Happy birthday, NCLB! Bells are ringing today at the White House, the Education Department, and the Capitol as the drafters, enactors, implementers, and enforcers of No Child Left Behind observe the second anniversary of its enactment.
Just about everyone has by now acknowledged that this is a major, major piece of federal education legislation, surely the most important since the original ESEA was enacted almost four decades ago. It's also the most controversial development in memory for American K-12 education. What's more, it has occasioned a vast amount of commentary, analysis, and bloviating, and any number of NCLB-focused studies and research projects are now underway. (We at Fordham are co-sponsoring one with the American Enterprise Institute that's examining NCLB's public-school choice and supplemental services provisions. A very interesting set of draft papers and comments will be aired at AEI on January 15-16. To learn more, go to http://www.aei.org/events/type.upcoming,eventID.684,filter./event_detail.asp.)
In the two years since President Bush signed NCLB, the Education Gadfly has run more than 100 pieces examining or commenting on it. A partial bibliography appears below. And it's a fact that, if you read them from beginning to end, you'll observe the Gadfly changing his mind more than once about this law. Because he's not normally plagued by indecision, you will correctly infer that it's absurd to be "for" or "against" NCLB. It's too big and complex to elicit a simple pro-con opinion, at least from a thinking person (or fly). Moreover, with every passing week, experience reveals more about this law and its implementation. Two years has barely been long enough to play the overture.
On this anniversary, therefore, let us offer just three more observations:
First, do not suppose that anything with so many moving parts could be perfectly engineered from the beginning. Every major federal program has needed amending, fine-tuning, reworking. As Michael Kirst points out above, it took more than a decade of experience and at least two reauthorizations before the 1965 Title I law's comparatively modest purposes were carried out as intended across this vast and diverse land. NCLB is infinitely more ambitious. OF COURSE it will need revising - and its authors are foolish to stonewall about that fact. They should, instead, be saying, "Send your suggestions here and after the 2004 election we'll pay attention to them. In the meantime, please do what you're supposed to."
Second, besides lots of folks who really want NCLB to succeed (albeit revised in ways that don't negate its mission), plenty of people and organizations hate it - and it's increasingly clear that this is because it would oblige them to make changes that they don't care to make. On balance, we like the booster-revisers a lot better than the opponent-detractors and find much wisdom in Henry Kissinger's famous crack that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Third, states and districts that really don't want to comply with NCLB's demands should remember that they don't have to - provided they're willing to forego the Title I money. The New York Times reported the other day that several Connecticut and Pennsylvania school systems are going to eschew the cash rather than make the changes that NCLB demands. Let them go. So long as they remain part of their state testing programs, everyone will be able to see how they do academically. Maybe they'll do fine sans Title I funding and NCLB rules, maybe they won't. If their schools stink, people will move away, vote down the bond issues, or throw out the school board. That's democracy in action. Uncle Sam's money comes with strings and those that can't abide the strings should shun the dollars.
"School reform breaks 'segregation'," by George Archibald, The Washington Times, January 8, 2004
"Some school districts challenge Bush's signature education law," by Sam Dillon, New York Times, January 2, 2004 (subscription required)
"Bush defends education act," Associated Press, January 6, 2004
"Statement by U.S. Rep. John Boehner on second anniversary of President Bush's No Child Left Behind education reform law," January 7, 2004
Selected Bibliography of NCLB-related commentary
"On leaving no child behind," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, February 28, 2002
"Implementing No Child Left Behind: eagerness, regulation, capacity," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, August 8, 2002
"Debating NCLB: Part one," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, May 8, 2003
"Debating NCLB: Part two," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, May 15, 2003
"Confidence game in the Hoosier State," by Derek Redelman, The Education Gadfly, August 7, 2003
"Blaming NCLB," by Diane Ravitch, The Education Gadfly, August 21, 2003
"The trials of NCLB," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, September 4, 2003
