Former Assistant Secretary of Education (and onetime colleague of mine) Susan Neuman promotes the "broader/bolder" agenda in the pages of the Detroit Free Press today. (HT to Alexander Russo.*) I've already expressed my dismay with said agenda (and Checker and Liam go even further), but let me quibble with a few of her article's specifics. First:
Six years after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, there is frustratingly little evidence that it will close the achievement gap between low-income, minority children and their middle-class peers.
Perhaps not, but there is plenty of evidence that NCLB-style accountability is helping to narrow the gap between low-achieving and high-achieving students, for better or for worse. But let's be honest: none of the social service programs Neuman touts are likely to "close" the achievement gap between poor and middle-class children either. Maybe they can help to "narrow" the gap. That's a big distinction. As I wrote the other day, we're unlikely to entirely erase group differences in achievement, particularly class differences, so holding that up as the standard for NCLB (or any other program to meet) is rather silly. Also:
The impetus for change built into NCLB was to effectively "shame" schools into improvement. We now see that the shame game is flawed.
Let's be clear about NCLB's theory of action. It wasn't to "shame" schools and their educators into working harder, with the assumption that they were lazy or ill-intended. It was to shift the political environment on the ground, so that needed reforms could have a shot at winning the day. It was to undo the veto power so many teachers unions and other adult interests hold, so that sensible changes (such as, say, paying teachers more in high-need schools or high-need subjects) might be embraced. In the past, unions could just say niet, but now superintendents can respond, "we have to embrace these reforms and improve our failing schools or else we'll suffer terrible consequences under No Child Left Behind." And reform-minded superintendents, from New York to Denver to Chicago to Washington, have been saying exactly that. Which is why many of these superintendents don't want NCLB's political cover to go away.
Professor Neuman is a reading expert (and a good one at that), but clearly she's still not well versed in the politics of education reform.
* In this case, Russo actually found an article we wouldn't have otherwise come across, as opposed to this case.
