The cast of characters

The people of schools reform
[You can view the PDF here.]

As a senior at Princeton University, Wendy Kopp proposed a national teacher corps in the aim of eliminating educational inequality. Shortly thereafter, with $2.5 million in funding and a “skeleton” staff such a corps came into being. Ms Kopp’s corps, Teach For America, began its first year in 1990, with 500 men and women serving six low-income communities across the country. Seventeen years on, the acclaimed program has reached some 2.5 million students, in now 25 regions, with 4,400 current members and 12,000 alumni.1 “We believe that all children have the potential to achieve,” the corps’ mission explains, “and that all educational inequity stems from broader structural and societal problems.”2

That something is terribly amiss is a shared sentiment among the political and intellectual divide. Strong American Schools, a nonpartisan public awareness and action campaign, is promoting as its centerpiece Ed in ‘o8. The group, funded by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Bill & Melinda Gates and Eli & Edythe Broad Foundations, declares that “America’s students are losing out,” and hopes that presidential candidates offer much more than “empty rhetoric” in elaborating on their three foci on education standards, effective teachers, and giving students more time and support for learning.3

Indeed, for better or for worse, it is in politics where the greatest power is wielded. There are plenty who look upon power as promise, and just as many who would rather see it fail. First, the protagonists.

The ayes of Roll Call 145
“I strongly condemn an achievement gap that exists in this country,” President George Bush passionately explained after a “fascinating” spring meeting with the nation’s education, civil rights, and business leaders. True to form, the President went on to deadpan that he believes his signature No Child Left Behind Act needs to be reauthorized “because it's working.”4 The program’s May 2001 passage was a striking bipartisan feat, united in broad agreement with “what the law is trying to do,” writer Linda Perlstein explains.5,6 “Glum ‘buts’” soon followed.

The ‘buts’ are wildly, and distressingly contradictory, in lamentation of impossible rigidity, a view shared widely among educators, and illogical flexibility, shared by commentators.[i] President Bush straddled a delicate argument in securing the bill’s first passage with what many conservatives viewed as a distressing impediment by federal government into their revered states’ rights. The vote is telling: Republican votes managed only 5 ½ votes in favor for every dissenting one, where the Democrats achieved nearly 20 to one.

The law finds its origins in the standards-based reform movement. It began in the 1990s with an emphasis on “having clear and high content and performance standards for students” with curriculum and assessments in line.7 Students, the thinking has it, will rise to meet high expectations, just as easily as they will effortlessly fall to meet lower ones.

As for whether the program is working, the evidence, while fleeting, aligns itself decisively in the President’s favor. The Center on Education Policy’s June 2007 report, Answering the Question that Matters Most, details that states with three or more years of comparable test data have shown increased student achievement in reading and math since 2002 – the year No Child was enacted. Further, achievement gaps between students have been narrowing, if remaining undesirably “substantial.” Most tellingly, nine of the thirteen states with sufficient data to determine trends before and after the law was enacted shows that average yearly gains in scores were greater after No Child took effect than before.[8],[ii]

Yet the trouble arises as the report concludes that it is “difficult, if not impossible” to determine the extent that NCLB has caused these trends as states and schools have all simultaneously released different, but interconnected policies to raise achievement. All the same, the law – loftiest goals aside – was no more than the spur for states to carry out such initiatives. The conclusions, then, are encouraging. Tracy McDaniel, a national board member for the Knowledge is Power Program, is clear: “I think the greatest impact of No Child Left Behind has been to serve as a catalyst for innovation and excellence in public education.”[9]

The ink barons
A survey of major newspapers would find broad agreement with the duality of a federal framework and greater autonomy for schools. The Washington Post editorializes its fear that No Child is “in the crosshairs,” analogizing that one would not “demolish his home because it had a leaky basement or it needed new carpeting.” Were it not for the law, the paper goes on to say, failure would continue without consequence, the achievement gap would remain irrelevant, and parents would remain powerless to ensure their children a better education where their schools have failed them. Strengthen the law, the paper argues. No one claims it won’t be hard.10,11

It is The Wall Street Journal, founded in the interests of “free markets and free people,” that advocates for school choice.12 It champions economist Milton Friedman’s belief that “empowering parents would generate a competitive education market, which would lead to a burst of innovation and improvement, as competition has done is so many other areas.”13

Both the New York Times and Washington Post have supported their respective mayor’s moves for school reform; the Times particularly impressed with the City’s “impressive strides toward the goal of replacing large and often dysfunctional factory-style high schools with smaller schools.”14 The Economist, commenting particularly on British schools, but its principles universal, believes that “competition and freedom in education, as elsewhere, are the way to encourage innovation and raise standards for all.”15 That four of the nation’s most influential newspapers are so strongly aligned with the duality of education reform speaks to a strong reservoir of support that is awaiting a thoughtful comprehensive reform plan.

Enter the foils
“Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses,” a critic of the legislation told the Washington Post.16 With the executive branch’s political capital severely marginalized, legislators are beginning to, in the words of an old folk song “making their own kind of music.” The tune would be to allowing states to opt out of the law’s testing mandates; the lyricist being suburban and exurban districts that look upon the law’s mandates with dismay – seeing the crippling of programs for the gifted and talented and the discouragement of creativity in their schools.

A recent report by the Center on Education Policy finds that 62% of districts have increased time for English and mathematics classes since No Child was enacted; it is the 44% percent of districts that have reduced time in social studies, sciences, arts, physical education, lunch, and recess that has elicited such ire.17.iii Their frustration is merited – and captured frequently within this paper. The No Child Left Behind Act succeeds precisely because it is not a reckless, crippling expectation of “legislated excellence.”18

Elsewhere, others disdain the increasing unrealism surrounding demands for 100 percent proficiency by 2014. It is an understandable, but not respectable criticism. Muddling the clarity of the law’s aim of adequate yearly progress through variables that essentially “let schools off the hook” through different measures, as Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust writes, threatens to obscure what the law has “uncovered” Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling concurs in a Washington Post symposium.[19]

Yet, as the threats ceaselessly mount against the law, an opportunity, consistent with that of this paper arises. If the act is looked upon as the first venture into a nationalized framework for reform, the discontent arises not out of hostility to its aims, but out of a desire to move forward in bringing about the duality of a national framework and autonomous schooling. It is here that the small but crucially necessary reforms, especially relevant for students for whom English is a second language, can be made.

The law, as a transitional framework, parallels that of the short-lived Articles of Confederation. The increasing desire for further reform reveals the law’s role as an interim means of furthering this duality.[20] It is an audacious effort, but not inconsistent with the pursuit of an equitable, lively, meritocratic education.

Indeed, amidst the discontentment, it is the ideal time to begin repositioning the education debate towards autonomy. The risk of abandoning states and schools to their own means threatens to impede the fulfillment of a lasting platform for intellectual development. The risk of returning to decades more of idle reform – teetering back and forth between empty rhetoric and vacuous technique – is not one to entertain.

[1] Our history. Teach for America. 5 July 2007. http://www.teachforamerica.org/about/our_history.htm.
[2] Theory of change. Teach for America. 5 July 2007. http://www.teachforamerica.org/mission/theory_of_change.htm.
[3] About us. Ed in ’08. Strong American Schools. 5 July 2007. http://www.edin08.com/AboutUs.aspx.
[4] President Bush Discusses the Reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. The White House. 12 April 2007. http://whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070412.html#.
[5] Final Vote Results For Roll Call 145. United States House of Representatives. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll145.xml.
[6] The Issue Left Behind. Linda Perlstein. The Nation. 21 October 2004. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041108/perlstein.

[7] A Call for High Standards & Systemic Reform. American Federation of Teachers. 6 July 2007. http://www.aft.org/topics/sbr/index.htm.
[8] Answering the Question That Matters Most. Has Student Achievement Increased Since No Child Left Behind? Center on Education Policy. June 2007. http://tinyurl.com/38o4rg.
[9] Leaving No Child Behind. Tracy McDaniel, et al. A symposium. The Washington Post. 10 September 2007.
[10] ‘No Child’ in the Crosshairs. Editorial. The Washington Post. 2 July 2007.
[11] A Vote for ‘No Child’. Editorial. The Washington Post. 7 August 2007.
[12] Our philosophy. About Us. Opinion Journal. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. http://www.opinionjournal.com/about/philosophy.html.
[13] School-Choice Strategy. Howard S. Rich. Opinion. The Wall Street Journal. 16-17 June 2007.
[14] Smaller, Better High Schools. Editorial. The New York Times. 6 July 207.
[15] The S-word. The Economist. Leaders. 26 May 2007.
[16] Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush’s Prized ‘No Child’ Act. Jonathan Weisman, Amit R. Paley. Washington Post. 15 March 2007. http://tinyurl.com/2r9v4f.
[17] Choices, Changes, and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era. Jennifer McMurrer. Center on Education Policy. 24 July 2007. http://tinyurl.com/35pkne.
[18] Schools That Work: America’s Most Innovative Public Education Programs. George H. Wood, Ph.D. Penguin Books. 1992.
[19] Leaving No Child Behind. Margaret Spellings, Reg Weaver, Kati Haycock, Jack Dale, Michael R. Bloomberg, George Miller, Jason Kamras, Andrea Peterson, Tracy McDaniel. The Washington Post. 10 September 2007.
[20] Several prominent schools superintendents are now disclosing their support for national standards. Jack Dale, superintendent of Maryland’s leading Fairfax county schools, “would advocate for a federal testing system that allows comparison across states and … school districts. … Unless we create a quality, integrated system with clear roles and responsibilities, we will instead create an incoherent, contradictory and inconsistent educational system in the U.S.” Schools Chiefs Suggest Fixes for ‘No Child.’ Jay Mathews. The Washington Post. 1 October 2007.

[i] “In May, two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s superintendents signed a statement protesting the law’s rigidity, and seven in ten Connecticut superintendents said the law’s sanctions harm struggling schools instead of helping them, according to a survey released last week. National organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the NAACP, echo the concerns.” The Issue Left Behind. Linda Perlstein. The Nation. 21 October 2004. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041108/perlstein.
[ii] The report also concluded, “more attention should be given to the issues of the quality and transparency of state test data.” It recognizes that tests are an “imperfect measure” of achievement.
[iii] The report notes a 31 percent reduction in the total instructional time devoted to social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch and/or recess since 2001-02. The report recommends staggering testing requirements to include more academic subjects and encouraging states to give “adequate emphasis” to the arts.