It seems education has received scant attention in this presidential race--despite Bush's attempt in debate #3 to make it a silver bullet answer for any and all social problems. Unfortunately, the administration's hallmark education initiative, No Child Left Behind, has, in some experts' analysis, fallen flat.
Bruce Fuller, co-Director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a 20-year-old independent policy research center founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford University, released the following statement on October 11 based on a recent PACE survey:
"In 11 of the 15 major states surveyed, youngsters' reading scores were flat or have declined since the Bush [NCLB] reforms were enacted. 'Important gains in children's reading skills were earlier seen, throughout the 1990s, as many governors advanced their own accountability measures,' said Aimee Scribner, spokesperson for the research team. 'But children in few states have yet to respond to the 'No Child' reforms with stronger reading scores.'"
http://pace.berkeley.edu/pace_publications.html
Dr. Fuller went on to explain the political implications of this in an essay published in EducationWeek, the education field's major trade paper. (Note: for those not familiar with NCLB, "adequate yearly progress" refers to the federally-mandated, yearly incremental student performance gains each school must make, as measured by standardized testing, toward the goal of 100% of students being "proficient" or better in all core academic subjects by 2014):
"You might surmise that faltering test scores are bad news for the White House. . . But even as the earlier student gains stall or turn south, more, not fewer, schools are meeting their 'adequate yearly progress' requirements, according to early returns. . . . An array of governors and state school chiefs, many of them Republicans, have [sic.] vehemently protested the many tripwires embedded in the arcane maze of No Child Left Behind regulations. Detonate one hair trigger--by testing too few students, failing to show growth among over 30 student [racial/ethnic, ESL, special needs] subgroups, or simply being in a state that naively set ambitious achievement standards--and the law instantly sets off explosions within a school district.
"So, Mr. Bush's Education Department began cutting the states some slack last spring. The required share of students tested can now be averaged over multiple years; results for children with limited English proficiency are being factored differently; and the measurement error involved in testing children, especially in similar schools, is now more liberally tolerated. . . . All this raises federal pass rates, allowing governors to send out buoyant press releases detailing how more schools are meeting their growth requirements -- even as children's reading scores are stalling out or falling."
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/10/13/07fuller.h24.html
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In fairness, the Bush Administraction condemned PACE's analysis. "The study . . . is deeply flawed," said Education Secretary Rod Paige in a Department of Education press release October 8. "In fact, the numbers PACE selected show that test scores are up in 14 of the 15 states they analyzed. . . . A group of 12 distinguished education researchers and academics from Harvard, Stanford, Northeastern, the University of Illinois at Chicago and other institutions and organizations have also analyzed the PACE study and have come to the same conclusion - that it is misleading at best and outrageous at worst."
http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2004/10/10082004.html
Both sides can point to evidence of success or failure. All I can tell you is that working in the field of school improvement, as I do (in the private nonprofit sector), I and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues (even those who staunchly support NCLB) have been struck by the extraordinary inability of the Bush Department of Education to provide adequate support to states and school districts trying their best to accommodate NCLB. And I mean support not simply in terms of dollars, but guidance as well. The New York Times, in an October 10 editorial, put it well:
"As incredible as it sounds, the GAO found that the Department of Education had failed to provide written, state-specific instructions that made it clear how states could win approval [from the U.S. Department of Education, which required approval for release of federal funds] of their [NCLB] 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. . . . The government agency in charge of the most important education reform in 100 years lacks the capacity, courage, and leadership to do its job."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10sun1.html?ex=1098504000&en=a0a657fb03ca00ba&ei=5
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Put simply, NCLB has a great deal of mainstream, bi-partisan elements to it. But the implementation has been shoddy. It's an issue not easily captured in sound bites, nor is it seemly as grave or immediate as terrorism or Iraq. But it is one I for one care about a great deal and hope gets paid some greater attention in the closing days of this campaign.
(This is my first post. Please forgive my lack of proper formatting skills.)