Let’s Get Ready To Rumble
Fred Barton
Editor, SLATE Newsletter, and Region 4 Representative to the NCTE/SLATE Steering Committee

Much has been written about the discipline of the Bush White House. Their ability to stay on message even when faced with contradictory facts has led opposition groups to label themselves the “Reality Based Community” in a not-so-subtle dig at the administration’s fidelity to their positions.

So it becomes news when an actual bipartisan commission is formed to study the effectiveness of the No Child Left Behind law, and man bites dog news when that panel is critical of the law. That is precisely what happened in the report of the National Conference of State Legislators written by the Task Force on No Child Left Behind.

The committee, made up of legislators from 17 different states and co-chaired by Senator Steve Kelly of Minnesota and Senator Stephen Saland of New York, recently completed the 10-month study of the effects NCLB is having on schools across the country. Senator Kelly summed up the overall thrust of the report when he said, “To say that only one measurement can be used to judge every school’s effectiveness is not practical. Our recommendations continue to hold schools accountable, but provide for a more realistic measurement method to ensure that they do.”

Predictably, the DOE defended the law. “[T]he report could be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we’ve made,” said Ray Simon, an assistant secretary of education. “My big concern is that they did a better job of pointing out the problems than identifying solutions,” said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable.

The report lists 43 specific recommendations on ways the law can be improved. Some of the recommendations are familiar, such as fully funding the law, or removing one-size-fits-all measures of student performance, or recognizing that some schools face unique challenges in areas like special education or English language learners.

Many of the recommendations, and specifically chapters four and five of the report, focus on the balance of power between the states and the federal government in determining what constitutes quality education. One recommendation suggests allowing states to decide the order of intervention when a school is identified as being in need of improvement. Another states, “The federal government should recognize that the states are in the best position to identify special circumstances.” Another says, “Allow states to establish conditions under which exceptions could be granted to the highly qualified teacher provisions.”

This struggle between states and the federal government in determining the directions public schools will take seems to be at the core of the report and should certainly provide fuel for the (at this writing) nine state legislatures preparing bills to oppose NCLB, including Utah where the House has passed and the Senate is considering a bill that would require state education officials to give priority to Utah’s education laws over the dictates of the federal law.

NCLB comes up for reauthorization in 2007. Recommendations like giving IDEA primacy over NCLB in cases of conflict, or reevaluating the 100 percent proficiency goal are also likely to be topics of much debate, along with the struggle of states to win back more control over their schools.

Perhaps the most surprising and potentially most provocative statement the panel made was not a recommendation at all, but a position. “The task force does not believe that NCLB is constitutional,” the authors wrote. While co-chair Steve Kelly says there are no plans to take the issue to court, it is clear that a message is being sent to the federal government in the 43 recommendations, and if the Department of Education chooses a hard line, Mr. Kelly is pointing out that a nuclear option is available—one that will tie the law in knots for years to come.

A line is being drawn in the sand by the states and, while this may be heartening to critics of the law who have been making the points contained in the Task Force Report for years, the danger remains that the fight over which direction NCLB will take will, once again, divert support and attention for the very real needs of children in public schools. These are problems that were never intended to be addressed by the law, but which often provide the biggest obstacles to quality education. I would hope that advocates on both sides of the issue, as they engage in this debate, remember that the children are watching…and waiting.