The utopian demand that all children be proficient in math and English language arts by 2014 would be replaced by the goal that all students be on track for a career or college by 2020.
The unyielding pass or fail grade for a school based on collective test scores would be replaced by measurements of individual students’ growth and broader gauges of school progress, such as school climate and student attendance.
As its antidote to the excesses of the No Child Left Behind law, the Obama administration has released a 41-page outline for its as yet-unnamed reauthorization of NCLB, officially known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
The Obama plan would inject flexibility and, for most schools, more autonomy with more federal money. It would address some of the sharpest criticisms and unanticipated consequences of the 2001 law without abandoning its central tenet: that schools must be held accountable, through annual testing and measurable objectives, for all students’ progress.
California schools have seen a narrowing of the curriculum, as have schools nationwide, in response to heavy testing in math and English. Unlike other states, California hasn’t lowered state standards to escape federal penalties. And so it should welcome from the ability to create more complex assessments, incorporating more subjects like history, and a reprieve from the unmanageable and NCLB-discrediting numbers of schools facing federal sanctions.
But the switch in focus from proficiency on tests to preparation for work and college would also expose California’s hypocrisy of bragging about high standards while settling for low achievement. No longer could California be able to ignore high dropout rates and justify straight-faced a high school exit exam based on seventh and eighth grade math and 10th grade literacy. It would have to truly align high school standards to college requirements and rigorous technical careers – a task that K-12 leaders and territorial-minded state colleges and universities have failed to do.
Obama would relax some of the overly prescriptive approaches of NCLB: parents’ right to transfer from any school that failed to make adequate scores two years in a row and to demand outside tutoring. Parents should be able to choose better schools, but schools should also be given a reasonable time — three or four years? — to improve first. Tutoring should remain an option, but schools should retain more control over Title I dollars.
Obama’s blueprint would distinguish between a schools that are lousy through and through from those where individual subgroups – special education or African-American students – are falling further behind. The former would face the sharpest interventions, while the latter might not. Civil rights advocates worry that this would signal a retreat from a commitment to minority students, but that assessment is premature. The document calls for a higher level of scrutiny on schools with a marked achievement gap; resources would be focused on students who need help, not the entire school.
Focus on equity
The blueprint reiterates the administration’s commitment to competitive grants, like Race to the Top, and promises not only to throw money at the worst 10 percent of schools but also to reward the top 10 percent – a big shift in tone and dollars. The feds would demand that effective teachers be spread equitably in low-income schools and, over time, equalize spending for poor and rich schools within a district – though it’s not clear how this could be enforced; the feds contribute only 7 cents out of every education dollar.
U.S. Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from Martinez who will play a large role in crafting the legislation in the House, praised Obama’s principles. But the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions expressed dissatisfaction.
The blueprint, said California Teachers Union President David Sanchez, “appears to be built on the same one-size-fits-all and flawed foundation of George Bush’s NCLB Act — a law that has unfairly and unproductively used test scores to label public schools and students as failing for the past eight years without providing the necessary resources or promoting the proven reforms to help schools improve.”
Either this is CTA’s lifting of the leg, or I’m reading a different document. I see flexibility where Sanchez see rigidity and new directions where he sees the status quo.
Congress, which now has the job of writing the legislation and filling in details, will have the final word.
