IBD - Washington Still Fails Education

Washington Still Flunks Education After So Many Years

Posted 02/10/2012 06:33 PM ET

Education: Handing out state-by-state waivers from No Child Left Behind is just a half-measure. It's time to ask a fundamental question about the federal role in schools: Why?

Washington has spent much and achieved little in its attempts to improve the nation's public schools. But hope springs eternal. States also
need the federal money, and the feds (logically) want to see the money deliver results.

Such are the underpinnings of the seemingly endless debate over the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law just over a decade ago by George W. Bush.

Wrangling over how to change NCLB has been going on almost as long as the law has been in effect, and the issues are not likely to be settled during the current election year.

Meantime, the Obama administration has been granting waivers to states that agree to an alternate school-improvement plan. These states — 10 out of 28 that have applied — will not have to meet the NCLB goal of having all students "proficient" in reading and math by 2014.

In return, they have to come up with viable plans to prepare kids for jobs or college, to evaluate teachers and reward schools based on performance.

This is the same old same old, with a touch of realism. It's widely known that the "proficiency" goal is unachievable. Dropping it is just acknowledging a fact.

The waivers also tweak the classification of student groups (by such factors as ethnicity, English-language proficiency and disability). But the degree of federal influence in the classroom will stay pretty much the same.


In other words, the administration isn't close to asking the more basic question about its role in the classroom: "Why are we here at all?"

Some in Congress are bolder. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, put forth bills last week that would basically leave it to states to hold schools accountable.

But there's a problem here, too.

States would get federal school money with few strings attached. The money's considerable — $21.4 billion was handed out under NCLB last year.

How could taxpayers know they were getting something in return?

The only way to solve this dilemma once and for all is gradually to wind down most of the federal aid along with the burden of federal rules.

In other words, return Washington and the states to the relationship they had before 1965, the year in which federal aid took its quantum leap with passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Most Democrats would probably recoil in horror at such an idea. Some Republicans would also wonder if it isn't a bit too radical. But the nation has changed since 1965, when one would make a strong case for federal intervention to undo the effects of racial segregation.
The original ESEA was meant to bring equality — at least in terms of money spent, if not outcomes.

Later, especially in the 1980s, the federal mission crept toward a new goal of improving schools for everyone. But equality was never out of the picture.

In fact, it was front and center with NCLB, which had the explicit aim of closing the achievement gap between white and minority students.

That was a laudable goal, but NCLB has shown only mixed progress, and modest at best, toward meeting it. The law has done some good by forcing states to accept the need for frequent testing and high standards. But it has not made the kind of difference that would justify its price tag.

So why not trust the states? Back in 1965, when the Jim Crow era was just winding down, one really could question the good faith of some state governments.

But really, in 2012? Is any state so poor or benighted that it won't be able to give its citizens an equal chance at education? All the evidence says the states are ready to get their old responsibilities back in full, and eventually they should be able to pay the bills as well