Dozens of states dumping disastrous No Child Left Behind
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The George Bush education cornerstone has been a disaster since the day it was first laid, and now that states have been given the opportunity they are dumping it as fast as they can.
Since its inception the No Child Left Behind policy forced teachers to teach to the tests, and this resulted in an education policy that has proven itself to be one of the worst in the history of the country.
Born of noble intentions, the No Child Left Behind legislation enacted by the federal government in 2002 was, from the start, a disaster in its implementation.
A hopelessly unrealistic law that demands adherence to standards it refuses to set, punishes rigorous states while rewarding lax ones, and makes no accommodation for the realities of students’ varying potential, will, in the end, do more harm than good.
So it was superb news when President Barack Obama announced last week that the Department of Education would soon waive some of the law’s main requirements for states that meet certain criteria. The bad news is the reason the waivers are needed: the same partisan gridlock we’ve seen so often of late. Congress can’t agree to fix or repeal the law via normal legislative methods.
NCLB was the brainchild of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and President George W. Bush. Besides bipartisan support, it had the perfect name. What legislator, after all, wants to be accused of wanting to leave children behind?
The goals of the act were laudable: narrowing tenacious racial and economic achievement gaps, adopting real measures of student progress and teacher proficiency, and recasting ineffective schools. But while the law demanded schools meet standards, it left it to the states to set them. That meant states with low bars actually fared better than those with tougher goals.
Worse, NCLB demanded that every school bring every student up to grade-level proficiency in math and English by 2014 or be labeled “failing.” There were no exceptions — not for the severely disabled, nor for students newly arrived to this country who spoke little or no English.
In effect, every school, district and state in the nation would have been judged a failure in 2014 — and been subject to an overhaul that could include fired principals and decimated teaching staffs.
NCLB is due for reauthorization, and educators have been highlighting its weaknesses for years. And attacking the law can be a minefield. Those who call for its repeal are accused of being against standards, or even anti-education.
With the federal government providing a significant chunk of the education spending in this country, it makes sense to have a federal education policy. More important, there is some good in NCLB. Educational standards should be rigorous and aspirational. Special attention should be paid to schools that are failing to educate their students, and those that continually let their pupils down should be overhauled. And while standardized tests shouldn’t be the basis of lesson plans, they do have real value.
On balance, though, the law has been more of a hardship than an enhancement.
Obama plans to issue waivers of NCLB’s most egregious demands to states that can show they are making concerted efforts (and progress) in narrowing achievement gaps, measuring and improving student competencies, and evaluating teachers with empirical tools.
Many states have said they will almost certainly apply for the waivers, and New York Education Commissioner John King says a waiver request will be on the agenda at this month’s Board of Regents meeting.
It is a mark of how poisonous politics have become in Washington that some Republican legislators — who have in the past argued that NCLB is a huge federal overreach that takes too much power from the states and the districts — have nonetheless attacked Obama‘s waiver plan as a “power grab.”
Deeply flawed, NCLB never should have passed as written. The best outcome would be to scrap it or amend it enough to set out a blueprint for positive, achievable progress in our nation’s educational system. Barring such sensible legislation, Obama‘s waivers make sense.
That we’ve effectively barred such sensible legislation is a real shame.
Many thanks to Newsday and while we’re at it we thank you for telling us what you think about No Child Left Behind.
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It would have also helped if right-wing xians weren’t so anti-intellectual and anti-science.
“Hey, NCLB–don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” That’s how I feel about that. 🙂
Glad to see it start to go–there are better ways of equalizing educational opportunities in the U.S. I just wish we could stop seeing our own fates, and those of our children, as part of a zero sum game with those in need. If more affluent parents spent a bit less time scrambling to get into better school districts, and put that money and effort into a fight to improve all schools, we’d be in a much better place.
My sentiment exactly GL. I have lots of friends who are educators. Not one of them likes NCLB and all those f-ing standardized tests. It truly was legislation passed by politicians mostly unqualified to tamper with education.