Looking beyond NCLB

Abstract

IT MAY seem improbable or even heretical to some, but the No Child Left Behind Act is likely to become irrelevant. That is, its influence will dwindle unless its policies and purse are directed toward supporting changes in teaching and learning that are more aligned with what is best for kids and society. The pundits are now admitting that the law has done little to improve real achievement (as opposed to raising test scores by increasing test prep), and it has not closed the achievement gap between white students and their minority counterparts. Moreover, NCLB fosters curriculum and instruction decisions that run completely counter to higher-end learning or research-based knowledge about what stimulates students at all levels of ability to want to work hard. Perhaps the law does deserve some credit for galvanizing efforts to better define what education should be about. That's why the thinking that is taking place beyond NCLB's circle of angst may influence learning much more than the law itself. True, some reformers who are giving up on NCLB's thrust are beginning to tout national standards and tests as the solution. Others, however, are introducing new policy ideas. For 10 years the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America's Promise, an initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, has been developing a consensus among business and education leaders about the skills college graduates will need. Through research, forums, and surveys, the council came to agreement on essential learning outcomes. These would modify the emphasis on utilitarian skills for a profession and balance them with much more cross-disciplinary knowledge in the sciences, global cultures, and technology. The learning outcomes encourage the development of advanced skills, the kind that can make use of technologies to push toward creative and innovative reasoning. College students, the report said, need much more experience using what they learn to solve problems. In other words, community service, internships, and capstone courses should be part of every student's experience on campus. Surveys sponsored by the council found that employers agreed with goals that emphasized broad knowledge and versatile skills. Roll the camera back to the K-12 system, and you will find similar visionary statements about education beyond basic skills. Two of them hit the streets about the same time: one, Tough Choices or Tough Times, garnered a lot of media hype; the other, A New Day for Learning, received less attention but offered similar analyses of the issues, although it proposed a different solution. (Full disclosure: I documented some previous work of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which sponsored the commission that produced Tough Choices or Tough Times. I also had a central role in writing the other report, A New Day for Learning, produced by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Task Force on Time, Learning, and After School.) Both reports warn of an impending lower standard of living for all Americans because public education is not staying ahead of changes in the global economy. Once, the issue was competition from countries with low skills, available for lower wages, according to the analysis by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). Now, because of advances in China, India, and similar places, other countries can offer large numbers of highly educated workers willing to work for comparatively low wages. The Mott Foundation sees the competitive angle as one shaped primarily by demographics: more is being asked of a student population soon to be half minority or poor, students who traditionally have not done well in the public schools. Tough Choices and A New Day for Learning, then, cover many of the same issues but with a philosophical difference. …