NCLB: The Teach to the Test Act?

From the New York Times

Rename Law? No Wisecrack Is Left Behind
By SAM DILLON Published: February 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — Two years ago, an effort to fix No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public schools, provoked a grueling slugfest in Congress, leading Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, to say the law had become “the most negative brand in America.”

The little schoolhouse, front and back, at the Education Department building in Washington. A blog contest to rename the No Child Left Behind law has received entries like the Rearranging the Deck Chairs Act and the Teach to the Test Act.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan agrees. “Let’s rebrand it,” he said in an interview. “Give it a new name.”

And before Mr. Duncan has had time to float a single name, scores of educators, policy wonks and assorted rabble-rousers have rushed in with an outpouring of proposals.

The civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman took the high road, suggesting it be called the Quality Education for All Children Act. But a lot of wise guys have gotten in on the act too, with suggestions like the All American Children Are Above Average Act. Alternatives are popping up every day on the Eduwonk.com blog, where Andrew Rotherham, a former Clinton administration official, is sponsoring a rename-the-law contest.

One entry, alluding to the bank bailout program, suggests that it be called the Mental Asset Recovery Plan. Another proposal: the Act to Help Children Read Gooder.

Part of the problem is that the law, which comes up for reauthorization every five years, became closely associated with President George W. Bush, and as his popularity slid, the law, and its name, came under attack and ridicule.

Jay Leno, for instance, pointed out in 2006 that Mr. Bush’s approval rating had dropped to 35 percent. “You know Bush’s No Child Left Behind program?” Mr. Leno said. “Now even the children left behind are going, ‘You go ahead, we’re fine.’ ”

The law dates to 1965, when Congress passed it to channel federal money to poor children in the war on poverty, calling it the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

By the early 1990s, a school accountability movement was gaining momentum. In the 1994 reauthorization, the Clinton administration required states to develop new math and reading standards, use more tests, and adopt a benchmark for school improvement known as “adequate yearly progress.” And it gave the law a new name: the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994.

Most people clung to the original name, however, until Mr. Bush signed No Child Left Behind.

The phrase appears to be borrowed from Ms. Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, who throughout the 1990s seasoned speeches with the phrase “leave no child behind.” In 1994, the organization registered “Leave No Child Behind” as a trademark.

But as early as the mid-1990s, Mr. Bush, then the Texas governor, was routinely using similar phrases.

In 2000, the organization reminded the Bush campaign about its trademark, but those complaints were brushed aside. After Mr. Bush’s inauguration as president, he sent Congress a thick packet of education proposals to guide the law’s 2001 rewriting, titled No Child Left Behind.

Sandy Kress, a Texas lawyer who helped compile those proposals, said the phrase nicely summarized the president’s views, especially his provision requiring that authorities publish test scores for all minority groups, shining a spotlight on the low scores of poor students previously hidden by schoolwide averages.

Just about everyone praised that feature of the Bush-era law. But other provisions aroused opposition, including the requirement that every child be brought to proficiency in reading and math by 2014, which many educators said was like requiring law enforcement agencies to end all crime.

Nicknames for the law proliferated: No Child Left Untested, No Child’s Behind Left, No School Board Left Standing.

Since Mr. Rotherham announced his contest last week, Eduwonk has received 41 entries, including: the Double Back Around to Pick Up the Children We Left Behind Act, the Rearranging the Deck Chairs Act, the Teach to the Test Act and the Could We Start Again Please Act.

Making do with less

Editorial from the BCCT.

If this is editorial policy, how about having the reporters ask the tough questions like:

Why did/didn't you cut this program?
What is/is not affected?
How much does this save/cost?

Then, print the answers. If the answer is "I dunno", print that too. Be accountable all around, not just on the editorial page.

Making do with less
Hit with pay cuts and wage freezes, taxpayers have no choice but to cut back. School boards should follow their example.

It’s kind of like the Stockholm syndrome, that state of mind where a hostage becomes sympathetic to the hostage taker. We have in mind those hefty tax hikes school districts are proposing as part of their preliminary budgets.

Fortunately, preliminary budgets are state-mandated exercises that are frequently revised. So by the time a final budget is passed calling for a lower tax hike than originally proposed, taxpayers are thankful that their captors gave them a break.

In normal times, that sort of thing is almost tolerable. Indeed, taxpayers understand rising costs. But in case school officials haven’t noticed, these are not normal times. They are difficult times. Most taxpayers are feeling the financial pinch; many are hurting.

And so it’s unrealistic if not irresponsible for school districts to be discussing hefty tax increases while jobs are being lost, wages frozen and people generally are making do with a whole lot less.

In this area of the state, we’ve become spoiled by the overall high quality of education and haven’t always demanded that school boards knock off the spending binges.

A big part of the problem is the ever-rising cost of labor and school districts’ willingness to meet the unreasonable demands of teachers unions. Top-heavy administrations, with six-figure salaries, add to the burden — too often with school boards hardly batting an eye.

Act 1 was the state law that was supposed to put the brakes on school spending by requiring districts to seek voter approval for tax increases. But each year, districts can raise taxes a certain amount (this year, it’s 4.1 percent) without consulting the voters. In our view, 4.1 percent is excessive these days. But districts can exceed even that by filing for certain exceptions.

Act 1 has become a bad joke, and the taxpayers are the butt of it. School officials don’t help by piling on higher and higher expenses that they claim are absolutely vital.

There is certainly enough blame to spread around for the crisis in public education funding. The state has danced around the problem for years. And local school officials haven’t worked hard enough to bring their budgets in line with economic reality. That needs to change.

Certain “necessities” have to become “options” and certain “options” have to be scrapped, at least for the time being. In every district, labor agreements have to be scrutinized. Renegotiation shouldn’t be an unheard of practice.

In short, school districts have to get their spending under control before they bleed their taxpayers to death.