In Praise of No Child Left Behind

As we watch No Child Left Behind blow away in the political winds, we should do so with shame and lamentation. This has been the most hopeful piece of legislation in the history of American education, drifting away on adverse political currents not because it failed but because it succeeded so splendidly.

Let us examine the facts regarding, and counter all of the specious charges levied against, No Child Left Behind. The legislation was proposed by George W. Bush in June 2001 and signed into law in January 2002 after coauthors in the House of Representatives (Democrat George Miller and Republican John Boehner) and the United States Senate (Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Judd Gregg) oversaw overwhelming approval (384-45 in the House, 91-8 in the Senate). The law is the prevailing version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that first went into effect during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The essentials of the law are the requirements that data on student progress must be disaggregated to indicate performance of students according to ethnicity, gender, economic status, national origin, and special needs. If students in each category do not meet certain minimum academic standards, a school is put on notice that it is not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

If a school is not making AYP, it gets a year to improve its program. For each school that for the second year in a row does not make AYP, a school district must offer the opportunity for students to move to another school. A third year of failure to make AYP dictates that free tutoring must be offered. The fourth year of failure to make AYP requires that free tutoring must continue, and the school is notified that it will face restructuring if student performance does not improve. The fifth year of not making AYP results in restructuring or closing the school, with a restructuring plan or closing occurring in the sixth year.

No Child Left Behind grew out of a movement on the part of many reformers for standards-based education, whereby students at each grade level are tested to determine who is and who is not functioning at grade level, particularly in math and reading. Under the pressures exerted by No Child Left Behind, a few schools have succeeded in improving, but most have not. The latter situation is not surprising, given the mediocrity of so many teachers and the lack of a coherent curriculum throughout the K-12 years. All of this predictably makes teachers’ unions and other entities of the education establishment extremely uncomfortable, which is how they should feel when faced with public recognition of their failure to offer an education to all students worthy of a democracy.

One by one, we can dismiss the specious assertions regarding No Child Left Behind that have emanated from the education establishment:

Assertion #1: The law has brought too much emphasis on standardized testing.

The Reality: Standardized tests represent the most objective, reliable means of fairly judging a particular student’s knowledge or skill base. If teachers “teach to the test,” that is fine, because a properly constructed test features the key material to be learned at a given grade level, and teaching to the test assures that substantive academic content is offered at many schools that year after year have presented little academic content at all.

Assertion #2: No Child Left Behind has imposed unfunded mandates and federal intrusion into public school systems, which have thereby lost local control.

The Reality: In fact, the sort of training that teachers and administrators receive from education professors is highly similar across the country, so that local control has always been an illusion. The education establishment functions identically from one supposedly independent school system to another. Many of the mandates brought by No Child Left Behind are actually well-funded and more generous than they should be. Why should any additional funding really be necessary when the basic requirement is to provide grade level appropriate education to all students?

Assertion #3: Too much focus on reading and math results in a “narrowing of the curriculum.”

The Reality: In fact, there is little in the way of a curriculum at the K-5 level; teachers are generally free to teach what they want, and they generally do not teach much at all in history, government, economics, natural science, literature, and the fine arts. Educators at the middle school level devalue subject area content in favor of student socialization skills. Subject area courses at the typical high school are frequently poorly taught, but not narrowed by No Child Left Behind.

Assertion #4: The sanctions against schools imposed by No Child Left Behind are too punitive, penalizing even many good schools because a few students lag behind.

The Reality: In fact, the standards set forth by No Child Left Behind are applied to all schools fairly, holding them accountable for properly educating students of every economic and ethnic category. This is precisely what disaggregation of the data is supposed to do; any school that fails to educate students of all descriptors is not a good school, whatever its previous reputation.

No Child Left Behind is in political trouble because it is the most serious challenge in United States history to the failed K-12 schools run by the education establishment. That establishment is backed by powerful lobbies, and many politicians receive hefty campaign contributions by the education establishment that these lobbies represent.

So understand this: No Child Left Behind has been a splendid success in shining a bright spotlight on the shortcomings of K-12 schools in the United States. It is the education establishment that has failed in the challenge presented by No Child Left Behind, a challenge simply to bring all students in K-12 school systems throughout the United States up to grade level standards in math and reading. Such standards must be met, by all students, from the richest to the poorest of the poor, in any country that aspires to genuine democracy.