The Mistaken Premise of No Child Left Behind

[Note: Filed under "Parenting" not "Politics" because, well, that's where I felt it belonged.]

There is no doubt in my mind that the No Child Left Behind act, as it stands today, is a terrible piece of legislation. It mandates mathematically impossible levels of performance from schools, based on achievement tests which focus only on the 3 R's, and imposes draconian levels of punishment against public schools which fail to meet these goals.

The inevitable outcome if NCLB is unchanged by 2014 (when schools have to have 100% of students meeting minimum test scores) is that nearly all the country's public schools will fail to meet NCLB's mandates, and face penalties. It is simply impossible to devise a meaningful achievement test which 100% of students will pass. But in an effort to stave off the inevitable, public schools are likely to cut all programs not covered by achievement tests, including things like music, drama, "gifted" programs, and advanced-placement programs. Those things cost money, and there's no incentive under NCLB to cultivate the best students, just keep the worst ones from failing.

Some on the left have suggested that NCLB is really an underhanded way for conservatives to impose a school voucher system (long an item on the conservative agenda). It is worth noting that under a NCLB-mandated voucher system, the private schools receiving vouchers would not have to meet the requirements of NCLB. But that's a different issue.

The Real Problem with NCLB

The more fundamental issue with NCLB, however, is not that it sets impossible goals on public schools. And I don't accept the premise that the people who wrote NCLB intended to destroy public education: more likely, nobody really understood the law before it passed (not surprising, given that it is 670 pages long).

The fundamental, core problem with NCLB is that it is based on a faulty premise: NCLB assumes that the problem with public schools is that they lack incentives to improve, and have no way of measuring success. The entire law is built around measuring success and creating incentives to improve.

Measurement and incentives are not an unreasonable way to improve many things, especially in the business world (where lack of motivation and underperformance are constant struggles). Given that many in the Bush administration come from business, it isn't surprising that they would latch onto this standard business solution as a way to fix education.

But anyone who has spent much time among professionals in public schools will quickly realize that motivation is not lacking: teaching is such an underpaid, demanding job, and requires so much education that few teachers would be there if they didn't have strong personal reasons. And those internal motivators are far more powerful than money. [Aside: Students, on the other hand, often lack motivation. Sadly, even though they're the ones being tested under NCLB, they're not the ones who get punished when they fail to perform.]

We also have myriad ways of measuring the relative and absolute performance of schools: graduation rates, college entry rates, advanced placement scores, SAT scores, dropout rates, and so forth. Nor has there ever been any problem getting this performance information into the hands of parents. If you doubt me, call any real estate agent anywhere in the country and ask which neighborhoods in his or her area have the best schools.

So fundamentally, NCLB attempts to fix public education by adding measurement and incentives; yet there's not been any lack of either in the past.

So What Is Lacking In Our Schools?

If we already know how well the schools are doing, and public school teachers have always been (for the most part) highly motivated, then what ails our educational system?

You could probably write books on this topic, but I believe it comes down to two things: parental involvement, and resources available to the schools.

One of the most important predictors of educational success is parental involvement. Simply put, the more time and attention parents put into educating their children, the more likely the children are to succeed. This is true at both the individual level (involved parents increase a student's likelihood of success) and the collective level (more involved parents lead to a better school). I don't have any great insights into how to get uninvolved parents involved (it probably depends on the reasons why parents aren't involved--and therefore will be very dependent upon the particular neighborhood), but I suspect that there are relatively inexpensive solutions.

The other thing missing is resources. I don't just mean money (though most public schools could certainly use more of that), but also things like helping teachers learn best practices from each other, making sure parents understand the importance of their roles, and basic stuff like making sure everyone has sufficient supplies, textbooks, etc.

Where Do We Go From Here?

There's no doubt in my mind that NCLB won't survive in its present form. Once punitive measures start kicking in, the political winds to reform the law will be like Ivan, Jeanne, Frances, and Charley all rolled into one. After all, parents vote--and there's a lot of them.

In the meanwhile, however, I expect it will be a messy few years, with a lot of collateral damage inflicted on the schools as they try to make the best of a bad situation.

What we really need is an Every Parent Involved Act, to educate and motivate parents to be involved in their schools and remove barriers which might be preventing them from being more active. Then we need a No School Left Behind Act, which will make sure the schools in poorer neighborhoods have the resources they need to provide a safe and effective learning environment.

Then, perhaps, we'll be attacking the real problems in our public schools.