No Child Left Behind: Don't Renew It -- Undo It!

USA Today offers point-counterpoint editorials on the No Child Left Behind law. The paper's editorial board argues that the law is flawed but fixable (not exactly a characterization parents like to hear about their kids at parent-teacher conferences). Education writer Alfie Kohn responds that the law is "is an appalling and unredeemable experiment that has done incalculable damage to our schools — particularly those serving poor, minority and limited-English-proficiency students" ["Opposing View: 'Too Destructive to Salvage,'" USA Today, posted online 2007.05.31]. Says Kohn,

Let's be clear: This law has nothing to do with improving learning. At best, it's about raising scores on multiple-choice exams. This law is not about discovering which schools need help; we already know. This law is not about narrowing the achievement gap; its main effect has been to sentence poor children to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills. Thus, even if the scores do rise, it's at the expense of a quality education. Affluent schools are better able to maintain good teaching — and retain good teachers — despite NCLB, so the gap widens.

Kohn cites a Teachers Network survey that finds that an unwhopping 3% of teachers believe NCLB helps them teach more effectively. An even less whopping 1% of teachers believe NCLB effectively assesses the quality of schools.

For once, this teacher finds himself among the majority. I have not seen NLCB improve anything other than testing company profits and income for curriculum and testing specialists. The Montrose School District actually hired a specialist not to teach or conduct professional development but just to collect and analyze the data required by NCLB. Other schools have done the same, spending money just to handle the NCLB paperwork, not to directly produce any educational benefits. Spending more money -- local, state, or federal -- on NCLB won't actually improve education; it may only help fund the extra bureaucracy created by this federal effort to turn education into a numbers game and a campaign slogan.

A few summers ago I called in to the midday Forum program on South Dakota Public Radio to ask Governor Rounds how he felt about NCLB. Specifically, I asked how he, as a Republican, rationalized his support for this intrusion of federal power into the fundamentally local issue of education. He put on his big smile (so shiny it gleams even on radio) and said we all ought to be interested in improving educational opportunities for our kids. That's right -- he avoided my question.

(I can't resist pointing out that Governor Rounds espouses support for the principle of local control of schools when it serves his purposes:

My first objection to Senate Bill 95 is that it creates a new and unnecessary layer of government. Senate Bill 95 irreversibly alters a governance system that currently operates well and the way it was intended, with local control. Adding a new bureaucracy simply drains additional state resources and provides no benefit to the technical institutes. I do not support creation of this unneeded layer of government. [veto message rejecting Legislature's effort to create a state-level board to govern South Dakota's vo-tech schools, 2007.03.20])

As recently as the 1990s (back when I was a Republican), the GOP agreed that education was a local issue and wanted to eliminate the federal Department of Education. ("...the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the work place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools...." -- GOP platform, 1996.)

Since then, I've changed parties, but the GOP has changed philosophy, creating more big government with NCLB. I'll argue for more financial support for education from the state if that's where I have to go to get it, but education works better when it is funded and controlled at the local level. The teachers and parents in your school district can tell you how the kids are doing and what the school needs to improve on better than any standardized test or bureaucrat from Washington or Pierre can. NCLB doesn't offer any real assistance to education; it wastes money and man-hours. Let's kill it now and let our schools get back to teaching without Washington looking over their shoulders.