'Fine-Tuning' vs. Fundamental Change

Is No Child Left Behind a promising approach to accountability that merely needs a bit of fine-tuning to work better? Or is it fundamentally flawed and in need of replacement by a more equitable, rational, flexible, and constructive accountability system? Is NCLB "fixable" or does it need to be thoroughly overhauled? Should we "stay the course" or set an entirely new course?

These questions define the two basic positions on NCLB, as Congress prepares to extend – or overhaul – the law before it expires on 30 September 2007. The answers do not conform to a traditional liberal-conservative or Democrat-Republican divide. Instead they reflect broad alliances of NCLB enthusiasts and critics, respectively, each encompassing forces with widely varying interests and rationales.

On one side is the Stay the Course camp. It includes the Bush Administration; powerful Democrats and Republicans who drafted NCLB back in 2001, notably Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. George Miller and House Majority Leader John Boehner; and advocacy groups such as the Education Trust, the Business Roundtable, and the National Council of La Raza, which have formed the so-called Achievement Alliance.

Some of these forces favor making the law's accountability provisions more flexible; others want to make it less so, to keep schools from "gaming the system." Some favor increasing federal spending for K-12 education; others don't. Some want to use NCLB as a lever to promote "choice" and related privatization schemes; others claim to oppose these goals. But all Stay the Course proponents are dedicated to what Rep. Miller calls the "core concepts" of NCLB: reliance on standardized tests, "adequate yearly progress" targets, subgroup accountability with limited concessions to student diversity, and punitive sanctions to force school improvement.

The opposing side, representing an even wider range of viewpoints, could be called the Total Overhaul camp. Also a bipartisan group, it comprises federal and state legislators, governors, and local officials who support accountability in principle but regard NCLB as a costly failure that's doing more harm than good to American schools. Many of these elected officials are feeling the heat from constituents, parents and educators in particular, who are fed up with all the testing, narrowing of the curriculum, and federal heavy-handedness.

The politicians are joined by a broad array of education and civil rights groups. A loose alliance known as the Forum on Educational Accountability – including the National Education Association, Children's Defense Fund, American Association of School Administrators, National School Boards Association, International Reading Association, National Council of Teachers of English, FairTest ... more than 90 groups in all – has endorsed a statement calling for significant changes in NCLB: use of multiple achievement measures and "growth models" rather than a single test score; realistic rather than arbitrary targets for "adequate yearly progress"; and a focus on school improvement (capacity-building) rather than punitive sanctions. While far from radical, this critique poses a challenge to the law's basic premises.

NCLB and ELLs
The Stay the Course position where English language learners are concerned is represented by the National Council of La Raza. Here is its rationale:

"NCLR believes that NCLB is an important step in the right direction and that the law holds considerable promise for closing the achievement gap between ELLs and their English-proficient peers. It is imperative that all key stakeholders work together to perfect, not discard, NCLB’s accountability framework. The alternative is a school system with little accountability for student outcomes ..."

Overhaul proponents, including the Institute, counter that NCLB is only one approach to accountability and a misguided one at that. It's one-size-fits-all mandates are especially inappropriate for ELLs and lead to perverse effects that contradict a generation of research and practical experience in teaching these students. If the goal is to promote academic excellence and equity for ELLs, NCLB is a step in the wrong direction.

Attaching high stakes to a single test score is a debatable policy for students in general. It's indefensible where ELLs are concerned, a group for whom valid and reliable assessment of academic achievement is seldom available. English-language tests are simply not meaningful for students who have yet to master English, even with "accommodations" (extra time, bilingual dictionaries, etc.). Although native-language tests are allowed under NCLB, they don't exist in most states and in most languages. They are also inappropriate for students receiving all-English instruction – about 85% of ELLs nationwide.

Stay the Course proponents treat ELL assessment as a technical problem to be addressed through "technical assistance" by the U.S. Department of Education, along with threats of sanctions against states that fail to come up with a solution. No state has. Maybe none will. There's no assurance that a single test in English can be valid and reliable for children at many different levels of English proficiency.

Meanwhile, NCLB enthusiasts apparently have no problem with the idea of using invalid data to label schools as failures, stigmatize educators, and dismantle programs that may be working. They seem to view an arbitrary and capricious accountability system as better than none at all. Perhaps they believe, to paraphrase that fabled U.S. Army officer during the Vietnam war, "We have to destroy the public schools in order to save them."

Seizing the Rhetorical High Ground
Unstated Assumptions