[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: How to Rescue Education Reform

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How to Rescue Education Reform

October 10, 2004
 


 

Americans are generally stunned to learn that their schools
perform poorly and have been losing ground when compared to
those of industrialized nations abroad. This country once
led the world in high school graduation rates, but it has
dropped to 14th, well behind nations like France, Germany
and Japan. We have tumbled even further when it comes to
student achievement in reading, math and science. At a time
when a college degree is the price of admission to the new
economy, the college-going rate has flattened over all and
appears to be dropping among the poor. 

Most of the nations that are passing us by educationally
have a national commitment to strong curriculums and
intensive oversight of teacher training and educational
progress. The United States employs a radically
decentralized system under which the states do as they
choose. The result is a wildly uneven system littered with
educational dead zones. 

Congress responded over the last 10 years with a series of
laws that required the states to raise standards and
student performance in exchange for the more than $50
billion in annual federal education money. The Elementary
and Secondary Education Act of 1994 set the reform in
motion, but the states have largely ignored these laws,
abetted by waivers from the Department of Education.
Desperate for change, Congress responded to President
Bush's call and passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which
required the states to provide regular testing and highly
qualified teachers. The goal is to wipe out the achievement
gap between rich and poor children by the school year of
2013. 

The states have adopted regular testing and have, to some
degree, been pressured to focus on poor, minority and
disabled children who were once shunted aside and even
excluded from testing regimes. Test scores have begun to
rise and the achievement gap has narrowed noticeably in
several states. The administration deserves considerable
credit for pushing the law through Congress. 

But it undermined the measure when it saddled the states
with new responsibilities and shortchanged them by $6
billion - or about 30 percent of what Congress approved.
And the Department of Education has focused on divisive,
politicized issues like school prayer while failing to
provide state and local authorities with the oversight and
technical help they need to get their accountability
systems up and running and to comply fully with the law. 

Parents and community leaders who had wanted the
presidential candidates to steer a course out of this mess
have been gravely disappointed. President Bush brags about
No Child Left Behind, but characteristically refuses to
acknowledge any problems. Senator John Kerry is critical
about the way the law has been implemented - a crowd
pleaser with the many teachers who take part in his town
hall meetings. He promises better funding but could be more
emphatic about compliance. 

Meanwhile, the debate has burned on without them. The
emerging consensus is that the Department of Education, the
most politicized department in recent memory under
Secretary Rod Paige, may be structurally incapable of
providing the oversight and technical assistance needed for
the most important school reform in a century to actually
succeed. 

Part of the problem is the lingering presumption that
public schooling is largely "a local matter'' - even when
states contravene the national interest by doing a
horrendous job. Beyond that, however, the department lacks
the resources to help the states create the complicated,
data-driven systems they need to achieve true
accountability. At bottom, the department seems unable or
unwilling to point out shoddy education plans and plainly
tainted data when it sees them. 

This is borne out in a new report from the Government
Accountability Office, excoriating the department's
handling of the No Child Left Behind compliance process.
The G.A.O. said the department had approved some state
plans even when they were piecemeal and lacked such basic
things as a method for calculating graduation rates. It
said that as of last July, 23 states and the District of
Columbia had not received full approval for their plans.
The department's performance did not satisfy the
requirements laid out in the law, despite administration
claims that all was proceeding well. 

As incredible as it sounds, the G.A.O. found that the
Department of Education had failed to provide written,
state-specific instructions that made it clear how states
could win full approval of their plans. This laissez-faire
approach has characterized Mr. Paige's operation from the
start of the effort. The department has blithely accepted
bogus graduation rates and unrealistic progress schedules,
and simply rolled over for plans that depict teacher
preparation as just fine - when the whole country knows
that the teacher corps, especially in poor areas, is
riddled with unqualified and inexperienced people. This is
enough to sink the reform by itself. 

Despite its difficulties, the No Child Left Behind Act is
potentially the most important education reform since the
nation embraced mandatory schooling. The Bush
administration nearly capsized the law when it gave the
cash-short states new educational burdens without providing
the money it had promised. But the recent revelations about
the Department of Education offered by the G.A.O. and
other, nongovernment critics reveal an equally serious
problem: The government agency in charge of the most
important education reform in 100 years lacks the capacity,
courage and leadership to do its job. 

Congress can stand idly by and wait for the reform effort
to collapse, or it can provide the states with the money it
promised and build the capacity and authority that the
Education Department needs to further reform. The clock is
ticking and time is short. 

Campaign 2004/The Big Issues: Editorials in this series
remain online at nytimes.com/issues. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10sun1.html?ex=1098426646&ei=1&en=2723bd678f7cfd6a


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