Conservative Argument Against NCLB

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

<>GETTING PAST "NO CHILD"
Washington Post Op. Ed. Column --  December 9, 2007
by George F. 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 the 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 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 who can most 
help the state meet its "adequate yearly progress" requirements.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pete+Hoekstra?tid=informline> 
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 
Universtiy 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.

   
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/07/AR2007120701980_pf.html