About the author
Dianne Piche is civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights.
Charles Barone is an independent consultant and former deputy staff director of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor.
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Opinion: Is the federal education law helpful? …
NCLB carries on the fight for equal opportunity
by Dianne Piche and Charles Barone
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) continues a 50-year federal effort to equalize educational opportunity for every child – rich or poor, minority or non-minority, abled or disabled – in the United States.
“No Child Left Behind” is a new name for an old law: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). ESEA was championed by Senator Robert Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of the War on Poverty initiative.
Over its long history, ESEA has been a true safety net, providing billions of dollars in additional funding from Washington to high-poverty schools, even as state and local governments continued to shortchange the poor through inequitable funding systems that rely heavily on local wealth.
While funding of Philadelphia schools is still well below that of its affluent neighbors, ESEA has historically narrowed some gaps and guaranteed some services.
NCLB was accompanied by the largest increase in federal education spending – an almost 20 percent increase for the ESEA Title I programs, which contain the lion’s share of federal funds. Because of efforts of members of Congress, like Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), to target funds to the neediest schools, Philadelphia and other high-poverty areas received even greater increases and a higher overall share. In FY 2002, for example, Philadelphia city schools received over $1,400 per poor student under Title I, one of the highest of any urban district in the U.S.
But ESEA has never been only about money. From the Act’s inception, elected officials have been concerned that the Act actually resulted in improvement in educational quality for poor and minority students.
The testing requirements now considered by some to be so onerous were first established in 1994 under President Bill Clinton – designed to provide public information about schools’ achievement and bare achievement gaps separating poor and minority students from others. The intent was to hold schools accountable for using their Title I money effectively to close the gaps and educate all students – not just some – to grade-level standards.
The requirements are very modest. States and school districts that elect to receive federal Title I funds have to measure and report students’ progress in reading and math each year. The tests must be valid and reliable (to avoid bias and cheating) and include virtually all students. While states and districts are free to add other subjects of their choosing (like science or history), the federal law recognizes this reality: if students do not acquire solid literacy and numeracy skills, they will never be able to pass middle-school and high-school level classes in other subjects like science and social studies. We know if students cannot complete high school, their life prospects are grim.
What is different about NCLB is the recognition that testing for testing’s sake would not result in changes to the quality of services provided to America’s school children. So, in 2001, Congress and the President decided that states should set goals to bring all students to grade-level proficiency in reading and math. If schools fell short of the goals, districts would upgrade the curriculum, teaching methods, and, ultimately, the administration of such schools.
Congress gave schools 12 years to get the job done. A child who started kindergarten when NCLB was passed would be graduating from high school before NCLB’s timeline went into full effect.
For parents, who know that even two consecutive years of ineffective instruction can set a child far behind, that is not too ambitious a goal.
Many schools have proven that NCLB’s goals are achievable, including several in Philadelphia. M.H. Stanton Elementary is the best known, a stereotype of urban failure and dysfunction turned around by a team that dramatically improved instruction, curriculum, and school climate. With focused and effective interventions, Stanton’s achievement levels rose to well above the city average (read more at www.achievementalliance.org/files/Stanton.pdf).
The law certainly can be improved. Some states need to make their tests more rigorous and develop more robust measures of learning. Low-performing schools need more supports if they are to exhibit the kind of turnaround that Stanton did. And we need bold action to make sure that teacher talent is fairly apportioned between high- and low-poverty schools (read more here).
Some people are confused about No Child Left Behind because they think it came out of nowhere and, frankly, because they associate it with an unpopular president. Some are predisposed to oppose NCLB because they disagree with other policies of the Bush Administration, such as the war in Iraq. But NCLB was supported by a bipartisan coalition – including many civil rights groups and key Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy – because of its focus on principles of equity and accountability.
Let’s not sacrifice the education of our neediest children on the altar of one president’s unpopularity or of prejudice about what underserved children are capable of. To do so would be the height of cynicism. Instead we should relentlessly push educators and politicians alike to do their part to make the dream of equal educational opportunity a reality.