Congress has dropped the ball on No Child Left Behind — again. With just seven weeks before 2007 comes to a close, lawmakers have yet to introduce a bill to reauthorize the national education plan, despite Democrats promising some much-needed major changes.
Efforts are underway to hammer out a bipartisan bill that could be introduced next year, but we had hoped Congress would begin fixing the unnecessary and burdensome mandates of No Child Left Behind this year. Next year is a presidential election year that likely will be top-heavy with politics instead of substance and policy.
The law, deemed the most important domestic achievement of the Bush administration, passed Congress in 2001 and will remain in effect until Congress takes action. It holds public schools accountable for improving student test scores and punishes those that fail.
Yet it’s proven to be so problematic that all 50 states have made some attempt to fix or circumvent the law, ranging from legislatures demanding federal money to cover costs to requests for exemptions from certain elements. It’s another example of what happens when the federal government meddles in what is traditionally a state and local matter.
Colorado’s Department of Education and its new commissioner, Dwight Jones, recently outlined 10 important recommendations for Congress to consider in reauthorizing NCLB. The recommendations are reasonable and designed to give states more flexibility to enhance and measure their own students’ achievement. We urge Congress to give them serious consideration.
Among them is a proposal to allow states to use a growth model to determine if school districts are making what is known as “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP. We support growth models because they actually measure how individual students are progressing, rather than just taking snapshots of how a particular class of students are doing.
Congress also should address the wildly optimistic goal of having all students proficient in math and reading by 2014, and drop the penalties for districts that don’t achieve AYP.
In a meeting with The Post’s editorial board this past summer, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings indicated that she was receptive to some changes.
“We passed the very best law that we could five years ago, but we’ve learned some things. There’s more capacity in states around assessment and accountability in data systems than there was five years ago, and we can improve the law and we should.”
Another state proposal calls for subgroups of students who fall short of achievement goals to be identified and targeted with resources to help them succeed. Education Commissioner Jones also recommends putting more federal resources into efforts to increase graduation rates and reduce dropout rates.
Whatever is introduced, we hope it expands the criteria for judging school performance beyond standardized test scores. Even though it will be tempting for Democrats to put off reforming NCLB, they shouldn’t. The law definitely needs to be improved.
