United States Government Accountability Office
September 2004
The GAO (now officially the "Government Accountability Office") is the source of this appraisal of Executive Branch implementation of NCLB, which reveals vast state-by-state variability on multiple dimensions and describes some gaps in the Education Department's handling of that situation. Enclosed in the report is a five-page response by Deputy Secretary Eugene Hickok that disputes several of GAO's main conclusions and says that most of the recommended changes are either underway or unnecessary.
Much of the argument centers on the fact that the Department had given "full approval" to just 28 state NCLB plans by July 31, while the rest had been "approved with conditions." Moreover, "17 states did not have approved academic standards and testing systems in place" two and a half years after NCLB was signed - and the Department "did not have a written process to track that states are taking steps toward meeting the conditions set for full approval. . . . ."
That's a typical GAO criticism. But the more interesting and worrying information in this report has to do with inter-state variability on many dimensions of NCLB and with the accuracy of reporting data. "[T]he percentage of students expected to meet proficiency goals in the first year varied widely. . . . States also varied in the minimum size of designated groups...[and] in the percentage of students they expected to be proficient annually . . . [and] in how they planned to determine whether their schools met state goals." The big question going forward: can federalism work this way in education? Has NCLB left too much discretion to states? Or possibly too little? Is this a national law or fifty laws? And has the Education Department got the capacity to manage so complex and multifaceted a process? You'll find it here.
"Archaic architecture, creaky machinery," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Education Gadfly, August 26, 2004
