Dianne, 2:16 p.m.:

Yes, Virginia, NCLB is working.

In fact, NCLB is working better than one might expect, given the fierce opposition in states like Virginia and Connecticut, along with some school districts, school administrators and teachers unions. Despite all the whining about the law, however, NCLB is supporting and prodding educators across America to take the teaching and learning of all students more seriously than ever before. And this is leading to unprecedented attention to achievement gaps and the needs of groups of students that historically were left behind. For many, many students and their families, NCLB is providing cause for hope and celebration.

It’s at this point, barely two sentences into my argument, when I can almost hear the reaction of Edspresso’s readers: this woman must be out of her mind! What evidence could she possibly have that NCLB is working? Has she not heard about all the horrible things NCLB is doing to our schools: narrowing the curriculum, imposing “unfunded mandates,” making kids throw up on tests, making kids fat? Of course, I’ve heard it all, but I assure you I am not delusional or on drugs.

Let’s step back and consider what NCLB is and where it came from.

First of all, NCLB is in many respects a civil rights law. As my colleague John Brittain of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law pointed out in his recent Congressional testimony, NCLB is the latest in a long line of efforts in the policy and legal arenas – including desegregation cases, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), and school finance and adequacy cases in the states -- to promote equity and opportunity in the public schools. Thus, far from being the product of a right-wing conspiracy, NCLB was adopted largely to further a compelling civil rights agenda: the erasure of class and race-based achievement gaps that stand in the way of full civic participation and opportunity in our democratic society. Critics and supporters alike should consider: How long does it take a cutting-edge civil rights law to “work?” Could a credible argument have been made in 1969 – 5 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act – that the ambitious law was “not working” and therefore ought to be abandoned? How long has it taken for the promise of Brown v. Board of Education to be realized? Are we even there yet?

Second, NCLB is the product of real-world wheeling and dealing. NCLB was the latest revision of the ESEA, a long and long-standing set of programs authorized by Congress to support K-12 education. No law with the far-reaching aspirations, political history, and legal complexity of the ESEA is ever perfect. No statute hammered out over portions of two Presidential administrations and by a deeply divided Congress could come close to being 99% pure, as the Secretary of Education recently suggested. NCLB is what it is: the product of compromises between Republicans and Democrats, advocates for change and defenders of the status quo, the interests of kids and adults, and so on. Maybe it’s because I have messy, active boys, but I prefer to think of NCLB as more like the heavy-duty, super-concentrated detergent we use to wash their clothes after muddy soccer games: it’s hardly pure or “organic” but if you use enough of it with plenty of hot water, it’ll eliminate over 90% of the stains and odors.

But, whatever its flaws – and there are plenty – NCLB is working in many of the ways Congress and civil rights advocates intended.

Here’s how:

Finally, teeth in Title I. NCLB’s predecessor, the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 contained many of the same provisions (e.g., standards, assessment, disaggregation, schools in need of improvement, corrective action, transfers to better schools). The IASA was not taken seriously by states and school districts, however, and it was only weakly enforced by the Clinton Administration. It took a Republican president, along with the courageous leadership of Democrats like Senator Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller to decide to put some teeth into the law. Now, for the first time in the 40-year history of this program, Title I is more than a loosely-regulated stream of federal dollars. And while there is always plenty to criticize over at the Department of Education, this Administration, under Secretaries Paige and Spellings, has done more to secure compliance with the law than perhaps all previous Secretaries combined. Recipients of these dollars now get the message that the federal government expects something in return for its investment. This is huge.

Unprecedented focus on the poor, minorities. NCLB has provoked a tectonic shift in the public discourse about achievement in America. In countless schools and communities (though by no means all) the discussion now is not about whether schools can do better but how. There has been a proliferation of success stories, including a series of profiles of high-achieving, high-poverty schools by journalist Karin Chenoweth at the Achievement Alliance, to be published this spring (preview here). In most major newspapers in the U.S., readers now find inspiring stories of schools examining their data and redoubling their efforts to improve achievement. And thanks to NCLB, tens of thousands of students are receiving individual attention and tutoring to bring them up to grade level in reading and math.

The “I’ll have what she’s having” effect. The public education system in the U.S. has done a very good job creating and maintaining inequality. And inequality is so entrenched, it often seems futile to try to change the prevailing order. But NCLB is helping to foster a long-overdue sense of entitlement to decency on the part of educators and parents in long-neglected schools. Three specific NCLB provisions are especially helpful in empowering parents and others to demand some of “what they’re having” on the other side of town: 1) the transparency, disaggregation and report card provisions, 2) the provisions designed to eliminate the “teacher quality gap” between poor and minority students and other students, and 3) the options to select a better school or free tutoring provided to parents in low-performing schools.

Vive la resistance! NCLB is also doing exactly what it was intended to do by advocates for change: it is making the education establishment uncomfortable, pushing the adults in the system to work harder and smarter and to confront their own racism and other biases, whether subtle or otherwise. Though our nation can hardly afford to demand less, NCLB does ask a lot of our public schools. Nobody said it would be easy, and it isn’t, so some degree of pushback is inevitable. In fact, there are some of us who view much of the resistance as a sign that the law really is working!

Mike, 3:41 p.m.:

Is No Child Left Behind working? Nobody, with a straight face, can answer that question with a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down (sorry Dianne). The complexity of American education, and NCLB itself, makes such an assessment virtually impossible. Nevertheless, in the spirit of “differentiated ratings,” let’s try to appraise the Act with grades in four categories, from A to Z:

• Achievement;
• Changes that otherwise wouldn’t have happened;
• First, do no harm; and
• Zeitgeist of the education system.

Achievement
This is the “man on the street” question: are test scores going up because of NCLB, and are the nation’s achievement gaps closing? It depends on who you believe. The Administration points to NAEP results and claims that achievement gaps are “at an all-time low.” Opponents of the law spin the numbers another way, arguing that the strong progress our schools made in the late 1990s (especially for math but somewhat for reading) has stalled under the law.

The most responsible answer is that it is, indeed, too soon to tell. But are gains in test scores likely? I think so, because states that embraced NCLB-style standards-based reform in the 1990s are already making great strides. Last fall, Fordham published a major study looking at the progress states have made with their poor and minority students since the early 1990s. The states that have made the most widespread “statistically significant” gains in getting disadvantaged students to the lofty “proficient” level on the NAEP are ones such as Texas, Florida, and California that embraced standards, testing, and accountability for many years. If NCLB forces more states to follow this route, strong achievement gains for poor and minority kids should follow—at least in reading and math.

Of course, reading and math are not the whole ballgame; it’s plausible that NCLB has depressed achievement in subjects such as history and civics because of its pressure to “narrow” the curriculum. (We’ll know more this spring when the latest NAEP history and civics results come out.) And if schools are trying to take short cuts to higher reading scores by eliminating all content from the elementary curriculum (see here), we’ll likely see disappointing reading results by the eighth grade too, since students won’t have the knowledge and vocabulary to make sense of the passages they are reading. (More on this below.) Still, this is all speculation.

Achievement grade: Incomplete.

Changes that otherwise wouldn’t have happened
Another way to assess NCLB is to determine whether it has altered the behavior of states, school districts, or other key actors. After all, the federal government doesn’t actually run the schools; all it can do (through carrots and sticks) is to push, prod, and cajole. Has this law worked to force changes, or at least (as Dianne argues) give local and state leaders political cover to do the right thing?

There have been some successes here. Disaggregating achievement data by racial and income groups has had a galvanizing effect, focusing the nation’s schools on the achievement gap like never before (especially in the suburbs), and wasn’t happening in many states pre-NCLB. Similarly, for all of the complaints, NCLB’s focus on getting a certain percentage of students to the “proficient” level every year is better than the anything-goes, a smidgeon-of-gains-is-fine-with-us growth models some states had in place in 2001. And annual testing of students is, on the whole, a good thing that would have been sporadic if not for NCLB.

Perhaps the best marks on this score are for providing cover to reform-minded superintendents, who have been able to be much more aggressive with NCLB than without. Paul Vallas, Arne Duncan, Steven Adamowski and their colleagues can push hard on the system and its defenders of the status quo (yes, Joel, I’m referring to your affiliates here) and blame those “crazy people” in Washington.

Still, at the end of the day, the federal government has very little power to make anyone do anything against his or her will. When it comes to creating new choices for parents, closing down failing schools, laying off ineffective teachers, or adopting a content-rich curriculum that works, Uncle Sam’s bark is bigger than his bite (see here). Dianne says that “the federal government expects something in return for its investment,” but it’s not exactly foreclosing on schools, districts, or states that don’t deliver.

Changes-that-otherwise-wouldn’t-have-happened grade: B-Minus.

First, do no harm
Creating unintended consequences is a longstanding Washington tradition, but NCLB’s creators went even further by creating predictable negative consequences. To wit: the “race to the bottom” spurred by allowing states to set their own definitions of “proficiency,” while requiring that all students reach proficiency by 2014. To wit: the “highly-qualified teachers” provision, which sparked a volcano of meaningless paperwork while insulting the entirety of the nation’s teaching force. To wit: the “narrowing of the curriculum” plausibly made worse by NCLB’s focus on reading and math.

First-do-no-harm grade: F.

Zeitgeist of the education system
Finally, as I explain here, and Dianne describes well in her piece, one of NCLB’s major goals was to change the “public discourse” in education. While the achievement gap has been around forever, narrowing it wasn’t at the top of everyone’s to-do list until the passage of NCLB. This is significant. Sure, battles still rage about whether schools can make up for the challenges of poverty, and resistance to the law is fierce, but insinuating that poor kids can’t learn isn’t allowed in polite conversation anymore (although if you’re Charles Murray the Wall Street Journal will let you argue [for three days] that dumb kids can’t learn).

This is bad news for the apologists for today’s education system, and good news for reformers. For it gives breathing room to those on the left and right, Democrats and Republicans, who want to try bold, far-reaching reforms that touch at the heart of the education enterprise. It makes fairness in funding more possible. It makes changes in teacher distribution more conceivable. It opens the door to discussions about collective bargaining, and whether the old industrial model is still the best one for today’s challenges.

In other words, it gives cover for groups like Dianne’s to do battle against groups like Joel’s—which is good for education reform and great for kids.

Zeitgeist-of-the-education-system grade: A.

So there you have it: mixed grades for No Child Left Behind, and a whole lot of snarky comments for Joel to respond to. See you tomorrow.

Joel, 7:23 p.m.:

No Child Left Behind has good intentions – closing achievement gaps among various groups of students and raising overall student achievement (at least as measured on two statewide tests - one each in reading and math), and ensuring that all students have highly qualified teachers.  But the law’s good intentions have gone seriously awry. While Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has said NCLB is “like Ivory Soap; it’s 99.9% pure or something… there's not much needed in the way of change,” the reality is that it is not working – either as intended or unintended.

Among its myriad flaws and negative results (though as Mike points out perhaps predictable ones) are narrowing of the curricula and the projection that virtually all schools will eventually fail to meet its one-size-fits all, all-or nothing AYP mandate.  There is also little evidence that NCLB has directly contributed to its own major goal – raising student test scores. 

In addition, it has significant flaws in how it tests and “counts” test scores from both English Language Learner (ELL) students and special education students. And its regimen of consequences, sanctions, and punishments are neither research-based, nor is there any evidence they are helping to close achievement gaps. Finally, it is seriously underfunded – with the cumulative shortfall between the amounts actually appropriated and the amounts authorized in the law exceeding $56 billion over six years.

NEA is not alone in calling for fundamental changes to the law.  A coalition of over 100 national groups - including the NAACP, the Children’s Defense Fund, the National PTA, and the National Alliance of Black School Educators - has called for 14 changes to the law noting “the law's emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement”.

Let’s take a look at some of these flaws and failures in more depth:

Is NCLB raising test scores?
The Administration consistently claims that NCLB is working because NAEP reading scores for nine-year olds have increased more in the last five years than the previous 28 years. The reality is that most of that five –year period occurred prior to NCLB being in effect, and all of it occurred prior to the mandated testing for each of grades 3-8 being in place. Looking at grade 4 reading results on the main NAEP test,  reading scores went up nine points between 2000 and 2002 (before NCLB) and were unchanged between 2002 and 2005 (post-NCLB).  Looking at math scores between 2002 and 2003, scores indeed increased by 9 points, but between 2003 and 2005 (post-NCLB) they only rose 3 points.

Is NCLB closing achievement gaps?
The respected Civil Rights Project at Harvard, in a June 2006 report found that, “federal accountability rules have little to no impact on racial and poverty gaps. The NCLB act ends up leaving many minority and poor students, even with additional educational support, far behind with little opportunity to meet the 2014 target.”

Is NCLB narrowing the curriculum?
According to school superintendents, the answer is a resounding yes. Two reports from the Center on Education Policy, Is NCLB Narrowing the Curriculum? and From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act, found that since the passage of the NCLB, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts have reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to make more time for reading/language arts and/or math. Twenty-seven percent of the districts reported reduced instructional time in social studies. Twenty-two reported cuts in science and twenty percent reported similar cuts in art /music.  Other studies, including one by Harcourt Assessment have reached similar conclusions.

Will most schools eventually fail AYP?
Several studies by a mix of researchers, think tanks, and foundations have all reached the same conclusion - between 75 and 99% of all schools will eventually fail AYP.  As a study of AYP in Louisiana found, “Labeling a vast majority of schools as failing would render the accountability system of rewards and sanctions meaningless.”  A similar study issued by a coalition of Massachusetts education groups projected a 74% failure rate, while the California Department of Education projected a 99% failure rate by 2014. Even the most vocal critics of public schools wouldn’t claim that 99% of public schools are low-performing. 

Does the public think NCLB is working?
William Bushaw, Executive Director of PDK International, which conducts an annual poll of the public's attitudes about education recently wrote about NCLB, “Praiseworthy goals are encased in an implementation plan so ill-conceived that the public overwhelmingly rejects every strategy used.”  He further notes that, “six of 10 Americans say NCLB is either hurting or making no difference in their community’s schools. That this reality is being ignored makes it likely that NCLB, for all its bright promise, will lead to limited gains and may actually do harm to our schools.”

What do classroom teachers and other educators think?
In a June 2006 survey we conducted of 1,000 NEA members, their feelings about NCLB were in synch with those of the public. The survey showed that NEA members believe that NCLB has not improved public education because of inadequate funding, the punitive nature of the law and the sole reliance on standardized testing to measure student achievement.  Other findings of the survey include:

More than two-thirds, 69 percent, of members surveyed disapproved of NCLB, with just under a small majority, 49 percent, strongly disapproving. As NEA members have become more exposed to NCLB, their views have soured. Approval of NCLB has dropped from 40 percent in 2003 to 29 percent currently.

At the same time, disapproval rose from 56 percent in 2003 to a current 69 percent.

Fifty-seven percent of members want to see major changes in NCLB, 21 percent favor making minor changes, 17 want total repeal and only 4 percent want to keep the Act as it is.

If you want to hear the voices of classroom educators express their frustrations, anger, and sorrow at NCLB and its impact, read through their stories on NEA’s website.  “Voices from America's Classrooms," offers hundreds of observations and stories from educators who have been impacted by this law.

The bottom line: NCLB is presenting real obstacles to the original purpose of the law.

Dianne, 7:21 p.m.:

What’s all this fuss about “what works” and “whatever works?” And what does this have to do with NCLB?

If today’s debate topic seems a little think-tanky for some of you (e.g., for those of you who have about five minutes to think about the President’s budget and then move into action), that’s because the topic does come from a think tank, the Fordham Foundation, and its V.P. Mike Petrilli. Last summer, Mike wrote an interesting commentary piece for Education Week on the subject. In case you missed it, I’d recommend checking it out, as it sets forth a novel history of NCLB. Plus, it’s today’s debate topic.

Mike’s contention is that two groups of “reformers” were battling it out to get their ideas printed in the U.S. Code last time the ESEA was reauthorized, in 2001, and in the end each got some of their stuff into the law. In Mike’s words:

The No Child Left Behind Act is the result of an uncomfortable truce between two groups of school reformers: the "what works" camp and the "whatever works" camp. The law is an amalgam of their ideas, and their ongoing competition will shape the contours of No Child Left Behind version 2.0.

Interesting take on the past, but I don’t buy it. I was there for virtually all of the debate on NCLB, from 1999 through final passage in 2001. I just don’t recall the sort of robust debate between so-called “reformers” Mike describes. What did I miss? A forum over at AEI or Heritage? A cocktail party for policy wonks, where ideas about how to reach Nirvana get more fantastic with each glass of cabernet?

The debates I heard in the hearing rooms, at the mark-ups, in education and civil rights coalition meetings, at various conferences, and in the press were actually between two other camps: the pro-change folks and the pro-status quo folks. Maybe this is too simplistic (some will say unfair), but that’s pretty much what it was. Some of us were calling for more accountability, more teeth in the law, while others were trying to hang onto the “accountability lite” they enjoyed during the Clinton years. Some of us pushed to get more qualified teachers into high-poverty schools and encountered resistance from entrenched interests. And so on.

Oh that it were the case that an ESEA debate were truly or even mostly about reform!

(In 2001, the pro-change camp included both traditionally conservative and traditionally liberal groups and activists. It is certainly true that there were differences among these folks on issues like vouchers and numerous so-called “flexibility” measures. But these were largely partisan squabbles having less to do with a coherent education reform strategy than with competing political agendas.)

The difficulty with Mike’s thesis then, and any thesis even now about a “theory of action” -- [Wait, who uses terms like this in the real world anyway? “Class, my ‘theory of action” today is that if I don’t let you out for recess because you’ve been bad, you’ll behave better this afternoon…”]-- for the mighty ESEA is that it fails to grapple with raw politics. Ultimately, the final passage of ESEA is a huge political compromise among numerous competing interests, as they are represented in the Congress. As I wrote yesterday, there was plenty of negotiating and horse-trading (some not too pretty) on NCLB 1.0. And most certainly there will be even more on NCLB 2.0. The influential players on NCLB reauthorization are a growing and unwieldy crowd, which now includes: 1) both political parties and their various factions and Presidential candidates; 2) education organizations [for those unfamiliar with Washington, there are literally dozens of interest groups, each representing a group of elected officials and/or paid employees in education, from pre-K through higher ed]; 3) the education industry (a large and hardly monolithic collection of private sector providers, suppliers, publishers); and, 4) to a small but significant extent, advocates for less powerful interests (e.g., children and their families), including the Education Trust, some civil rights organizations, and advocates for particular groups of children, including those who are homeless, disabled, etc.

The real challenge then for good education policy is to line up as many pro-reform voices with political clout and moral sway as possible, and this is one reason both approaches need to learn to get along. Moreover, each can help kids, and this, of course, is the ultimate goal. Thus, I am largely in favor of the two-pronged approach Mike sees in the law, as long as each element is crafted and implemented in ways that make sense for kids and those who teach them. Following, I describe each approach and make some recommendations for reauthorization.

There’s lots of precedent for the federal government to invest in “what works.” Lots of examples come from science, medicine and health care. It’s become trendy for education folks to look to medicine and the hard (or harder) sciences for policy and inspiration. After all, those of us fortunate enough to have access to health care know that when we get sick, medicine usually has a treatment protocol based on the latest research and standards of practice. And the professionals we go to are all licensed after rigorous education as well as on-the-job training.

In education, there are numerous programs funded by Congress explicitly based on some evidence of “what works.” They include Reading First, Early Reading First, Striving Readers, Advanced Placement, and Comprehensive School Reform. There is clearly an important place for all of these, and perhaps others, in the ESEA. Congress should be careful, however, balancing two important considerations when authorizing these programs: First, Congress should sort through the evidence of effectiveness and support both proven-effective and promising programs. In some cases the distinction will be minute, and we are in dire need of models of “what works,” particularly at the middle and high school level. Second, Congress should be careful not to be overly prescriptive. For example, while requiring a reading program to meet a set of rigorous guidelines based on the available evidence, it would be unwise to dictate (or to allow the Department of Education to mandate) the use of a particular textbook, designer program, etc. Finally, all “what works” programs – as designed and as carried out in real classrooms – must be subject to rigorous third-party evaluation, and funding should not be continued to programs or recipients that are not successful.

Title I and “Whatever Works”

Title I, where the vast majority of ESEA dollars are directed, has been written largely as a “whatever works” program since 1994. This is at least a symbolic improvement over the law prior to 1994, when it was an “anything goes” formula grant to school districts. Title I is generally loosely regulated in terms of education “inputs,” and contains all the core accountability provisions of the law: standards, assessments, AYP, school improvement, corrective action, and restructuring. On the ground, Title I provides the largest stream of money from the feds to K-12 schools. And every single Congressional district receives Title I funds.

For the most part, however, Title I does not tell recipients how to spend their allocations. Rather, the law sets out a framework requiring participating districts and schools, using a combination of federal and state/local resources, to improve achievement by certain minimal annual increments. It also requires states and districts to take remedial action when achievement targets are not met.

For many reasons, it makes good sense to permit local educators to make their own decisions about how to spend this money. There are safeguards, however, that serve to protect the interests of children, the intended beneficiaries of the funds: 1) compliance with certain fiscal requirements designed to ensure that Title I funds truly provide the extra help students in high-poverty schools need, 2) requirements that states and districts equalize the distribution of certified, experienced teachers, and 3) fund-allocation rules that require targeting to higher-poverty schools, and in some cases, expenditure only on or for certain children (e.g., students must be poor to opt for extra tutoring in low-performing schools).

While this framework is sound in theory, it is flawed in one significant way: nobody loses their Title I funds when they fail to produce results. Consequently, Title I remains in many, many school districts more like the “anything goes” entitlement school districts have come to expect from Washington, and less like the “do whatever it takes, but do it” approach Mike imagines. Here are some ideas to fix this problem:

1. While the idea of cutting off Title I funds to a chronically failing school is distasteful to some, it’s an idea Congress ought to consider. One way to shift the dollars to a truly outcome-based system that rewards success would be to gradually move Title I funds into a competitive grant program. All high-poverty schools would be eligible on the same basis and for amounts roughly equal to or greater than their current per pupil allocation. But only schools that produce measurable results would continue to receive Title I dollars, and a percentage of the worst-performing schools would become ineligible each year. Congress would no longer automatically subsidize the lowest achievers, it would reward success in similarly situated schools, and more children would achieve at higher levels than is now the case in many high-poverty communities.
2. Reinventing Title I as a credible outcomes-based program will only work if there is sufficient due process built in: First, ensure real comparability in the distribution of state and local dollars allocated to Title I schools. Schools cannot be shortchanged and expected to perform like schools on the other side of town with better resources (including teachers). Second, make sure teachers, principals and parents – those working directly with children – have a voice in how the money is spent, and for a period of years to ensure time to work. Third, make sure parents have the means to leave persistently failing schools, if that is their choice. Fourth, make sure building-level stakeholders have the opportunity to participate in developing school improvement strategies and plans. Finally, don’t constrain educators with rigid scripts and boxed-in curricula. Allow innovation, flexibility, and some competition among Title I schools.

Obviously, there are huge political obstacles, along with many details to work out. But if real Title I reforms along these lines were enacted, I bet we’d hear fewer complaints from teachers about the draconian management of their schools and school systems, about narrowing of the curriculum or being forced to “teach to the test.”

Tomorrow: more on this subject as we wander over to the “HQT” debate.

Mike, Tuesday 6:55 a.m.:

Dianne finds my “what works vs. whatever works” premise “think tanky,” but I’ll take it as a compliment that it inspired her to pen a 1,700 word response. (The original Ed Week article weighed in at a mere 1,300 words; Dianne, the Brookings Institution is calling.)

Let me provide a little more context from my original piece. First, about the “what works” crowd:

These reformers look across the education system and see its failings in terms of ignorance and ideology. They decry the pedagogical fads that sweep through our schools, bemoan educators’ resistance to scientifically proven reading-instruction methods, and abhor the quasi-religious nature of disliked educational “philosophies” such as constructivism and “multiple intelligences.” They seek to bring order to this chaos through the dispassionate eye of science. Using medicine as their model, they aim to employ rigorous research methods to determine what works, and then to use the force of law and regulation to ensure adoption of these methods throughout the land.

And about the “whatever works” crowd:

These reformers look out across the education system and see its failings in terms of incentives, power, and politics. They decry the daily decisions made by school boards and district leaders that benefit adults instead of children (especially poor children). They abhor the red tape and bureaucratic inertia that keep educators from innovating. They don’t particularly care what happens inside the “black box” of classroom instruction; they just want children to be well-educated at the end of the day. They seek to right the system through the classic management model of “tight-loose”: Be tight about the results you expect, but loose as to the means. Put differently, the whatever-works camp combines accountability for student learning with flexibility around everything else. Using the entrepreneurial sector as its model, this camp aims to create a marketplace of schools, free to experiment, compete, and improve.

Now, Dianne’s right, of course, that the tension between these two camps was secondary to the fight between the proponents of change and the defenders of the status quo. It was the what works and whatever works folks on one side, and the “nothing works” folks on the other. (The NEA talking points Joel’s post on Monday illustrated a key tenet of this group yesterday when he argued that “between 75 and 99% of all schools will eventually fail AYP.” That assumes, of course, that we can’t expect the schools to actually improve. Gotta love such defeatism from an organization that now purports to be all about closing the achievement gap.)

Still the tension was, and is real. And while there weren’t any debates staged over cabernet (when we do get together, cheap beer at the Lucky Bar is more typical), ideas from both camps got amalgamated into NCLB. After all, many of the big debates last time around didn’t result in winners and losers. Everybody won—because everybody’s ideas got lumped together into the law. Which left educators to sort out the internal inconsistencies.

So in which direction should the next version of NCLB move? If you read the Ed Week article closely, you can tell that I’m fundamentally a “whatever works” kind of guy. And not just in the No Child Left Behind context. To my eye, history is littered with examples of top-down government mandates gone awry. It’s not that I’m a libertarian—far from it. It’s just that, at a pragmatic level, focusing on rules and processes and inputs doesn’t seem as effective as focusing on results and outcomes for a simple reason: it’s harder to game results than it is to game process. You can go through the motions when it comes to following rules, but you either get results or you don’t. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

And it’s not just education where this is the case. The historic breakthrough in welfare reform came when a handful of states were allowed to bend the rules and try new approaches, as long as they achieved key outcomes. Some of the most promising environmental initiatives (such as the creation of a marketplace of “pollution credits”) rest on this same premise—that regulating outcomes (the amount of chemicals released into the atmosphere) is more effective than regulating inputs (the design of a smokestack).

So in education, that means holding schools accountable for boosting student achievement (properly measured, with good tests and anti-cheating measures in place) while cutting them free of most of the red tape that currently ensnares them. Specifically, we need to empower principals with lots more freedoms, especially: to hire the best person for the job (which means opening pathways to alternate certification); to pay teachers what they are worth (which means eliminating the single salary schedule and allowing differential, performance, and incentive pay); and to remove ineffective teachers (which means throwing out the worst parts of collective bargaining agreements).

Don’t get me wrong: I have sympathy for the “what works” crowd. It’s a big gamble to expect incentives alone to alter behavior, especially when “hearts and minds” are in the mix. Put more simply, it’s not clear whether “accountability for results” in education will overcome 80-odd years of enchantment with stupid ideas, especially regarding how to teach children to read. And some of the most high-profile champions of the “whatever works” worldview haven’t helped the cause by siding with the anti-science crowd when it comes to curriculum. As Fordham trustee Diane Ravitch has so eloquently explained in a variety of settings, reformers such as Joel Klein seem almost predisposed to place their faith (a word chosen carefully) in constructivist educators who’ve spent their lifetime fighting the what works crowd. What tragedy! And what a lesson for all of us who care about results: obsess about structural change and ignore what’s happening inside the classroom at your own peril. (Ravitch develops this argument here.)

But I’m less conflicted when it comes to federal education policy. For there’s little doubt that Uncle Sam lacks the tools to effectively force “what works” on the nation’s schools, since it doesn’t actually run them. The Reading First brouhaha is a perfect case in point. While I believe the program is starting to get results thanks to the heroic efforts of Chris Doherty and his colleagues (see here), the political backlash that resulted from having federal officials involved in curricular decisions probably means that it’s just not feasible. To do it right, we’d need an F.D.A. for education—an agency that can vet the best research and evaluation findings in a transparent way, picking winners and losers based on science and enforcing its findings on the nation’s schools. (Nobody could use federal funds for programs not on the approved list.) The What Works Clearinghouse could morph into such an agency. And if you think that idea is saleable, let me talk to you about mandatory national testing…

So as much as I hate to say it, federal regulators should get out of the “what works” business. For sure, the Institute of Educational Sciences should continue to produce high quality studies evaluating the effectiveness of various approaches, and the What Works Clearinghouse should continue to vet and disseminate them. But Uncle Sam should keep its “what works” agenda to researching interventions and sharing information, not mandating particular curricular approaches in return for funds. It’s just not tenable.

Meanwhile, the feds should beef up the “whatever works” side of the equation for, as Dianne eloquently explains, there’s still not enough true “accountability for results” in the law as it stands. A good first step would be ending the race to the bottom by setting rigorous (and yes, voluntary) national standards and tests; Dianne’s other “get tough” actions are worth considering too.

Most importantly, though, NCLB version 2.0 needs to defeat the defeatists—the “nothing works” coalition of the Charles Murrays, the Richard Rothsteins, and yes, the NEAs, who don’t think educators are up to the task of getting all kids to true proficiency. Joel, are you ready to defect to the other side?

Joel, Wednesday 9:35 p.m.:

Instead of having a debate among Washington policy wonks about whether the next ESEA should be more focused on the Federal Government dictating that states and schools use “what works” versus letting them do “whatever works”, I suggest that policymakers listen to those who actually do the work – classroom educators!

A major part of the problem with NCLB is that it was developed with little input from frontline educators - teachers, paraprofessionals, and local school administrators. Its numerous federal mandates (a study by the Department of Education Inspector General found “588 … compliance requirements within Title I, Part A of the NCLB Act..”) are a command and control mechanism that fails to recognize the diversity of our 90,000 plus public schools and more than 40 million students.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, states and schools are expected to spend 6,457,586 burden hours and $135.9 million to comply with the paperwork requirements of NCLB.

NCLB’s entire premise is not based on “what works”. As I pointed out in my Monday post, NCLB is not closing achievement gaps and is not likely to achieve its own stated goal of 100% student proficiency on the math and reading tests. According to UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), the “most serious problem is that the NCLB expectations for student achievement have been set unrealistically high, requiring that by the year 2014, 100% of students must reach the proficient level or above in math and reading. Based on current improvement levels and without major changes in the definition of adequate yearly progress (AYP), almost all schools will fail to meet NCLB requirements within the next few years.” The author Bob Linn says, “The most important modification is to set realistic performance targets for adequate yearly progress, rewarding effort with success.”

While NCLB purports to base all of its provisions on scientifically-based evidence of what works, it dictates consequences for schools and districts that have no basis in such evidence. School choice, supplemental educational services, turning schools into charter schools, and turning school over to private companies – where’s the evidence that those work?

A Government Accountability Office study of so-called education management organizations found “Little is known about the effectiveness of these companies’ programs on student achievement, parental satisfaction, parental involvement, or school climate because few rigorous studies have been conducted.”

NCLB also assumes that the sole way to measure student achievement and whether achievement gaps are closing is by two statewide test scores. Does that work? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a coalition of high-tech companies and education organizations including NEA said: “The No Child Left Behind Act risks losing relevance if an innovative approach to reauthorization is not pursued…” One of its recommendations is that “NCLB's assessment and accountability system should be based on multiple measures of students' abilities that include 21st century skills.”

Even Mike’s organization Fordham Foundation said:

“…is anybody prepared to tackle one of that law's most damaging unintended consequences? We refer, of course, to ‘the big squeeze’—the compression of the curriculum to little but reading, math, and sometimes science… Doubling the time that schools devote to math and reading in response to state and federal testing requirements won’t truly prepare young Americans for life in the 21st century. It probably won’t even boost reading and math scores in the long term, concluded a conference of policymakers, business leaders, and educators…”

So I agree with Mike Petrilli (I don’t often say those words!) that the federal government largely get out of mandating “what works”, especially when what it says works doesn’t!

However, Mike is completely off base in characterizing NEA as part of the “nothing works” crowd. It is simply absurd to pretend that schools – by themselves – can overcome all of the other challenges faced by too many children and their families – poverty, racism, crime, homelessness, lack of heath care, inadequate nutrition, and more. Perhaps it makes sense – indeed perhaps it might “work” more to close achievement gaps - to focus on programs that provide the services and resources children need to be successful in school.

Perhaps as the research has shown, investments in quality early childhood education and pre-K programs will do more to close the achievement gap than additional federally- mandated tests and private school voucher schemes.

As Rothstein points out in his August 2006 response to Mike’s boss, Checker Finn:

“…if we truly believe that school improvement alone can close (or even come reasonably close to closing) the achievement gap, then, as Mayor Bloomberg suggested, we need not worry terribly much about the serious social problems facing American society. All these problems – racial discrimination, economic inequality, inequitable access to health care, dysfunctional families and neighborhoods – will take care of themselves. But if school improvement alone cannot close (or come close to closing) the achievement gap, then assertions to the contrary have the effect of undermining public and political pressure to take action to reform other social and economic institutions, making a significant narrowing of the achievement gap less likely. In this sense, the rhetoric of school reform is counter-productive and dangerous.”

Let’s focus on what works for children – in their schools as well as their neighborhoods and communities.

NEA believes all children should have a great public school. That’s why we have proposed a set of criteria for great public school. That’s why we believe great public schools should have quality programs and services that meet the full range of all children's needs so that they come to school every day ready and able to learn. Students must have access to programs such as public school pre-K and kindergarten programs; afterschool enrichment and intervention programs; nutrition, including school breakfast and lunch programs; school-based health care and related services; counseling and mentoring programs for students and families; safe and efficient transportation; and safe and drug-free schools programs.

I also believe that Dianne’s proposal to turn Title I into a competitive grant program is ill-conceived and should be and would be rejected by Congress. Instead of further punishing schools that lack the tools and resources to succeed, and cutting off funds and services to children most in need, the Congress should instead double Title I funding, so that the more than 3 million children now denied the full range of services get the help they need. Let’s see if full funding for Title I works.

Instead of labeling and punishing schools, the federal government should help them build capacity to improve. The next ESEA should focus on assisting these schools to build the capacity to implement research-based instructionally sound strategies and programs to close achievement gaps. Such strategies should focus on expanded high-quality professional development for teachers and other educators, an intensive effort to strengthen parental and community involvement in schools, and improved working conditions so that teachers are treated like professionals and empowered to work collaboratively with strong school leaders to improve student learning.

Top–down programs and mandates developed by those far removed from the classroom don’t work. Programs that actively involve educators and parents in shared decision-making with their school leadership and support from the federal achievement via technical assistance and useful educator-friendly best practice guides on what has worked in other similar schools to improve achievement should be the focus of the next ESEA.

Mike, 8:58 a.m.:

Ladies and gentlemen: We finally have a debate on! While today’s topic is the highly dubious Highly Qualified Teachers provision, let me start by reacting to a few of Joel’s comments.

I’m willing to concede that labeling the NEA and its ilk as part of the “nothing works” camp was unfair. Based on Joel’s essay I think a more accurate moniker is the “ending poverty works” crowd. Joel’s words: “It is simply absurd to pretend that schools – by themselves – can overcome all of the other challenges faced by too many children and their families – poverty, racism, crime, homelessness, lack of heath care, inadequate nutrition, and more.”

There’s only two problems with this world-view. One, thousands of “absurd” schools are in fact getting the job done, today, with kids who face all of these challenges. Many find creative ways to engage the community and other social service agencies, but they take responsibility for their students’ learning. But the more pernicious problem is that the “end poverty first” argument excuses the education system for another generation of ill-prepared students. After all, if we knew how to end poverty, we’d have done it by now—and I’ve never heard a solution for helping people escape poverty that didn’t include getting a good education.

Furthermore, I’m glad to see Joel agree with me that the “What Works” approach is problematic at the federal level, though he then goes on to propose that the next ESEA include “research-based strategies” around “high quality professional development” and “community and parent involvement” and “improved working conditions.” In local schools, these are worthy endeavors. But I can just imagine a federal “improved working conditions” program, mandating particular approaches based on “science.” Here we go again…

On to today’s question: What should be done with NCLB’s Highly Qualified Teachers provision? Here’s my suggestion: Nominate it for the Dumbest Federal Policy Ideas of All Time Hall of Fame. It should get accepted on the first ballot.

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the importance of effective teachers. Yes, they are more important to raising student achievement than anything else under the control of schools. Yes, shamefully for all of us, they are inequitably distributed throughout our education system, with poor kids and kids of color much less likely to have access to the effective teachers who could save their lives. Yes, the federal government should do something about this.

But the crafters of the Highly Qualified Teachers provision—most notably Ed Trust and the other civil rights groups (including Dianne’s)—made an enormous blunder. They ignored the elephant in the room, and that elephant has trampled all over their precious creation. And it is this: most of what makes a teacher effective cannot yet be measured.

All of those characteristics which we wonks argue endlessly over—teachers’ intelligence, their subject matter knowledge, whether they went to education school, whether they have full certification, or a master’s degree, or went to a selective college, etc., etc.—all of that adds up to maybe 25 percent of what makes a teacher effective, so say the researchers. We know that teacher effectiveness matters a lot, but we don’t know how to predict who will be effective and who won’t.

So instead of being humble about the 75 percent of teacher effectiveness which is a mystery, we obsess about the 25 percent that we can measure. But even here, NCLB gets it wrong. Of all the measurable characteristics of teachers, the one most linked to strong student achievement is general intelligence. Yet the law only addresses this opaquely, through required (low-level) tests for elementary teachers. Other teachers can skate by with a major in their field or the Kafkaesque “HOUSSE” process, neither of which put a premium on intelligence, per se. Subject matter knowledge is also important, but HQT is a stretch even there, taking the few studies linking content knowledge in math and science to better outcomes and applying the principle to every subject under the sun. Then, as if to make the whole thing a big farce, the HOUSSE loophole was added, as if to say, “we don’t actually expect veteran teachers to know their stuff.”

And then there’s the requirement that all teachers be fully certified, despite reams of evidence that this credential is basically meaningless.

So what’s the alternative to this madness? We should start by taking the 75 percent that we can’t measure seriously. Sure, effective teachers tend to be smart, well-educated in their field, knowledgeable about classroom practice and effective instruction, but they also can connect well with kids, use humor, show a passion for learning, endure long days, work effectively with colleagues, and hold high expectations for their students—none of which can be measured well by bureaucrats or researchers. But these characteristics can be detected by school principals—the people who hire teachers, hold interviews, talk to references, watch a practice lesson. So if we take the 75 percent of what we can’t measure seriously, we would empower principals to decide whether teachers are highly-qualified or not, because they have much more information than anyone in Washington will ever have.

Of course, principals don’t act in isolation. The leader of a high-poverty school is at a huge disadvantage because he or she can’t offer teachers more money or other incentives to work in the tougher conditions. And with seniority transfer rights (Joel!) he or she just has to watch as experienced teachers float away to take jobs in more comfortable settings, never to return.

This is a problem the federal government could address. All it would take is striking one line in NCLB (namely Section 1120A(c)(2)(B)) regarding “comparable” resources. Under the statute, high-poverty Title I schools are supposed to get equal district resources before the extra federal money is added. Yet this line specifically says that teachers’ years of experiences (and thus varying salary levels) are not to be considered when determining if the “comparability” standard has been met. Strike that line, and suddenly every district in the country would have to move to some sort of weighted student funding model, ensuring equitable resources on a per-pupil basis. Combined with some flexibility around the single salary schedule, that would give principals of high-poverty schools dramatically more resources and thus the buying power to keep experienced teachers from going astray, and to attract new talent to where it’s needed most.

Now, I suspect Dianne will defend “Highly Qualified Teachers,” saying that it’s not perfect but is a decent proxy for teacher quality. But when issuing top-down mandates that tie schools’ hands, proxies aren’t good enough. Or maybe she’ll hop on board the “highly effective teachers” train—the idea floating around Washington that the new NCLB should measure whether individual teachers are boosting student test scores. It’s a good notion—and impossible to implement from Washington. (Please, stop us before we kill again.)

And I suspect Joel will move in a totally different direction, tweaking the twenty-five percent to shut down alternate routes to certification and free teachers even further from the subject matter requirements. But all that will do is make it even less likely that our schools will be able to attract much of the top-notch talent which (understandably) refuses to sit through years of worthless ed school classes, while lowering standards for everyone else.

Or maybe the three of us can join forces, bring some common sense to this highly emotional debate about the equitable distribution of teachers, and promote a policy that’s sound, not symbolism.

Joel, 9:53 p.m.:

Hey, Mike, thanks for acknowledging that ending poverty might work to help close achievement gaps. I certainly prefer being in that crowd than the "do nothing" crowd. Mike and several others have made this debate into an either-or one, arguing that if we care about these broader societal problems faced by many children then we are letting schools off the hook. According to this thinking, we either address societal problems and do nothing to improve schools, or work to improve schools (through more testing?) and ignore societal challenges. My point is we should concentrate our nation’s efforts on both. Of course we need to improve the many struggling public schools, yet equally important is to also address the broader set of issues. NEA has never argued for doing nothing in schools until we eradicate poverty, and indeed believe that education is a key factor in overcoming the other societal problems we face.

On to teacher quality. I would actually raise the ante on Mike’s characterization of the Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) provisions -“Nominate it for the Dumbest Federal Policy Ideas of All Time Hall of Fame” - by also nominating it for the “Poorest Policy Implementation of the Decade” award.

It took almost five years after enactment of NCLB for the U. S. Department of Education to finally approve most states’ highly qualified teacher plans (though four still await approval). The process surrounding implementation of this provision has been an almost never-ending series of miscommunications from the Department of Education, completely unclear guidance and assistance to states and school districts, ever-changing rules and processes, inconsistent enforcement and interpretation, and a major lack of openness and transparency.

Pity the poor classroom teacher who is supposed to become “highly qualified” when her state and the Federal government can’t agree on what that means or what she is supposed to do.

However, at least one part of the HQT provision has some merit. I believe (sorry, we part company here Mike) that ensuring that all teachers are fully licensed and certified is an important component of a teacher quality policy. An April 2005 study issued by several researchers at Stanford University’s School Redesign Network found that “certified teachers consistently produce significantly stronger student achievement gains than do uncertified teachers." That's why we have opposed the loophole in the current law that allows some charter schools teachers to be deemed highly qualified even if they are not licensed or certified.

The flaw in the HQT provision is that it focuses only on "content" knowledge - what teachers know about a subject - and not on their ability to impart that knowledge to an increasingly diverse student population. Educators consistently report that successful teachers have both content knowledge and instructional skills, such as knowing how to address different students’ learning needs and skill levels in the classroom.

Unfortunately, the language of NCLB - with its lack of distinction between minimally and highly qualified teachers, along with a rapid implementation schedule and limited resources - poses a serious problem for building a profession of teaching, which must be marked by a coherent teacher development system of standards, assessments, and incentives.

NCLB must be amended to focus not only on teachers’ content knowledge but also on their ability to teach it by requiring preparation and performance based assessment before a teacher is considered highly qualified. Specifically, the loophole instituted by the U.S. Department of Education that allows teachers in alternate route programs to be considered highly qualified for up to three years before they COMPLETE their program should be repealed. Would anyone with a straight face say that a person is a highly qualified doctor three years before they complete their training?

Finding Hard-to-Staff Solutions: The current crisis in recruiting and retaining teachers often relates less to overall supply and more to regional and local inequalities. While some districts appear well on their way to meeting the 100 percent highly qualified teacher requirements, these well-resourced communities sometimes obscure the pervasive recruitment and retention challenges faced by hard-to-staff schools and districts. Leaders in urban and rural districts struggle, even with additional funds, to compete in the teacher labor market. What’s more, schools need to go beyond just signing bonuses to more comprehensive approaches in recruiting teachers, including better working conditions and long-term support for teachers. We need to provide teachers with the tools and resources they need to succeed.

In fact, improving working conditions will directly improve student learning. The Center on Teaching Quality has conducted surveys of teacher working conditions in several locations, including NC and Clark County, NV. Based on responses from 150,000 educators (both teachers and administrators), the surveys found “Teacher Working Conditions Are Student Learning Conditions” and “Teacher Working Conditions Affect Teacher Retention”.

The recent report on the 2006 NC survey results concluded:

“Ensuring a qualified teacher for every student is not enough to close the achievement gap. Teachers must have the resources and support they need to serve all students well, and without comprehensive sustained efforts to improve teacher working conditions, much of the states’ notable school reform efforts could go unfulfilled.”

Federal policy should be directed toward providing states and school districts with the resources and technical assistance to create an effective program of professional development and professional accountability for all employees. Effective professional development should promote continuing growth. It should create opportunities to acquire new knowledge and apply the best pedagogical practices consistent with the school’s goals.

ESEA should also include a grant program to states willing to encourage skills- and knowledge-based staffing arrangements in schools. This program should encourage collaboration between the school administration and the local organization representing teachers and other educators, as well as increased collaboration among teachers and between teachers and other education staff, to promote innovation in the way teachers’ and support professionals’ roles and responsibilities are defined.

The development and implementation of such programs must respect existing collective bargaining agreements. Teachers with specific knowledge and skills should be encouraged to assist their colleagues to become better at what they do, and should receive additional compensation for taking on new roles.

To sum up, ensuring that all students have a high-quality teacher requires a comprehensive approach. One that is more than just bureaucratic federal mandates. Such a comprehensive approach should –

• close the HQT loopholes for charter and alternate routes teachers,
• provide some common-sense flexibility in the definition for special education, social studies, and middle school rural teachers,
• provide an array of financial incentives to attract and retain qualified teachers in hard-to-staff schools,
• improve working conditions in order to assist teachers in improving student learning,
• create high-quality mentoring and induction programs to support new teachers,
• expand and improve professional development for al teachers – linked to their specific curricular and instructional needs,
• ensure quality district/school leadership that is able and willing to support all professionals with quality and appropriate professional development and experienced mentor teachers,
• facilitate and recognize teachers who help other teachers improve their teaching skills through support for peer assistance programs and mentor teacher positions,
• continue support for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and
• provide teachers with professional pay.

Joel, 8:05 p.m.:

At last we turn to the always fun debate about NCLB funding. Unfortunately, for the last several years, there has not been much “fun” in NCLB funding. Has NCLB been adequately funded? The answer to that question sometimes seems like the argument over light beer – “Tastes Great!” versus “Less Filling!”

Even the Beatles were conflicted about how important money is, singing at different times, “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy you love”, and “The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. I want money. That’s what I want.”

In the case of NCLB, the reforms and mandates sure aren’t free! And while money probably can’t buy you love, it sure helps school buy programs and services to improve student achievement and close achievement gaps.

Let’s look at some simple facts:

• There has been a cumulative 6-year shortfall of $56.1 billion between the authorized levels (the amounts specified in the bill that set forth what is needed to fully serve all eligible students, meet the costs of the program, etc.) and the actual funding provided.
• The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2008 budget would add another $14.8 billion to that shortfall.
• In Title I alone, the shortfall under the Bush budget from last year’s authorized level of $25 billion would be $11.1 billion, and the cumulative shortfall since enactment of NCLB would rise to $54.7 billion. More than three million children will be left behind.
• While the President's FY 08 budget proposes a modest increase of $993 million for NCLB programs, $300 million of that would be for private school vouchers.
• The five- year cumulative increase in NCLB funding under the President’s budget (FY 03 to FY 08) would be only 3.3% - not per year, but total! Excluding the $300 million for private school vouchers, the President would provide less money for NCLB than was available four years ago, and only 2% above the amount available five years ago.
• In the current 2005-06 school year, 62 percent of all school districts are receiving less Title I money than they did last year. Almost 90% either had their Title I funds cut or frozen.
• NCLB promised that schools labeled “in need of improvement” subject to “corrective action” or “restructuring” for their failure to reportedly make AYP would receive school improvement funds to provide resources to put in place programs to address their supposed shortcomings. NCLB authorized $500 million per year in school improvement funds for this purpose. For the first five years of NCLB the total amount provided in school improvement funds is exactly zero. Nada. Zilch. Definitely can’t but a lot of love or reforms for that!

I know some will say that 4% comes off the top of every state’s Title I allocation for distribution to districts that have schools that have failed AYP. However, due to the way the law is worded (taking the 4% off the top cannot reduce any district's Title I allocation below the level it received in the previous year) and the fact that Title I funding was cut in FY 06, and had less than a 1% increase the previous year, little money is available through this route. According to the Center on Education Policy, in a February 2006 report, A Shell Game: Federal Funds to Improve Schools,

“Complying with the school improvement reservation has become a shell game. To meet the reservation without violating the hold harmless, states must take money away from school districts that were slated to receive increased Title I allocations because of their larger numbers of low-income children. Then states must give the reserved funds to other districts that may or may not have as much poverty. So the very districts that were supposed to get more Title I money due to greater poverty are actually receiving smaller or no increases due to the improvement reservation.”

I also expect Mike will say that authorization levels are meaningless, they are just a maximum amount that Congress can provide, but are not a promise. However, the NCLB authorizations are not meaningless. They were carefully considered, debated, and voted on in 2001. In fact, on May 23, 2001, then-Rep. Cox (R-CA) offered an amendment to cut the authorized amount in the bill reported by the Education and the Workforce Committee, and instead set the authorization level for NCLB so that after the first year it would only go up 3.5% per year. The amendment was overwhelmingly defeated on a bipartisan vote of 101-326. Rep. George Miller said,

“Passage of this amendment, in fact, breaks the arrangement and the deal that we have with respect to this legislation. Let us look at why we have added the increases that we have in this legislation. We have added the increases in this legislation because we think they are important to bringing about the reforms that many in this Congress have said, many on both sides of the aisle, but also what clearly this President of the United States has said that he wants to achieve in terms of the results.”

Here’s the irony and the sad reality. If the Cox amendment had passed and funding was provided at the levels he proposed – levels that Rep. Miller said “breaks the arrangement”, NCLB funding in FY 08 would be $1.16 billion MORE than the President requested. Not only have we broken the arrangement, funding has not even kept up with the levels overwhelmingly rejected by Congress in 2001 as too low!

Key programs needing substantial increases in the new ESEA (indeed right now in the Fiscal Year 08 education appropriations bill) include Title I (so that elementary, middle, and high schools all get their fair share of funds), school improvement to help struggling schools, teacher quality state grants, after-school, and English Language Acquisition state grants.

One idea that Congress should consider to use funding to respond to one of the unintended consequences of NCLB – narrowing of the curriculum – would be to consolidate the several small grant programs targeted to various academic subjects (arts education, civic education, character education, physical education, etc.) and create a new comprehensive curriculum grant that would provide funds to school districts to ensure that all children have a rich and comprehensive curriculum covering not only reading, math, and science, but also art, music, social studies, foreign language, physical education, and more.

During Congressional consideration of NCLB in 2001, NEA said that reform without resources will fail to produce results. Mandates without money are the same. However, bad reforms without money taste bad AND are less filling!

Our nation’s educators will not be made suckers of again. We won’t be satisfied with the reauthorized ESEA unless it improves the fundamentally flawed policies of AYP, adds to the incomplete policies by providing proven programs such as class size reduction, and provides a substantial increase in resources. Our schools and students need an accountability system that includes common sense flexibility with shared responsibility. And also provides the resources to actually help schools close the achievement gap. Otherwise, NCLB will remain an unfunded mandate that largely labels and punished schools, and denies all children their basic right to a great public school.

Check back later for a response from Dianne.