Reauthorization of NCLB: federal management or citizen ownership of K-12 education?

• Author: Hickok, Eugene
• Position: Education

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IN HIS 2007 State of the Union address, Pres. George W. Bush stated: "Now the task is to build on the success, without watering down standards, without taking control from local communities, and without backsliding and calling it reform.... The No Child Left Behind Act has worked for America's children--and I ask Congress to reauthorize this good law."

A fundamental question concerning NCLB is whether to continue to increase the Federal government's management authority over education or to restore citizen ownership of America's schools. The No Child Left Behind Act dramatically increased Federal authority. While the Federal government provides only 8.5% of the funding for public education, NCLB gave Congress and the Department of Education new powers to set policies governing public schools. This increased authority has resulted in unintended consequences and difficulties that need to be addressed.

One significant problem is that NCLB testing policies inadvertently have weakened state-level exams and academic transparency. Under NCLB, states are required to test students annually and demonstrate continual progress toward a Federal goal of all students reaching "proficiency" on state-level exams by 2014. Some states have responded to this pressure by changing how their tests are scored to allow more students to pass and to show more progress under NCLB. This situation, which researchers have called a "race to the bottom," threatens to erode academic transparency. As states respond to the pressure of NCLB testing by lowering standards, parents, citizens, and policymakers are denied basic information about student performance.

To protect citizen ownership of American education, Congress must end Federal goals for student progress and return control of state standards and accountability policies to the state level. This will maintain academic transparency in state testing and restore greater citizen ownership in education, both of which are necessary conditions to enable future reforms to strengthen public education.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz.) opposed the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the first Federal law that provided funding to K-12 schools, because it included 12 Federal mandates. Congress passed the act in the hope of improving American math, science, and foreign language proficiency in the wake of the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Goldwater warned prophetically that "Federal aid to education invariably means Federal control of education." Yet, Goldwater's warnings proved no match for a national wave of Cold War education hysteria. Almost 50 years later, the Federal government has expanded its involvement in K-12 schooling enormously.

The refashioning of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan effort to get better results from Federal education spending. However, in reauthorizing NCLB, Congress faces an unsustainable status quo. Although fashioned with noble intentions, NCLB created a powerful perverse incentive for states to lower...