Sound and Fury

Abstract

POLICY makers really sounded off this spring about public education. And while they're not exactly furious, one suspects that, in the end, all the noise will signify nothing much. For example, state legislators derided No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for taking away state prerogatives in setting education policy and issued a report outlining what authority they wanted back, such as deciding what to do with consistently failing Title I schools or how many special education students to test. Considerably more federal money would be necessary, too, they said. Then the Public Education Network (PEN) followed with a report on its hearings on NCLB. PEN found states were failing to do their part in monitoring and guiding NCLB implementation, as well as in providing adequate support for the schools. After two days of hype about reforming public high schools at a summit with business officials and Achieve, Inc., the National Governors Association (NGA) essentially told federal officials to stay away from repeating NCLB at the high school level. The governors will do that job, thank you, and more than two dozen governors signed on to develop high school diplomas that count -- in Achieve's definition, at least. This means that all students would be college-ready by graduation. The governors also asked for more federal money for education and then turned their attention to more pressing problems for them, such as funding Medicaid. Despite presenting a tidy package for high school reform, the Bush Administration was rebuffed by Congress, which crafted a re- authorization of the Perkins Act with few changes. And this was the only lever the Administration had to move forward its agenda for a high school version of NCLB. Meanwhile, in its third report on NCLB, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) found that achievement on state tests has improved, but states have neither the resources nor the expertise to help all schools that are in trouble. In addition, the two major interventions provided by NCLB -- supplemental services and transfer to higher-performing schools -- are being used by very few eligible students. The PEN report also noted that parents and community witnesses at its hearings wanted the emphasis to be on making all neighborhood schools excellent, not on choice provisions. CEP and PEN both reported that the curriculum was being narrowed to focus on NCLB-required progress in reading and math. Meanwhile, the Harvard Civil Rights Project found alarming rates of dropouts in California's schools. Gene Bottoms, head of the High Schools That Work program of the Southern Regional Education Board, told me that in every state in the board's region where vocational and career education had been cut to make room for more college-prep curricula, the dropout rates had increased. All of the considerable ado going on in policy making these days seems so terribly top-down and out of touch with how students see the world. For example, the NGA summit included business leaders as partners in the high school reform enterprise, and they are indeed prominent in the leadership of Achieve, Inc. One of the major documents used to justify the summit was a survey of high school graduates, college instructors, and employers on how well they believed high school graduates were prepared for college and work. Large percentages of each group gave high schools poor grades on this score. …