Can NCLB be saved?
While it may seem that I spent the last week assaulting the No Child Left Behind Act, I should make it clear that I'm not a vociferous opponent. I think that the goal NCLB represents -- a quality education for every child and holding schools accountable for reaching that standard -- is an admirable one. Really, it's the only one. I can quibble about what defines quality, but that's for another day. The problems I have outlined below in some detail are unquestionably issues of execution, not concept. The natural response that follows, then, is that NCLB needs to be implemented better. But is that possible?
The importance of Connecticut becoming the first state to sue the federal government over NCLB is that it's a clarion demonstration of how resentful states are of federal intervention in education. For the moment, let's set aside the debate over whether Georgia should have the right to teach their kids to do arithmetic differently than Montana and focus on the practical aspects of this resistance.
It's not a profound statement to say that states don't like the federal government meddling in their affairs. But when it makes headlines that 45 state governors came together to agree on the monumental and magnanimous principle that there should be a common measure of how many students are graduating from high school, one starts to wonder how much more leeway the federal government has.
Indeed, the salves needed for fixing problems of inconsistent standards, crippling sleight-of-hand on test structure and results, funding inequities and the such may both need to and be unable to come from the feds. Just think how the states will howl the second Secretary Spellings hints at a national assessment. Highway funds are all well and good, but the federal government only has so many rounds in its clip. Even the somewhat radical and extremely intruiging proposals of the liberal task force led by Arizona Gov. Napolitano only went so far as to suggest voluntary national standards -- and that was recieved as a strech. When you've got Florida plunging ahead with its Sunshine "You Might Be Able to Read if You're Lucky" Standards and Texas having to switch tests from the TAAS to the TAKS because the TAAS was so ridiculously easy everyone was passing it (while only 27% of TX 4th graders were proficient on the NAEP reading in 2003), voluntary national standards seem like the very, very least that should have been in place since about yesterday.
The answer to the person who says we need better execution of NCLB to ensure that its purposes are met is: Yes, but how? These aren't minor problems, and they are going to require major solutions. Considering the political landscape just four years after the passage of NCLB, it can't be reasonably assumed that the federal government has the wherewithal to push through the needed implementation. If anything, the 2007 reauthorization of NCLB will potentially see a reduction of federal influence.
The feds can't do it. The states have made it abundantly clear they won't do it. Who precisely is going to save the already-decaying infrastructure of a noble law which is only inching the nation forward on its best days?
The importance of Connecticut becoming the first state to sue the federal government over NCLB is that it's a clarion demonstration of how resentful states are of federal intervention in education. For the moment, let's set aside the debate over whether Georgia should have the right to teach their kids to do arithmetic differently than Montana and focus on the practical aspects of this resistance.
It's not a profound statement to say that states don't like the federal government meddling in their affairs. But when it makes headlines that 45 state governors came together to agree on the monumental and magnanimous principle that there should be a common measure of how many students are graduating from high school, one starts to wonder how much more leeway the federal government has.
Indeed, the salves needed for fixing problems of inconsistent standards, crippling sleight-of-hand on test structure and results, funding inequities and the such may both need to and be unable to come from the feds. Just think how the states will howl the second Secretary Spellings hints at a national assessment. Highway funds are all well and good, but the federal government only has so many rounds in its clip. Even the somewhat radical and extremely intruiging proposals of the liberal task force led by Arizona Gov. Napolitano only went so far as to suggest voluntary national standards -- and that was recieved as a strech. When you've got Florida plunging ahead with its Sunshine "You Might Be Able to Read if You're Lucky" Standards and Texas having to switch tests from the TAAS to the TAKS because the TAAS was so ridiculously easy everyone was passing it (while only 27% of TX 4th graders were proficient on the NAEP reading in 2003), voluntary national standards seem like the very, very least that should have been in place since about yesterday.
The answer to the person who says we need better execution of NCLB to ensure that its purposes are met is: Yes, but how? These aren't minor problems, and they are going to require major solutions. Considering the political landscape just four years after the passage of NCLB, it can't be reasonably assumed that the federal government has the wherewithal to push through the needed implementation. If anything, the 2007 reauthorization of NCLB will potentially see a reduction of federal influence.
The feds can't do it. The states have made it abundantly clear they won't do it. Who precisely is going to save the already-decaying infrastructure of a noble law which is only inching the nation forward on its best days?
This entry was posted
on Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 9:46 PM.
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