate yearly progress calculation with a triage model that distinguishes among schools more effectively than does the current system. For example, distinguish among schools that are making progress overall and in 90 percent or more of their subgroups; those making progress overall but in fewer than 90 percent of subgroups; and those failing to make acceptable overall progress.  Such a triage system would reduce the vast number of "mostly okay" schools now being flagged by NCLB. 

Chester E. Finn Jr.
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

The headlines of many large newspapers carry negative responses to NCLB, but this is to be expected with any ambitious and complicated new federal law and could easily be the normal implementation friction of a difficult program.  The negative headlines could, however, be signs of trouble that actually need serious correction--it is just too early to tell which is the case. Nobody should be surprised that the early implementation of NCLB is not all its framers hoped or intended. On the other hand, while it is conceivable that "watch and wait" or "persistent strive" might be the right theory, our instinct, however, is that the law's two great engines of change--accountability and choice--could use some mechanical repairs to boost power and efficiency.

We offer the following suggestions:

1) Principals will be unjustly blamed for the necessity of accepting weaker students and thereby lowering their schools ratings. This could be prevented by only evaluating scores from students who have attended that school for two years or more.

2) Testing results come in too late to be useful. Either testing dates should be rescheduled to an earlier date, or the data should be gathered based on "lag scores"--that is, from the previous year's results or from an accumulated average of a few years span. 

3) The supply of high-achieving schools, alternative options, and support programs do not keep up with the demand for choice provided by NCLB. More creative options need to be explored, including charter schools, home schools, cyber-schools, private schools, and inter-district transfers.

4) Lawmakers should reverse the order in which supplemental educational services and public school choice are provided. It makes sense to help children improve their performance within a school before exiting that school.

5) School districts need to function either as the providers of supplemental services or the regulators, as there is an obvious conflict of interest. States need to screen, negotiate with, and oversee the providers--including the district--or else be responsible for appointing a separate agency to do this.

This important law can work, it should work, and morally it must work; but like other ambitious ventures, it probably will not work exactly right without learning from experience and tuning the engines when necessary.

Joel Packer
National Education Association

Even fixing the problems with NCLB will not be sufficient to bring about all the changes in education that need attention.  NCLB is only one among the chorus of voices which chimes in on calling for education reform.

Of the ten proposed reforms listed in the Hess/Finn piece in the Fall 2004 edition of The Public Interest (the article was adapted from their book, Leaving No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools), the NEA would generally agree with six of them, including: allowing the use of some type of growth model, not labeling as "failing" or "ineffective" schools that are improving but fail short of absolute targets, differentiating better among schools, not penalizing schools that accept transfer students, properly aligning the cycle of test results to the start of AYP consequences, and reversing the order of supplemental services and public school choice.

The article glosses over funding. Funding is down under the Bush administration, and transportation costs required by the choice provision will only add to the overall price tag. Unless modified, the number of schools failing to make AYP will continue to increase. The paper emphasizes accountability and choice but does not address other problems of NCLB, such as teacher quality, which seem to be highly problematic and unreasonable. Additionally, polling of educators suggests that they are unhappy with the changes suggested by NCLB and protest that some reforms already underway prior to NCLB are actually being disrupted by the new enforced standards.

The public has mixed views of NCLB, and polling reveals that the more they know the less they like it.

Ross Wiener
Education Trust

The Hess/Finn paper suggests that NCLB subverts state initiatives toward the same end, but the state ends and the hoped-for results of NCLB are very different in their aims. The state systems are not as ambitious and do not take into account as much as we need from public education. Most of the state systems conformed themselves to what the states were already producing. Florida, California, and Michigan are the examples: Florida's accountability is frustrating in its lack of communication and implementation--it rates schools, but not accurately. California's system, API, allows hidden decreases to go unnoticed under others' increases.  Achievement gaps are growing, and education is not improving. Michigan had a static bar, but they did not hold their schools to an obligation to rise to that standard. Now, under NCLB, they are motivated to push the low-performing schools up to the agreed standard instead of redefining the standard--a praiseworthy action.

One problem: NCLB shut out Democrats. It was originally a bipartisan action, but by the time it was passed, both houses had Republican majorities. As the results are coming in it appears that the gaps are closing and improvements are being made. We should let this law run its course.

Michael Petrilli
U.S. Department of Education

We need to focus on the results. There are still problems, but we are encouraged by the early results. States like Massachusetts, who have been at NCLB standards the longest, are seeing the best results because this law has captured the imagination of the educators of this country. So the next step should be to "extend it." President Bush proposed a few weeks ago to extend the principles of NCLB into the high school level to prepare students for higher education and the world of work. He also proposed expanding assessments through eleventh grade, multiple funding proposals, and transition, reading, and advanced placement programs.

Responding to the critique of funding problems: funding has gone up 49 percent under President Bush. There is plenty of funding to implement the reforms of this law.  Responding to the critique that too many schools are failing: Langley High School in Virginia was noted for the low quality of their Special Education Program. They took it seriously and reformed their program by the next year. The number of schools being identified is only problematic if the only achievement gaps and problems are in the urban schools and no one else is being left behind; we need to keep the pressure on all schools. The NEA's answer is retreat; instead, we believe all the children of America can reach these standards and that expecting student proficiency in reading and math skills is not too ambitious for the schools of the United States.

AEI intern Melissa Silvers prepared this summary.