Andrew Rotherham: All Hat, Hidden Cattle

What a letdown. People used to complain that President Clinton’s State of the Union speeches were laundry lists, but at least when there was a pre-speech build up that he was going to talk about education he then, you know, talked about education. The fact that President Bush’s State of the Union clearly said he wanted No Child reauthorized is significant, as is the placement of education at the top of the speech. But beyond that, not a whole lot in Tuesday night's speech.

When it comes to education policy the basic dilemma of the Bush Administration is this: It’s the one high profile issue where, even if you don’t agree with the President, his policies are more or less defensible. Yet at the same time, and despite its alleged importance to voters, nothing President Bush can do on education will salvage his presidency at this point. His big bet has been made elsewhere and he has other political imperatives.

That dilemma was on full display Tuesday night. First, the President tried to remind people that there are other issues besides the war, and that he’s even got ideas on some of them. But that’s an awfully tough sell. Hell, I care about education, obviously, and domestic policy more generally as well, and still I was more interested in what he had to say on the non-domestic front. So, I can’t imagine that against the backdrop of the ongoing carnage in Iraq the average American cares that President Bush is trying to force some action on what happens to schools in year five of program improvement under No Child Left Behind.

But the President didn’t help himself either. When he did talk about education, the President’s dilemma seems to have paralyzed him because rhetorically he pulled his punches. While the paper the White House released in advance of the speech had the school choice crowd all aflutter, the speech itself sidestepped the voucher issue. All Bush basically said was, “We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose something better.” Hardly a rising call to arms for the choiceniks.

In fairness, there is a lot in the White House paper besides choice, including some very good ideas. And granted he wasn’t giving a speech to an education audience. But he would have been better served by more specificity and more forcefulness. Best I could tell in the spin afterwards, education, the president’s strongest domestic suit, garnered hardly any attention. In other words, unless the entire gambit was to send a signal to a few members of Congress that he’s serious about reauthorizing No Child Left Behind – something he did already anyway – then this speech didn’t serve its intended purpose or really any purpose at all on education. As a result, it’s a missed opportunity to communicate directly with the American people on a key issue and cut through special interest noise.

We’ll have to see what happens going forward but Bush knows he can’t have both bipartisanship, which this speech was ostensibly all about, and a big push for vouchers in federal policy. And he can’t have a timid approach to No Child reauthorization, the politics are just too tough. So before long there are some tough decisions to make. But without a deft political touch and some engagement with the American people at the level of specifics, it’s hard to see a No Child Left Behind deal that meets the President’s goal of not backsliding on reform.

If the President is going to challenge Congress to pass No Child Left Behind, and ask Chairman Kennedy and Chairman Miller to shepherd a reformist bill through their committees and the Congress, then he needs to provide some cover by using the megaphone of the presidency to set the table and lay out the stakes. He didn’t do that Tuesday night and he won't have too many more chances like that.

Andrew Rotherham blogs at Eduwonk and is co-founder and co-director of Education Sector.  This also appears here.

Mike Petrilli: Mr. Fix-It

Though it's not the fundamental rethinking of No Child Left Behind that we would have preferred, the president's reauthorization proposal represents a pretty decent repair attempt.  It's 50% "stay the course," 30% "tweak and tuck," and 20% "bold new ideas."  Not bad for a president with 33% approval ratings, though the package as a whole has about a 0% chance of getting through Congress.  In its entirety it deserves a B-minus for addressing some of NCLB's greatest shortcomings. Let's break it down:

• Expanding parental choice: A. So what if most of these ideas don't have a prayer of getting past Chairmen Kennedy and Miller; they are worth a fight (and worth advocating in presidential campaigns, hint, hint).  The best of the lot is a proposal to use federal funds to replicate the D.C. voucher program in willing cities.  By seeking volunteers, it avoids two fundamental problems with NCLB choice: first, putting entities (school districts) in charge of a reform they don't believe in, and second, promising parents options but doing nothing to expand supply.  Other ideas are praiseworthy too: offering free tutoring to students in the first year of "school improvement" instead of the second; boosting the tutoring allotment for rural students or those with disabilities or limited English proficiency; requiring districts to spend their entire set-aside for public school choice and free tutoring or watch it go away ("use it or lose it")-which incentivizes them to reach out to parents whole-heartedly; and tweaking the charter school program to focus as much on charter quality as charter quantity.  The one problematic notion would allow schools to restrict public school choice and tutoring to students below "proficiency," as long as the school as a whole is meeting its goals and parents are informed of their options at least thirty days before the start of the school year.  Talk about an incentive for students to flub the test! 
• Ending Washington's micromanaging ways: B. One of the most important ideas in the entire blueprint is expanding the law's "transferability provision." This proposal would allow districts the flexibility to dump much of their federal funding into one big pot to be used at their discretion, and could greatly reduce the red tape that currently drives local administrators crazy.  As for the "highly qualified teachers" mandate-which has turned into not much more than a paperwork compliance exercise in futility-the proposal is eerily silent.  I'll interpret that to mean that the Administration wouldn't mind it going away, but you have to fight the fight if you want an A on this score.
• Getting tough with failing schools: B-minus. The Administration's ideas here are a smart mix of more flexibility and less flexibility.  On the one hand, they would allow superintendents to ignore their collective bargaining agreements when it comes to chronically low-performing schools, to bust any charter school cap their state might have in place, and to hand these schools over to their mayor, if they please.  On the other hand, they would limit the "restructuring" options available to districts, requiring a major overhaul of bad schools, not just minor adjustments.  Why not a higher grade?  Simply put, it's not clear that Uncle Sam has the ability to enforce any of this, regardless of what ends up in federal statute.
• Creating a workable, rigorous standards-and-accountability system: C-plus.  Most importantly, the proposal would allow any state to use a "growth model" in its accountability system, as long as it can meet the stringent requirements spelled out in Secretary Spellings's pilot.  That means giving credit to schools with lots of poor kids who are making great strides towards "proficiency," but aren't there yet, while avoiding a free-for-all that eliminates a sense of urgency.  Plus, if done right, growth models could give incentives to schools to pay attention to students already at or above proficiency.  The proposal also calls for America Diploma Project-like standards at the high school level that link coursework to college and workplace expectations.  Still, the state standards at the heart of NCLB are likely to remain perilously low, as the Administration declined to embrace any version of national standards.  Its idea to require states to disclose their NAEP proficiency rates on their school report cards is clever, and might help to stem the "race to the bottom," but it certainly won't create a race to the top.
• Addressing the "narrowing of the curriculum": C. Here, the Administration really deserves two grades: An "A" for asking the results of science tests to be included in schools' Adequate Yearly Progress ratings, and an "F" for leaving out history tests altogether.  As this recent paper by Marty West showed, states that test in these subjects spend more time teaching these subjects.  Maybe the new NAEP history results (due out this spring and expected to be depressing) will spur some interest in adding history to the mix.

All and all, not so shabby for the first comprehensive proposal out of the gate.  Chairman Miller, Chairman Kennedy, and the No Child Left Behind Commission: now it's your turn.  Let's see if you can jump to the head of the class.

Michael J. Petrilli is Vice President for National Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.  This article previously appeared here.

Chester E. Finn 

The president's No-Child-Left-Behind (NCLB) proposals are numerous, sensible — and unlikely to get far in Congress. Though not the thoroughgoing overhaul that many (including me) favor, within the current NCLB framework these mid-course corrections would ease some of the statute's worst sticking points. Five deserve special note:

* More options for kids stuck in failing schools, including private-school choice (funded at about $4,000 per kid, enough to pay many tuitions) and the option of attending public schools in other districts.

* New authority for districts to change their own failing schools, including setting aside collective-bargaining constraints on teacher transfers and state-level "caps" on charter schools. (Another provision modernizes Washington's charter-school support program in useful ways.)

* Overdue flexibility for states to shift their federal dollars from one "categorical" program to another.

* The opportunity for every state to convert its achievement-tracking system to what educators call a "growth model," i.e. one that measures student gains and the "value added" by their school, not just absolute performance in relation to fixed standards.

* The inclusion of science (with reading and math) achievement in the calculation of a school's "adequate yearly progress.

The last pair could garner bipartisan support. The first trio will be fought by Democrats and their union allies.

But the White House deserves two cheers for trying. I'll reserve the third for policymakers who offer instead to rethink NCLB from the ground up with national standards and tests offset by far less micromanagement from Washington. 

Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.  This previously appeared here.

Dan Lips: The State of Federal Education Policy

In his State of the Union address, President Bush spoke in broad themes to outline his education agenda for the next two years. The bottom line: The Administration wants to “strengthen” the status quo version of No Child Left Behind in its coming congressional reauthorization. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has already stated that the administration has been studying ways to “perfect or tweak” NCLB.

After five years, it’s become increasingly clear that No Child Left Behind -- like previous federal reform attempts -- will not fundamentally improve public education in America. While NCLB dramatically increased federal authority, the federal government (thankfully) is still only a minority partner in public education, with only 8.5 percent of funding for schools coming from Congress.

Policymakers should remember that past administrations and Congresses have sought to use the lever of federal power in education to improve student achievement and reduce the achievement gap since 1965. But after four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending, the federal government has proven unable to bring about big improvements in America’s schools. For example, since the early 1970s, little has changed in long-term measures of student performance.

As Congress prepares to consider the ninth reauthorization of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it’s time to draw some conclusions from these long-term trends and reconsider the federal government’s role in education.

For starters, families, taxpayers, and school officials should question whether the federal government has been a good partner in education all these years. In 2006, taxpayers paid more than $24 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to fund programs for No Child Left Behind. In exchange, the Department of Education uses that funding to play the role of a heavy-handed middleman.

After keeping a sizeable chunk of money to pay for administration, the Department sends that money back to states and local education agencies along with a blizzard of mandates, red tape, and bureaucratic reporting requirements. For example, the Office of Management and Budget found that No Child Left Behind alone increased the paperwork costs due to federal education programs by 6,688,814 hours, or $140 million.

Beyond this wasteful bureaucratic burden, the federal government’s role in education exacts huge opportunity costs. Were it not for the Department of the Education, states and local communities would have more than $24 billion per year in additional funding that could be used for other purposes, such as locally controlled programs that direct resources to classrooms.

Perhaps the costs of the federal government’s “middle man” relationship would be the justified if Congress and the 4,500 workers at the U.S. Department of Education proved that they have a formula for improving student performance in America’s 96,000 public schools. Unfortunately, a forty-year track-record shows this isn’t the case. Rather than travel further down the current road of federal education policy, the Bush Administration and Members of Congress have a responsibility to reassess whether the federal government’s current role in education is justified.

A promising alternative strategy would be to begin restoring state and local control in education, while maintaining true transparency in measuring student performance at the school level. Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) recently announced their support for such a proposal.

The DeMint-Cornyn plan -- called the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success or “A-PLUS” Act -- would allow states to opt-out of No Child Left Behind. These states would enter into a contractual agreement with the federal government, under which they would be free to control federal education funding and use it however state leaders believe would improve student achievement and assist disadvantaged students. In exchange, states would maintain performance transparency by measuring student achievement through state-directed assessments.

The DeMint-Cornyn plan has three important benefits. First, the amount of tax-dollars wasted on administrative costs and bureaucratic paperwork would be greatly reduced. More funding would be available for productive purposes, such as increasing resources in the classroom.

Second, states and local communities could innovate and try new approaches to improve student learning. Some states could try improving educational opportunities with policies that introduce competition into public education through school choice or performance pay for teachers; other communities may decide to pay teachers more or create new early education programs. Since transparency would be maintained, communities could learn what approaches work best.

Third, the Cornyn-DeMint plan would put an end to the idea that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. have a one-size-fits-all solution that will fix all our educational problems. Instead, this plan would shift the responsibility for improving American education back to where it belongs -- among parents, teachers, school leaders, and local representatives.

The coming reauthorization of No Child Left Behind offers Congress and the American people an opportunity to rethink the federal government’s role in education. One thing should be clear by now: continuing down the same path isn’t the answer.

Dan Lips is an Education Analyst at the Heritage Foundation.  This article previously appeared here.

Nelson Smith: SOTU, Between the Lines

No matter what the President said last night about No Child Left Behind, people were tuned in to hear about Iraq, a point made in Alliance board member Andy Rotherham's Eduwonk blog post this morning. And to this viewer, the president seemed somewhat detached when laying out the domestic program - -which was too bad, since there was a lot to like, including earmark reform (yea!) and a new health care initiative.

And I liked the Civilian Reserve Corps idea. Since the war started more than five years ago, it's been the military and their families who've done all the work. The rest of us have been burdened only by airport inconveniences. Bush said the Corps will "give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time." Right on.

There was no mention of charter schools as such, but the president did call for reauthorization of "this good law," the No Child Left Behind Act. For the past year, the timing of NCLB reauthorization has been a favorite topic of ed pundits. Before November the accepted wisdom was that it would happen in 2009; nobody wanted to open Pandora's Box before the next presidential race. But now it looks to the Bushies like a good legacy move – and to Ed Chairman George Miller and other Dems, the president's eagerness may mean concessions on the funding side. So it looks like jump ball.

In the SOTU, Bush stuck to the main themes of accountability and standards. (Worth noting here that the Alliance did a series of NCLB regional forums last year and found strong support among charterfolk for the basic outlines of the law, particularly the disaggregation of data that reveals such stunning achievement gaps.) But the White House's background paper includes at least four proposals of critical importance to the charter community:

• Expansion of "growth models" so states can measure student progress toward standards. This is key for charter schools because our kids often start school academically behind their non-charter peers. When AYP only measures schoolwide proficiency averages instead of progress, it may disclose more about kids' prior baggage than about the actual impact of their school. This is a badly-needed fix in NCLB's accountability structure.
• More high-quality charter schools, and more flexibility in how charter schools use their grants planning and startup activities. The Alliance has been pushing for this, since the current Act includes arbitrary constraints on the timing and use of funds that don't reflect the real life-cycle of our schools.
• Getting real on restructuring. The current list of restructuring remedies includes a huge loophole called "Other." States and school districts have been making cosmetic changes instead of shutting down lousy schools. Apparently the White House is serious about requiring that they get serious – up to and including reconstituting schools' governance structure, a.k.a. Starting Fresh.
• Timely info on choice. NCLB lets kids move to stronger schools as soon as their neighborhood schools are deemed "in need of improvement. " But too many districts let parents know their choice options too late – or at the end of a 12-page single-space memo. Bush says DOE will "strengthen enforcement mechanisms to ensure parents receive proper and timely notice of their tutoring and choice options."

The Administration also calls for "Promise Scholarships," allowing kids in chronically underperforming schools to get tutoring or transfer to private schools. Ordinarily in a Dem-led congress this would be DOA, but maybe not this year. DC's similar plan, though passed by a Republican congress, had bipartisan support – so watch for some hard bargaining.

And another Fact Sheet has an even better take on the charter proposals: “In addition, local decisions to convert schools identified for restructuring into charter schools will be allowed, even if the total number of charter schools would then surpass a state’s charter cap.”  Terrific news for states where there are a lot of deficient schools but legal barriers to opening new charters. 

Nelson Smith is president of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.  This previously appeared on the National Alliance's Charter Blog.

Kellyanne E. Conway: Hope and Opportunity for America’s Schoolchildren

In his seventh State of the Union address since becoming President, George W. Bush last night spent more time ambling to the podium than he did talking about education once he got there. But the length of his remarks on education reform belied their depth and consequence. Schoolchildren across the country – and their families – have reason to be hopeful that help is on the way.

The President used words and offered measures that would expand parental choice, schooling options, and the elasticity that local leaders need to craft solutions that meet the needs of their residents. He spoke boldly and with a sense of urgency. Specifically, President Bush opined, “We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools ... and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose some place better.” This is welcome relief for the millions of students who languish in government-run systems laden with bureaucratic self-interest and hostile to innovation.

A more thorough examination of the actual proposals shows that the President’s ideas track closely with the majority of public opinion when it comes to optimal education reform. Recent national polls show that when people are asked to focus on local concerns, education places at or near the top of the list.¹ And attitudes toward the President’s hallmark No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative remain steadily in favor of its principles.²

The President’s call in his State of the Union Address to reauthorize NCLB, already in existence for five years, will test the new Democratic Congress’ claim that it cares about children and will focus on improving the quality of their education.  Surveys that my firm has conducted of parents whose children attend federally-designated “failing schools,” (albeit often unbeknownst to the parents) unequivocally show support for NCLB tenets like automatic transfer and after-school tutoring.³

For example, a survey of these parents in Compton, CA and Los Angeles, CA conducted on behalf of the Alliance for School Choice found that 89% supported the “parent choice” provision in NCLB that “allows some parents to transfer their children from public schools that are not performing at a particular level to a better school at no cost” and 82% would exercise that option if they could.  Unfortunately, only 11% of these parents were actually aware that their child was in a failing school and, therefore, the choice to transfer was real rather than hypothetical.⁴

Another noteworthy aspect of the Administration's education vision would allow mayors to convert schools that must be restructured under federal law anyway into charter schools, another popular concept. In national and statewide surveys we have conducted for Center for Education Reform (CER) over the past two years, large majorities of Americans applaud “new public schools - called charter schools - that would be held accountable for student results and would be required to meet the same academic standards/testing requirements as other public schools but not cost taxpayers any additional money.”  They also respond positively to words like “standards” and “accountability,” staples of the President’s education lexicon last evening and in proposals he is expected to present to Congress.

As his critics denounce the President’s ideas on education as smooth sound-bites and easy applause lines, they ought to examine the successes already realized as a result of these programs. Expanding parental choice and schooling options for public school children is not a hypothetical. It was Mr. Bush who signed legislation three years ago that created the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the nation’s first federal voucher program, in a city where 95% of public school children are minority⁵ and 30% of them never graduate high school.⁶ President Clinton refused to enact similar legislation in the 1990s, even as he sent his own daughter to a private school in the District.

Over 1,800 children in D.C. currently participate in the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, and nearly three times that number apply. To be eligible, a child must live in a family with an annual household income below 185% of the poverty level. Their families receive up to $7,500 each year to attend non-public K-through-12 schools.

Since NCLB was enacted five years ago, students in this country have made noteworthy progress.  The minority achievement gap is closing and reading and math scores are at all-time highs.  In fact, 9-years olds have made more progress in reading in the past 5 years than in the previous 28 years combined.⁷

Small-government conservatives understandably blanch at the notion of deepening Washington’s involvement in what is viewed as a local issue. The President’s plans emphasize that local autonomy and home-grown solutions. And his call for assessment data develops a nexus between the demand for federal money and proof that it is wisely spent.

Early in his tenure as President, Mr. Bush famously spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” hard-wired in a public education system where those children with the least suffer the most.  He explained this in his address to the NAACP last summer, saying:

An amazing thing about our society today is wealthier white families have got the capacity to defeat mediocrity by moving. That is not the case for lower-income families. And so therefore, I strongly believe in charter schools, in public school choice. I believe in opportunity scholarships to be able to enable parents to move their child out of a school that's not teaching.⁸

It is imperative that proponents of school choice, opportunity scholarships, parental involvement and a back-to-basics educational system in this nation ensure that the President’s words are not relegated to the graveyard of political promises or fall victim to partisan posturing by folks who wish him to fail, even if it means our schools continue to as well.

Kellyanne Conway is President & CEO of the polling company™, inc./ WomanTrend, a full-service market research firm that specializes in quantitative and qualitative research and analysis, and provides strategic counsel for a diverse portfolio of clients in the political, corporate, legal, educational, public affairs, not-for-profit and media sectors.  The firm is headquartered in Washington, DC and maintains an office in New York, NY.

¹Telephone survey of 800 registered voters nationwide, conducted by Diageo and the Hotline, January 11-14, 2007.
²Elizabeth Weiss Green, (August 23, 2006) “Taking measure of No Child Left Behind.” U.S. News & World Report
³Telephone survey of 900 parents of school-aged children in New York City with an oversample of 300 parents of children in failing schools conducted for Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability (FERA) December 7-13, 2002.
Telephone survey of 450 parents of school-aged children in failing schools in Buffalo, NY conducted for Brighter Choice Public School Choice Project January 9-13, 2003.
⁴Telephone survey of 409 parents of school-aged children in failing schools in Compton, CA and Los Angeles, CA conducted June 23-29, 2006.
⁵D.C. Public School Data: http://www.k12.dc.us/dcps/offices/fastfactshome.html
⁶U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2006). The Condition of Education 2006,NCES 2006-071, Washington, DC
⁷www.whitehouse.gov
⁸'Opportunity' Is Knocked (July 25, 2006) Wall Street Journal