Extreme Makeover

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

 Hess and Finn's recent commentary calling for a "makeover" of NCLB is freely
available today and tomorrow from Teachers College Record. An excerpt is below.

Extreme Makeover: NCLB Edition
by Frederick M. Hess & Chester E. Finn Jr.
Teachers College Record, August 16, 2007, ID Number: 14586

Representative George Miller's declaration that NCLB is "not fair" and "not
flexible" and his pledge to quickly bring a reauthorization bill forward provide
an opportunity to move past the ill-conceived stances that have dominated the
debate. Neither the administration's reflexive defense of the law's unworkable
accountability system nor calls to "abolish" NCLB provide a promising path
forward. Instead, sensible redesign starts by recognizing that today's NCLB
awkwardly welds together two disparate accountability models-rendering each
dysfunctional.

<SNIP>

Prodding public-sector institutions to set goals, monitor performance, and then
reward excellence and intervene in mediocrity has been a signal success for
reformers of the left and right. Decades of effort, touted in iconic books like
Reinventing Government and championed through the 1990s by the Gore Commission,
have taught us that sensibly structured accountability systems encourage
self-interested workers to take goals seriously, focus on outcomes, and employ
all the levers at their disposal to produce those outcomes.

Such ?behavior modification? is compromised, however, when those on the ground
view the targets as unattainable. If workers know they are unlikely to succeed,
the goal becomes avoiding trouble when they fail. By making failure practically
inevitable, utopian goals perversely focus employees on band-aids and actions
that mask their inability to attain those goals.

The trick is not to retreat from accountability, but to thoughtfully separate
these components from one another and from naively heroic expectations. Lawmakers
should insist on a national X-ray using a uniform assessment that makes it simple
to compare achievement across schools, districts, states, and demographic groups.
And every state should be required to assess how effectively schools are boosting
student achievement and to intervene appropriately in faltering schools and
mediocre districts?or else forfeit federal funds.

NCLB could have a bright future. If it gets an extreme makeover.

George Sheridan