A Decade of No Child Left Behind: Time for a Change

Ten years ago, in a shinning moment of bi-partisan harmony, Republicans and Democrats joined hands and passed a monumental overhaul of the American educational system: No Child Left Behind. President George W. Bush had campaigned in 2000 on the platform of being a compassionate conservative, and what better way to demonstrate just how compassionate he could be than making sure every child, regardless of race, income, or learning circumstance would receive an equal education? Democrats rejoiced! Only 20 years before another conservative, President Ronald Reagan, had made the dissolution of the federal Department of Education a (unsuccessful) tenant of his campaign. Finally, Democrats thought, education would receive meaningful support from the federal government.

By 2014 every student was supposed to be proficient in reading and math; achievement gaps were supposed to be closing; and teachers were supposed to be highly certified. Instead, we have students who are continuing to fail, teachers who enter and leave the field of education with record speed, and students, parents, teachers, administrators, bureaucrats, and elected officials who all collectively throw up their hands in exasperation. What happened?

For many observers, the problem lies in the failed project of assessing all students on the basis of standardized tests. How can multiple-choice test truly assess everything students should learn? And doesn’t it just encourage teachers to teach exclusively to the test? And doesn’t it provide an incentive to schools to lower standards, not raise them? As Sol Stern pithily argues, channeling James Madison’s pessimistic view of human nature, “Since men are not angels, it was inevitable that state and local education authorities would dumb down the tests to make themselves look good to the feds and to the voters.” Creating standards to measure student progress is a perfectly reasonable goal; setting unreachable goals – such as a 100% success rate – is not only untenable but also foolish.

One of the major drawbacks of NCLB is that it was a law that came with a lot of sticks and not a lot of carrots. Schools that made progress were rewarded by being recognized as achieving or exceeding expectations; failure to meet standards was met with sanctions on the mild end and government-led restructuring and takeover on the extreme end. That’s not to say that failing schools should just be ignored, or that the solution is to just throw more money at the problem. As Michael Sullivan, an economic conservative from Texas, recently argued: "We've assumed that, well, more money equals better education. Let's just spend more money.” That assumption has failed us.

Both the political right and the political left need to give up some ground on this issue if we are going to have any meaningful change in education policy. The bi-partisan spirit that originally forged this bill should not be abandoned just because the law itself has proven a largely failed experiment. Economic reform in this country must begin with educational reform: spending money on proven methods, not just spending money for the sake of it; training students for vocations, not just college; and returning control of the curriculum to the states. Ten years later, it’s time to leave behind the No Child Left Behind policy and begin re-conceptualizing our education system.