Reauthorization of NCLB: federal management or citizen ownership of K-12 education?

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IN HIS 2007 State of the Union address, Pres. George W. Bush stated: "Now the task is to build on the success, without watering down standards, without taking control from local communities, and without backsliding and calling it reform.... The No Child Left Behind Act has worked for America's children--and I ask Congress to reauthorize this good law."

A fundamental question concerning NCLB is whether to continue to increase the Federal government's management authority over education or to restore citizen ownership of America's schools. The No Child Left Behind Act dramatically increased Federal authority. While the Federal government provides only 8.5% of the funding for public education, NCLB gave Congress and the Department of Education new powers to set policies governing public schools. This increased authority has resulted in unintended consequences and difficulties that need to be addressed.

One significant problem is that NCLB testing policies inadvertently have weakened state-level exams and academic transparency. Under NCLB, states are required to test students annually and demonstrate continual progress toward a Federal goal of all students reaching "proficiency" on state-level exams by 2014. Some states have responded to this pressure by changing how their tests are scored to allow more students to pass and to show more progress under NCLB. This situation, which researchers have called a "race to the bottom," threatens to erode academic transparency. As states respond to the pressure of NCLB testing by lowering standards, parents, citizens, and policymakers are denied basic information about student performance.

To protect citizen ownership of American education, Congress must end Federal goals for student progress and return control of state standards and accountability policies to the state level. This will maintain academic transparency in state testing and restore greater citizen ownership in education, both of which are necessary conditions to enable future reforms to strengthen public education.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz.) opposed the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the first Federal law that provided funding to K-12 schools, because it included 12 Federal mandates. Congress passed the act in the hope of improving American math, science, and foreign language proficiency in the wake of the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Goldwater warned prophetically that "Federal aid to education invariably means Federal control of education." Yet, Goldwater's warnings proved no match for a national wave of Cold War education hysteria. Almost 50 years later, the Federal government has expanded its involvement in K-12 schooling enormously.

The refashioning of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan effort to get better results from Federal education spending. However, in reauthorizing NCLB, Congress faces an unsustainable status quo. Although fashioned with noble intentions, NCLB created a powerful perverse incentive for states to lower their academic standards, and that pressure will grow stronger with each passing year unless Congress makes substantial changes. As it currently stands, NCLB carries enormous costs, both in terms of Federal taxpayer dollars and state and local revenues dedicated to its implementation. Moreover, its success as a public school reform strategy remains unproven. Most important, it has the potential to undermine the very purposes that it was created to promote: accountability and transparency. It may, in fact, provide neither.

NCLB embraces two powerful but contradictory approaches to education policy. On the one hand, it argues that Congress must increase its efforts at educational improvement. On the other, it asserts--as we do--that real reform only will come about when those closest to the student are empowered to make decisions and change.

With NCLB, Congress initially attempted to finesse these competing sentiments, but the effort has proven futile. With NCLB reauthorization, Congress now must choose whether the education that the U.S. needs can be achieved through increased Federal intervention or by restoring parent and citizen ownership of education. To be effective, education no longer can serve both masters.

Over the past two decades, standards and testing regimes have been created to provide better information about educational results, not just inputs. This information serves different purposes for different audiences but, broadly speaking, users can be divided into two major categories. Both of these user groups often are described as having a "stake" in educational outcomes, but the public discussion often does not distinguish between the different stakes of each group.

First, there are those who are involved in the long-term actual achievements of particular students. Parents are foremost among this group because they have the longest-term and most interest in the real achievement of their children, but it also includes all citizens concerned about the social welfare and future of the U.S. Second, there are users whose interest is short term and whose personal performance will be judged by the results (e.g., politicians, principals, and teachers unions). Particularly in the post-NCLB accountability regime, funding decisions and consequences for schools are based on results. For politicians, the ability to claim progress during their tenure in office has become a crucial criterion of their success. Those in charge of the nation's schools do not want to be seen as failing to deliver. Therefore, they have every incentive to devise strategies that evade true accountability rather than promote it. As Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Union, once said, "Nobody is better at creative insubordination than school people."