Critics such as EdWatch say the three core mandates of NCLB that must be ended are:
• Equalizing outcomes, rather than raising the achievement of all. NCLB is targeted exclusively to the bottom. Average and gifted students are ignored. A Robin Hood effect results in schools when higher achievement opportunities are gutted.
• Accountability to federal agencies. Accountability should be to voters, parents, and taxpayers. NCLB steals the power of the people and puts federal agencies over local school outcomes and classroom content.
• Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): All students will achieve at a certain level by 2014. This means standards will be either impossible for every student to achieve, or so low as to be meaningless, or both.
Policy Analysis
End It, Don’t Mend It: What to Do with No Child Left Behind
CATO Institute
Excerpt from Executive Summary, September 5, 2007
by Neal McCluskey and Andrew J. Coulson
"Virtually all of those analyses have assumed that the law [No Child Left Behind] should and will be reauthorized, disagreeing only over how it should be revised. They have accepted the law's premises without argument: that government-imposed standards and bureaucratic "accountability" are effective mechanisms for improving American education and that Congress should be involved in their implementation...
"We find that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective in achieving its intended goals, has had negative unintended consequences, is incompatible with policies that do work, is at the mercy of a political process that can only worsen its prospects, and is based on premises that are fundamentally flawed. We further conclude that NCLB oversteps the federal government's constitutional limits treading on a responsibility that, by law and tradition, is reserved to the states and the people. We therefore recommend that NCLB not be reauthorized and that the federal government return to its constitutional bounds by ending its involvement in elementary and secondary education."
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Get Congress Out of the Classroom
The New York Times
By DIANE RAVITCH
October 3, 2007
Excerpt:
The main goal of the law ¬ that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 ¬ is simply unattainable. The primary strategy ¬ to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year ¬ has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools. Unfortunately, the Congressional leaders in both parties seem determined to renew the law, probably after next year’s presidential election, with only minor changes. But No Child Left Behind should be radically overhauled, not just tweaked.
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Proficiency Illusion
National Review
By Liam Julian
October 4, 2007
Excerpt:
"One of the biggest flaws with NCLB, for example, is its insistence that all students - 100 percent - be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That won’t happen, of course. But no politician has the stomach to amend this irrational goal to a more manageable 70 or 80 percent, fearing that inevitable question: “Which 20 percent children don’t you care about?”
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Making No Child Left Behind Worse
The Heritage Foundation
By Dan Lips
EXCERPT:
An early draft of the new NCLB bill suggests that congressional leaders are working to make the already flawed program worse. As is well known, No Child Left Behind's problems are myriad. The law dramatically increased federal authority in education, eroding state and local control and imposing a heavy bureaucratic burden on school systems across the country. Its high-stakes testing requirements created a strong incentive for states to engage in a "race to the bottom" by weakening standards and making tests easier to pass. And few children have benefited from NCLB's very weak school choice options. These lackluster reforms were purchased with dramatic increases in federal spending. But even the current version of No Child Left Behind is significantly better than what Congress is now discussing.
End It, Don’t Mend It: What to Do with No Child Left Behind
CATO Institute
Excerpt from Executive Summary, September 5, 2007
by Neal McCluskey and Andrew J. Coulson
"Virtually all of those analyses have assumed that the law [No Child Left Behind] should and will be reauthorized, disagreeing only over how it should be revised. They have accepted the law's premises without argument: that government-imposed standards and bureaucratic "accountability" are effective mechanisms for improving American education and that Congress should be involved in their implementation...
"We find that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective in achieving its intended goals, has had negative unintended consequences, is incompatible with policies that do work, is at the mercy of a political process that can only worsen its prospects, and is based on premises that are fundamentally flawed. We further conclude that NCLB oversteps the federal government's constitutional limits treading on a responsibility that, by law and tradition, is reserved to the states and the people. We therefore recommend that NCLB not be reauthorized and that the federal government return to its constitutional bounds by ending its involvement in elementary and secondary education."
**********************************************
Get Congress Out of the Classroom
The New York Times
By DIANE RAVITCH
October 3, 2007
Excerpt:
The main goal of the law ¬ that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 ¬ is simply unattainable. The primary strategy ¬ to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year ¬ has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools. Unfortunately, the Congressional leaders in both parties seem determined to renew the law, probably after next year’s presidential election, with only minor changes. But No Child Left Behind should be radically overhauled, not just tweaked.
********************************************
Proficiency Illusion
National Review
By Liam Julian
October 4, 2007
Excerpt:
"One of the biggest flaws with NCLB, for example, is its insistence that all students - 100 percent - be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That won’t happen, of course. But no politician has the stomach to amend this irrational goal to a more manageable 70 or 80 percent, fearing that inevitable question: “Which 20 percent children don’t you care about?”
********************************************
Making No Child Left Behind Worse
The Heritage Foundation
By Dan Lips
EXCERPT:
An early draft of the new NCLB bill suggests that congressional leaders are working to make the already flawed program worse. As is well known, No Child Left Behind's problems are myriad. The law dramatically increased federal authority in education, eroding state and local control and imposing a heavy bureaucratic burden on school systems across the country. Its high-stakes testing requirements created a strong incentive for states to engage in a "race to the bottom" by weakening standards and making tests easier to pass. And few children have benefited from NCLB's very weak school choice options. These lackluster reforms were purchased with dramatic increases in federal spending. But even the current version of No Child Left Behind is significantly better than what Congress is now discussing.
