Unkept promises of NCLB expose the need for reform

Few laws come into existence with such high expectations as the No Child Left Behind Act. But has it lived up to its billing? Was President Bush right to promise us, back in 2002, “Today begins a new era, a new time in public education in our country. As of this hour, America’s schools will be on a new path of reform, and a new path of results”?

Unfortunately, NCLB is still generating consensus — this time, the widely shared realization that its promises have not been kept, that its promised new era is still far off.

Nearly six years ago, NCLB passed with the aim of closing the achievement gap across demographic and socioeconomic lines and bringing every American child up to proficiency. And it was a great first step — but students, teachers, administrators and parents have often been left to shoulder serious burdens that the law imposes. Now, as the law comes up for reauthorization, we have a responsibility to ease those burdens.

That’s why I’ve authored the No Child Left Behind Reform Act — a plan to help NCLB meet the complex challenges of 21st century education. My legislation would make three key changes, preserving the law’s underlying goals while working toward them more fairly and flexibly.

First, my bill would find more accurate ways to assess student learning. NCLB presumes that there’s only one way to calculate student achievement, a measure any honest observer would have to call simplistic: an annual set of standardized tests. The truth is that such a one-dimensional standard sells our children short. Why not consider how much an individual student has learned over the school year? Why not look at schools’ success in graduating their students, or the number of students participating in advanced placement courses? With so many yardsticks available, President Bush chose to use only one, with the result that our picture of our schools is narrow at best.

Today, added academic indicators, such as student improvement and graduation rates, can only be used to penalize schools. But if schools are succeeding on these fronts, they deserve credit. My bill would give it to them. It would also give schools the resources they need to monitor student progress over time — a far more accurate measure of student success than a single test score.

Second, my bill allows schools to target additional resources to the students who need them most. Under current law, a struggling school is mandated to offer supplemental services and public school choice to all of its students, even those who have not demonstrated a need for them. That strikes me as a wasteful and imprecise way to help schools improve. My legislation maximizes our resources by giving schools the flexibility they need to target additional resources to the students who most need them.

The No Child Left Behind Reform Act also adds a greater degree of reasonableness to the teacher certification process. Right now, NCLB requires teachers to be “highly qualified” in every subject they teach — which sounds fair enough, until you consider that the administration’s definition of “qualified” could require a high school science teacher to hold degrees in biology, physics and chemistry. These requirements will only compound problems with teacher recruitment and retention and have the effect of lowering the quality of our children’s education. Instead of making our teachers hold multiple degrees or take more exams than their students, it makes much more sense to create single, comprehensive state certificates: for middle school teachers, for social studies teachers, and for science teachers. My bill would do just that.

These reforms share a common thread: They turn NCLB into a nimble, adaptable tool to help solve problems too complicated for any one mandate. At the same time, when schools are labeled in need of improvement, it is essential to invest in them — not abandon them. This combined approach can help heal the disappointment so many of us feel over the unkept promises made by No Child Left Behind. And of course, we must fully fund this law.

Almost six years later, the disappointment over No Child Left Behind is very real: not because the ideas underlying NCLB were wrong, but because they were right. A high-quality education is the right of every American child. What pains us so much is to see those ideas embodied in a law that’s done so little for those it was meant to help. But Congress passes laws, not ideas — so if we value the ideas, we’ll fix the law.

Dodd is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

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