First in a two-part commentary on the NEA's criticism of No Child Left Behind
At its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., last week, National Education Association (NEA) President Reg Weaver presented the group's keynote speech to 9,000 delegates. Weaver promised a "laser focus" on student achievement and cited four areas of concentration: recruiting new members, closing the achievement gap between minority and majority students, changing the provisions of and funding for the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and electing candidates favorable to public education in November.
The battle lines are drawn. On one side, President George W. Bush, Education Secretary Rod Paige, and the Republican leadership are assembled. On the other side, school boards, school administrators, and teachers' associations form a loose alliance. Both sides are digging in for trench warfare on the education front.
NCLB is the no-man's-land between the trenches. Signed by Bush in January 2002, this act provides federal funding to education, focused primarily on disadvantaged students but reaching virtually every school district in the country. It is the cornerstone of Bush's efforts to compel meaningful change in American education.
Part of the problem in achieving workable compromises regarding NCLB may be that a large proportion of the public is still uninformed about the law. According to the last Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll (published in September 2003), only about 24% of respondents claimed a great deal or fair amount of knowledge about NCLB. The remaining majority of Americans said they had very little knowledge or knew nothing at all about it.
NCLB Requirements
Collectively, NCLB's provisions attempt to generate increased student achievement and hold states, school districts, and schools accountable for results. These provisions include:
- Yearly testing. NCLB requires states to test
every student in reading and math each year during grades 3 through
8, and once in high school. Each state creates its own standards
and tests, but the tests are to be administered statewide and
designed to measure students' achievement of the learning standards
established by the state.
- Academic progress. By the 2012-13 school year,
all students are expected to be "proficient" on state tests.
Schools must meet state targets for improvement, referred to as
annual yearly progress. Sanctions exist for schools not making
annual yearly progress.
- Report cards. Each state and individual school
district must publish "report cards" describing student achievement
performance broken down by demographic subgroups.
- Teacher qualifications. At the conclusion of the 2005-2006 school year, teachers of core subjects must be "highly qualified," meaning they must be fully certified to teach the subject and demonstrate knowledge of the subject matter.
The education groups criticize the annual testing and academic progress provisions, and point to the program as another unfunded federal mandate. Bush and congressional allies insist that, without testing and sanctions for low-performing schools, education will not make the significant changes necessary to improve American education.
Who's Right?
Right and wrong may exist on both sides. Bush and Paige are right to demand a method that shows students are learning and holds schools accountable for producing results. On the other hand, Weaver and the NEA are right to criticize NCLB as "one-size-fits-all," forcing schools to assess what a student knows using a "snapshot" on a particular test day.
These two perspectives are clearly reflected in the public's priorities for education. Several times in the past decade, Gallup has presented Americans with a list of possible goals for public schools, asking them to rate the importance of each. The item typically rated as most important is "mastery of the basics," which received an average rating of 4.84 on a 1-to-5 scale in 2000. But another item that also typically falls high on the list is "students are challenged to develop themselves to their full potential," which implies a more individualistic approach to learning. Furthermore, in 1995, respondents were significantly less likely to believe that the latter goal was actually being fulfilled in their local schools.
Bottom Line
Bush and Paige are wrong to ignore "value-added" approaches, which assess progress according to the relative development of each student. NCLB focuses on "proficiency" as if such a thing can be produced by magic. It does not reward schools for moving students from one level to the next, as from "proficient" to "advanced."
But Weaver and the NEA are wrong to assume that schools can succeed without producing student achievement results. The assertion that "we taught it, but students didn't learn it" is simply no longer acceptable.
Next week's commentary will focus on the question of where public education goes from here.