NCLB

Current Status:

EPI Policy Memorandum #149 Oct. 2009.

Richard Rothstein:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for a speedy re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), branded the "No Child Left Behind" law (NCLB) by the Bush administration. After expiring in 2007, NCLB has hung on with annual temporary extensions; its provisions are now so controversial that no Congressional majority has been able to coalesce around a proposal for modification. But "re-authorization can't wait," Duncan said recently, and he has pledged to get Congress to enact a new education law in 2010.

Many critics of NCLB have been dismayed by Duncan’s apparent resolve. But they may be reacting too soon. The principles for re-authorization that Duncan has announced represent a radical departure from NCLB and open uncharted territory in education policy. Fleshing out these principles will require extraordinary creativity and complexity as well as require the Department of Education and Congress to usefully explore accountability tools for which there is little precedent, either at the state or national levels. If Duncan sticks to these principles, the worst of NCLB will be behind us, although designing a new federal education policy will take us well beyond 2010.

That's not a bad thing. After rushing into an ill-considered NCLB whose perverse consequences far outweighed its benefits, it would be wise now to move more carefully in the design of new federal education policy, rather than rushing in again.

NCLB requires all schools, by 2014, to get all students, in all racial, ethnic, and income subgroups, to demonstrate proficiency by passing “challenging” tests in reading and math. Schools that fail to make progress toward this goal at first are required to permit students to transfer elsewhere. If the goal remains out of reach after five years, the school can be closed, or its staff replaced. NCLB, its promoters insisted, permit “no excuses” for children not meeting the goal of proficiency. The underlying concept is that “all children can learn” if schools are held sufficiently accountable for successful instruction: children from impoverished backgrounds may have a tougher time, but if teachers have high expectations, children will respond by overcoming their obstacles.

These sentiments are understandable, but there are perverse consequences of wrongly believing that every student, without exception, will reach proficiency, at a minimal standard, let alone a “challenging” one. In a September speech outlining his principles for ESEA re-authorization, Duncan called this idea “utopian” and observed that in a fruitless effort to get increasing numbers of students to pass, states have made tests easier by lowering the passing scores and eliminating all but the least-challenging subject matter. Schools have thrown out a balanced curriculum—eliminating the arts, science, history, social studies, and foreign language—to spend ever more time in boring drills of basic math and reading, along with incessant practice in test-taking. Physical education and even recess have been cut out to free more seat-time for basic skills "remediation." Inordinate attention has been devoted to students whose skills are just below the passing point, while students with either very poor or adequate skills have been ignored, because moving just a few students from failing to passing qualifies as progress toward the goal. The transfer provisions have been used mostly by the better students in "failing" schools, doing nothing to help students most in need, and making it all the more impossible for their schools to progress toward getting all students to proficiency.

Duncan has denounced each of these corruptions of American education and has vowed that a re-authorized ESEA won't replicate them. He has criticized NCLB's requirement that, rather than improve schools where test scores are inadequate, students are instead told to transfer out. In his September speech calling for re-authorization, Duncan charged that the NCLB system is “not education" but “game-playing tied to bad tests with the wrong goals."

Read the entire document here http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/pm149/

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