NCLB is in the news lately as the House and Senate work out a program to replace it. Now that we have some hindsight what did we learn from that huge nationwide social experiment?
Logically the premise of the original NCLB legislation seemed to be that we could effectively mandate academic achievement by getting teachers to continuously up their game re outcomes for students and punish or boot the ones not bringing the underachievers along at a satisfactory rate.
Assuming that there is a common sense understanding that real world academic achievement is hugely tied to family economic circumstances, or alternatively to cultural attitudes toward educational attainment, how was all this magic supposed to happen for underclass kids with minimally educated parents?
To be clear, NCLB is not going away. The law is “widely loathed” according to an article just published in Politico (I’d say that’s the understatement of the year) but it just can’t be killed. Both the House and Senate versions contains some positive changes, but fall short in other areas.
The Bad:[ul]
[li]Public school students will still be tested, every year from 3rd through 8th grade and 11th grade.[/li][li]Then central premise that we need a massive Education Department in Washington bossing around schools and districts all over the country remains.[/ul][/li]The Good:[ul]
[li]In either version, state governments get more freedom to craft the measures whereby they evaluate schools, rather than having to judge solely based on high-stakes tests.[/li][li]The House version eliminates 70 government education programs in favor of block grants to states, to use as they see fit.[/li][li]The House version also prevents the government from using financial incentives to push for things like Common Core.[/li][li]It appears to allow some version of backpacking, the policy under which federal education money is attached to a student, and when that student transfers to a new school, the federal money goes with them. This allows some measure of accountability for schools, since if parents choose to remove their student, the school loses money.[/li][li]It clarifies that parents have the power to opt their kids out of the testing regimen.[/ul][/li]Fundamentally NCLB is based on the assumption that more control by the federal government can solve any problem with public schools. I’m not holding by breath and waiting for anyone in Congress to say that the federal government is good at creating problems and bad at solving them. The exciting changes in education are coming at the state and local level. One example is Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, which give parents a set amount of money to spend in any way they wish: on a private school, private in-home tutoring, support for homeschooling, or online education. Unfortunately this program is only available to a tiny percentage of Arizona’s students until 2019, when it will be allowed to expand.