No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools

1. The Best-Laid Plans

CHAPTER 1 The Best-Laid Plans And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good— need we ask anyone to tell us these things? Robert Pirsig, paraphrasing Plato’s The Phaedrus It seemed like a good idea at the time. Samuel W. King, the newly appointed superintendent of the Portland, Oregon, schools, wanted results. Eager to improve his town’s public education, King turned to standardized tests. He initiated a comprehensive system of test-based accountability, publishing the test results in the local newspapers alongside the names of the individual students, teachers, and schools. Uniform and administered annually, these tests were designed to determine student promotion and to serve as the basis for evaluations of teacher competency. And so, in 1874, King administered the ‹rst round of his tests to Portland Oregon’s ‹fty-four high school students.1 Only eleven passed. King’s policy of publicizing test results drew immediate opposition from parents as well as teachers. The superintendent, however, stood by his tests. “Next to a New England climate,” he wrote, “these examinations necessitate industry, foster promptness and encourage pupils to do the right thing at the right time.”2 The rest of the community did not agree, and a coalition of teachers and parents “forced King’s resignation in 1877.”3 His successor, Thomas Crawford, was quick to backtrack on his predecessor’s reforms, keeping the test results from public consumption and criticizing their in›uence on the school, students, and curriculum. “It is not the excitement that is the source of much anxiety to the school authorities,” Crawford argued, “but the useless and almost criminal squandering of precious time.”4 King’s plan had other unintended consequences as well. The competitive spirit unleashed by these tests, according to the plan’s detractors, had done “incalculable injury . . . both to the teachers and to the pupils of our free schools, resulting from a spirit of rivalry on the part of the teachers.”5 The incentive structure induced by the high-stakes nature of the program produced some highly undesirable bureaucratic behaviors, such as teachers encouraging suspensions of lower-performing students so that they would not drag down classroom averages. We have traveled down the accountability road in education many times since King’s experiment, and we have often learned—or failed to learn—the same lessons. Accurate, workable systems of test-based accountability are very hard to create and implement. They often produce apparent gains at ‹rst, but test scores inevitably reach a stubborn plateau. Testing often produces all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen changes in the behaviors of those in the school system. And they are usually abandoned or watered down in the face of organized opposition by those who stand to lose from their implementation . This time, it might be different. Or it might not. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002, is at once more ambitious , more sweeping, and more consequential than any previous accountability initiative in American education. If properly implemented and suf‹ciently funded, NCLB holds the promise of being one of the great liberal reforms in the history of U.S. education.6 This may sound surprising, given that the measure was passed under a Republican administration, but it is—or can be—true. The reason lies in the goals. Desegregation and the Americans with Disabilities Act were both about equality of opportunity; No Child Left Behind aims to provide equality of outcomes.7 This is a very radical and ambitious goal. No longer content to provide access to education for tra2 NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ditionally excluded student populations, we are now demanding that these students receive equally good educations. In other words, we are now demanding equality of quality. To reach this goal, No Child Left Behind places signi‹cant responsibilities on state educational agencies, school districts, principals , and teachers. It is high-stakes accountability with teeth, offering consequences for failing schools much more signi‹cant than public praise or embarrassment. Unfortunately, we have placed these liberal hopes on a large and powerful ship that is heading the wrong way. My evidence suggests that any con‹dence placed in No Child Left Behind is probably misplaced. Its promise to close the achievement gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged will go unful‹lled unless the law is signi‹cantly rethought...