NCLB Trifecta

There has been plenty of criticism levied at the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Typically, one side claims the Federal Government isn’t funding the law properly, while the other side claims the states aren’t transitioning to the regulations of the law, or that they are ignoring it completely. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) recently asked strategically located scholars to assess NCLB in California, New Jersey, and Colorado.

Before NCLB was passed into law, California had already developed a highly esoteric accountability system that is much different from the Federal Government’s mandated accountability system, according to Julian Betts, of the University of California at San Diego. Thus, when President Bush signed NCLB into law, confusion spread throughout the California education system. This confusion led to disaster, and now Betts reports, “The number of schools that are deemed of needing improvement are going to skyrocket.” In fact, over 37 percent of California schools are classified as needing improvement. In addition, it is very difficult for schools to shed the “needs improvement tag. “Last year only 6 percent of schools got out of [needs improvement classification],” Betts reported.

The choice provision, as regulated by NCLB, is virtually void in California. Betts explains, “Of all students in California the percentage participating is a small fraction of the percent.” Betts believes that participation is low because “the California districts are not doing a good job of parental notification.” This has led to an audit of the California education system by the Federal Government. However, Betts states that another possibility is that “some parents see absolutely no advantages to shifting their kid across town to another school in the same district.” That said, Betts couldn’t find any current evidence that the NCLB choice program boosts achievement in school children. Betts concludes that in order to increase participation in the choice program the California Department of Education must add more personnel, which is currently understaffed when working with NCLB. Also, California must advertise the NCLB choice program, which includes making glossy pamphlets that aren’t simply tossed aside by parents.

Rick Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute, stood in for Patrick McGuinn in order to report McGuinn’s findings in New Jersey. Hess reports, “New Jersey had to devote considerable time and energy initially into aligning its existing state standards, assessment, and accountability policies with NCLB.” What made this more difficult was that some districts were operating under “detailed court ordered school improvement plans.” Only helping to complicate matters, “The State Department of Education tried to implement a number of new state reform initiatives simultaneously with the rollout of NCLB.”

As in California, the NCLB choice provision has had little impact in New Jersey. There are plenty of explanations for this ranging from a limited number of charter schools in the state to the absence of a state inter-district choice law. In fact, in Newark over the past 3 years, only 10 children have utilized the public choice provision. Hess reports, “A federal audit in 2005 criticized the New Jersey Department of Education…The report found that school districts in New Jersey had done an inadequate job of notifying eligible families of their choice options.” The state did respond by increasing supervision for the provisions. Choice providers have expressed concerns over the half-hearted efforts by the states, and believe that districts perceive them as a threat to their interests. Now, New Jersey initiated teams to conduct school reviews, but data from the teams effects have yet to be analyzed. So far, Hess claims, “The implementation of NCLB has been decidedly mixed in New Jersey as the state has struggled to comply with the law while preserving its historic tradition of local control.”

Alex Medler, of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, reports, “There is not much [choice] going on through NCLB. Out of 53,000 eligible kids, almost 900 actually exercised choice, but a whole 800 of those were in Denver.” Medler contends that there is simply not enough choice in Colorado to initiate change in the school system. In fact, “choice is only happening in places where it was already happening, but at a much smaller scale because of NCLB.” However, something is happening in Colorado that is not occurring in California or New Jersey, “NCLB is adding cover to what the districts actually want to do.” For example, “Denver public schools has seven other different restructuring initiatives underway that also compete with NCLB, and if you do any of those you will comply with the letter of the law if not the spirit.”

John Winn, Florida Commissioner of Education, claims that it’s not simply the states fault for the perceived failure of NCLB. “No Child Left Behind is having limited capacity in terms of changing hearts and minds.” Winn believes it has a Title I mentality with very little passion outside of the Department of Education. Furthermore, NCLB does not focus on results or change, and that started when NCLB gave states the power to set standards. No Child Left Behind turned the implementation over to the states, which is now handled by bureaucrats. And lastly, the NCLB accountability system had already been tried by states and it failed to work. In the end, if NCLB does fail it seems that failure will be due to the lack of cooperation with federal and state governments to develop NCLB together.

Matthew Hickman is an intern at Accuracy in Media.