If you thought the No Child Left Behind act went too far, you're going to love the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights under Russlynn Ali, the former leader of Ed-Trust West who is known for her admirable and effective sense of urgency. Education Daily asked about her advocacy on behalf of poor and minority students who have been shuffled into low-level courses. She responded:
If students of color are prohibited from accessing those high standards and rigorous courses, there very well could be a Title VI violation, so we would have some investigating to do.
Now, there are lots of reasons to support??efforts that prepare poor and minority students for rigorous courses--and plenty of reasons to complain when students spend their days filling out dittos. But I cringe at the thought of federal officials using??the threat of lawsuits to try to fix this problem, if that's what Ali has in mind.
Consider Advanced Placement courses, for instance. Getting more poor and minority kids into them is easy. Preparing students to succeed in those courses is something else. If a school district is forced by an OCR lawsuit to expand access to AP for poor and minority kids, what are the chances that it will do all the complex work it takes (from grades kindergarten through 11) to make sure those??students are ready? And what will the impact be on the students who are ready for AP, and whose classes will now be flooded by students who haven't mastered the prerequisite material? (If you want to know what the nation's teachers think about issues like this, see our survey of AP teachers here.)
We learned from NCLB that the federal government can make states and districts do things they don't want to do, but it can't force them to do??those things well. That's the case for the judicial branch, too.
Urgency is a great quality to find in a reformer. Here's hoping for some thoughtful restraint, too.
