"No Child Left Behind, Mistake? - Print Topic

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‘No Child Left Behind’ compounded a mistake
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.
George Will

    No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it.
    NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly — 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism’s subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12.
    NCLB was supported by Republicans reluctant to vastly expand that intrusion but even more reluctant to oppose a new president’s signature issue. This expansion of Washington’s role in the quintessential state and local responsibility was problematic, for three reasons.
    First, most new ideas are dubious, so federalization of policy increases the probability of continentwide mistakes. Second, education is susceptible to pedagogic fads and social engineering fantasies — schools of education incubate them — so it is prone to producing continental regrets. Third, America always is more likely to have a few wise state governments than a wise federal government.
    With mandated data collections — particularly tests of “adequate yearly progress” in reading and math — NCLB was supposed to generate information that would enable schools to be held accountable for cognitive outputs commensurate with federal financial inputs. Bad data would make schools blush and reform.
    Fourteen months ago, the president said, “The gap is closing. ... How do we know? Because we’re measuring.” But about those measurements ... ?
    NCLB requires states to identify, by criteria they devise, “persistently dangerous schools.” But what state wants that embarrassment? The Washington Post recently reported that last year, of America’s approximately 94,000 public schools, the “persistently dangerous” numbered 46. There were none among the 9,000 schools in amazingly tranquil California.
    NCLB’s crucial provisions concern testing to measure yearly progress toward the goal of “universal proficiency” in math and reading by 2014. This goal is America’s version of Soviet grain quotas, solemnly avowed but not seriously constraining. Most states retain the low standards they had before; some have defined proficiency down.
    So says “The Proficiency Illusion,” a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which studies education reform. Its findings include:
    The rationale for standards-based reform was that expectations would become more rigorous and uniform, but states’ proficiency tests vary “wildly” in difficulty, “with ‘passing scores’ ranging from the 6th percentile to the 77th.” Indeed, “half of the reported improvement in reading, and 70 percent of the reported improvement in mathematics, appear idiosyncratic to the state test.” In some states, tests have become more demanding; but in twice as many states, the tests in at least two grades have become easier. NCLB encourages schools to concentrate their efforts on the relatively small number of students near the state test’s proficiency minimum — the students that can most help the state meet its “adequate yearly progress” requirements.
    Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican who represents western Michigan’s culturally cohesive Dutch Calvinist communities, opposed NCLB from the start because he thought it would “tear apart the bond between the schools and the local communities.” He believes the reauthorized version of NCLB will “gut” accountability. He is gloomily sanguine about that because he thinks accountability belongs at the local level anyway, and because removing meaningful accountability removes NCLB’s raison d’etre. He proposes giving states the option of submitting to Washington a “Declaration of Intent” to reclaim full responsibility for K-12 education. Such states would receive their portion of K-12 funds as block grants.
    But Rep. Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, warns that Washington, with its unsleeping hunger for control, steadily attaches multiple strings to block grants. He proposes to allow states to opt out from under NCLB’s mandates and regulations and to give residents of those states tax credits equal to the portion of their taxes their state would have received back in federal funds for K-12 education. Garrett thinks that this could be a template for states to escape many entanglements with Washington.
    NCLB intensified what Paul Posner of George Mason University calls “coercive federalism.” Kenneth Wong and Gail Sunderman of Brown University and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, respectively, say NCLB “signaled the end of ‘layer cake’ federalism and strengthened the notion of ‘marble cake’ federalism, where the national and subnational governments share responsibilities in the domestic arena.” Hoekstra’s and Garrett’s proposals would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out.

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Reading program not helping
No Child Left Behind initiative brings no better scores
BY MARIA GLOD The Washington Post

    WASHINGTON — Children who participate in the $1-billion-a-year reading initiative at the heart of the No Child Left Behind law have not become better readers than their peers, according to a study released Thursday by the Education Department’s research arm.
    The report from the Institute of Education Sciences found that students in schools that use Reading First, which provides grants to improve grade-school reading instruction, scored no better on reading comprehension tests than peers in schools that don’t participate. The conclusion is likely to reignite the long-standing “reading wars,” because critics argue that the program places too much emphasis on explicit phonics instruction and doesn’t do enough to foster understanding.
    Reading First, aimed at improving reading skills among students from low-income families, has been plagued by allegations of mismanagement and financial conflicts of interest.
    But the Bush administration has strenuously backed the effort, saying it helps disadvantaged children learn to read. About 1.5 million children in about 5,200 schools nationwide participate in Reading First.
    The congressionally mandated study, completed by an independent contractor, focused on tens of thousands of first-, second- and third-grade students in 248 schools in 13 states. The children were tested and researchers observed teachers in 1,400 classrooms.
    No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2002 with support from President Bush and a broad bipartisan majority in Congress. The law, a signature domestic achievement for Bush, required an expansion of standardized testing in schools and authorized other measures meant to help close achievement gaps, including Reading First.
    That reading program, which drew on conclusions in a 2000 report by the National Reading Panel, has been widely promoted by Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
    It requires participating schools to use instructional techniques supported by scientific research. Proponents of a whole-language approach, which teaches skills through reading stories, say Reading First favors methods that emphasize explicit phonics instruction.
    Teachers in Reading First classrooms spent about 10 minutes more each day on instruction in the five areas emphasized by the program — awareness of individual sounds, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension — than colleagues in schools that didn’t receive program grants, the study concluded.
    But there was no difference when children were tested on how well they could read and understand material on a widely used exam.
    “There was no statistically significant impact on reading comprehension scores in grades one, two or three,” Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, said in a briefing with reporters.
    “It’s possible that in implementing Reading First there is a greater emphasis on decoding skills and not enough emphasis, or maybe not correctly structured emphasis, on reading comprehension,” he said. “It’s one possibility.”
    Whitehurst said there are several other possible explanations for the results. One possibility, he said, is the program “doesn’t end up helping children read.”
    He said the program’s approach could be effective in helping students learn building-block skills, but doesn’t “take children far enough along to have a significant impact on comprehension.”
    He also noted that both groups of teachers spent time on the same skills and said perhaps the differences between the classrooms weren’t significant enough to produce a shift in performance.
    “There were non-Reading First teachers doing more of what looks like Reading First practices than some Reading First teachers,” he said.
    Researchers said performance was higher in Reading First schools that spent more money per student.
    Late last year, Congress, citing concerns about mismanagement, cut Reading First funding for fi scal 2008 to $393 million. Previously, funding had been $1 billion annually.
    A 2006 report from the Education Department’s inspector general, John Higgins Jr., found that some program officials steered states to certain tests and textbooks.
    Congressional testimony last year revealed that some of those people benefi ted financially.
    President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget seeks to restore funding to previous levels.
    In addition, the Education Department has been coaching states on how to find other federal dollars to preserve the program.
    Thursday’s report included data collected from 2004 to 2006. Researchers are continuing their work, and a final report is expected this fall.
    Amanda Farris, deputy assistant secretary for policy and strategic initiatives in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, said in a statement that the department will look to the report, along with other data, to “enhance its implementation” of Reading First.
    “Secretary Spellings has traveled to 20 states since January. One of the consistent messages she hears from educators, principals and state administrators is about the effectiveness of the Reading First program in their schools and their disappointment with Congress for slashing Reading First funds by 60 percent this year,” Farris said.
    “The department,” she said, “has been encouraged by numerous indicators over the last several months which point to the positive impact this program is having with our young readers, including statereported performance data, studies from nonpartisan organizations such as the Center on Education Policy and results from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress.”

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