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The Heritage Foundation
NCLB
Reauthorization Proposals: Missed Opportunities for Conservatives
By Lindsey M. Burke
The House Education and the Workforce Committee, and the Senate Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee have each proposed
reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). House Education and the Workforce
Committee Chairman John Kline (R–MN) has introduced the Student Success
Act, and Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R–TN) has
authored an ESEA reauthorization discussion draft. The two proposals
mirror each other more than they differ, and the respective committees
have expressed a desire to reauthorize the law quickly. Proposals
offered thus far, however, fail to adequately reduce federal
intervention in education, and as such, represent a missed opportunity
for advancing conservative principles.
The U.S. Department of Education currently controls and directs a
significant amount of policy affecting local schools throughout the
country. For roughly 10 percent of all funding spent on K–12 education,
the department, largely through ESEA, determines policy impacting
everything from teacher certification and school assessment schedules
to the types of programs funding is spent on, and how much states must
spend in order to access federal funds. Moreover, dissatisfaction with
NCLB has created an environment in which the Obama Administration has
deigned to offer conditions-based waivers to states chafing under the
law’s provisions, enabling the White House to advance its preferred
education agenda, including common standards and tests, outside the
normal legislative process.
Over the past five decades, an accumulation of evidence on the
ineffectiveness of federal intervention in education suggests that the
federal government is less effective at improving educational outcomes
than policymakers at the state and local level, who can be far more
responsive to students and their families. As reauthorization
discussions continue in the coming weeks, Congress should empower
states to completely opt out of the programs that fall under NCLB,
either through stand-alone proposals, such as the Academic Partnerships
Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) Act, or through similar opt-out language
included in any ESEA reauthorization.
Conservatives Must Fight for a Complete Opt-Out of NCLB
Conservatives in Congress should pursue the A-PLUS approach in order to
restore educational decision making to state and local leaders, who are
better positioned to make informed decisions about the needs of their
school communities. The A-PLUS Act enables states to lead on education
reform by allowing them to completely opt out of NCLB and to direct how
their education dollars are spent. Including the A-PLUS approach in an
ESEA reauthorization would enable states to consolidate their federal
education funds authorized under NCLB to be used for any lawful
education purpose they deem beneficial. This allows states to opt out
of the prescriptive programmatic requirements of NCLB and use funding
in a way that will best meet students’ needs.
Streamlining NCLB
At the same time, conservative policymakers should streamline NCLB by
eliminating ineffective and duplicative programs, simplifying the
programmatic labyrinth within the Department of Education, and
increasing flexibility at the state and local levels.
Reduce Program Count. Although A-PLUS would allow states to opt out of
the programs authorized under NCLB and target education funding to
those education areas most in need, NCLB would remain in force for any
states that do not opt out. Therefore, in addition to providing an
opt-out for states, federal policymakers should simplify existing law
by eliminating many programs and allowing cross-program flexibility
among the remaining K–12 programs operated by the Department of
Education. Moreover, in order to limit the Department’s direction of
education, spending and programs under NCLB must be eliminated in
conjunction with an A-PLUS opt-out.
The current reauthorization proposals in Congress largely punt on any
effort to eliminate programs or cut spending. Through the decades and
various reauthorizations of the ESEA, dozens of competitive grant
programs have accumulated. In fact, some 80 programs are authorized
under NCLB today, more than 60 of which are niche competitive grant
programs. These programs create a significant compliance burden for
state and local leaders, who must apply for program funding, monitor
federal notices and regulations, and demonstrate compliance to the U.S.
Department of Education. They also represent one of the primary ways in
which Washington has extended its overreach into local school policy.
A conservative reauthorization of ESEA would include the elimination of
nearly every competitive grant program authorized under the law. At a
bare minimum, policymakers should eliminate (repeal the authorizations
of and set to zero any associated spending) the 43 such programs
outlined in the Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act
introduced by Representative Duncan Hunter (R–CA) in 2011.The proposal,
which was passed out of the House Education and the Workforce
Committee, would repeal the authorization for 43 programs under NCLB,
eliminating the programs completely. As the committee stated at the
time:
Congress must permanently repeal the authorization
for inefficient federal education programs to ensure taxpayer dollars
are well spent. This will help encourage a more focused, streamlined,
and transparent federal role in the nation’s education system.
Simply consolidating programs to provide “flexibility,” as the HELP
committee draft currently suggests, does nothing to limit spending—a
critical component of curtailing federal intervention in education.
Although the House version goes further in eliminating programs, it
remains to be seen whether those reductions will survive as the
proposal proceeds through the legislative process.
Eliminate Testing Mandates. NCLB currently contains prescriptive
testing mandates that dictate, from the federal level, how frequently
states are to assess students, that all students attain proficiency (as
defined by the state), and that failure to do so will result in a
variety of federal sanctions. The prescriptive Adequate Yearly Progress
(AYP) mandate in NCLB created a host of unintended consequences, namely
that states defined downward their definitions of what it takes for a
student to be considered “proficient.”
The current debate over how to reform NCLB’s testing provisions is
among the most contentious issues of this reauthorization. Although
testing is not inherently bad policy, and does, in fact, provide
critical information about student performance, mandating rigid testing
sequences from Washington has proven counterproductive. As researchers
Ze’ev Wurman and Williamson Evers explain in the journal EducationNext:
We would prefer that states retain annual
grade-level testing of each student (which would facilitate evaluation
of teacher and school performance), but we believe that federalism
requires that each state make that determination for itself. We expect
that some states might drop annual grade-level testing (in favor of
grade-span testing), but we expect that rivalry with other states and
pressure from parents would encourage many states to retain annual
grade-level testing for each student.
Early indications suggest that the two ESEA reauthorization proposals
under consideration will likely retain the federal annual testing
mandate. Moreover, conflicting language in the draft reauthorization
renders the option of multiple assessments moot. Having a choice among
assessments enables school districts to craft assessments in a way that
reflects local curricula. As researcher Jay Greene explains, a single
system of assessments would only make sense if, among other things,
“there was a single best way for all students to learn, and we knew
what it was." Yet as Wurman and Evers note, the current draft
reauthorization proposal language “requiring that such multiple state
assessments ‘are the same academic assessments used to measure the
achievement of all students’…seem self-defeating and needs to be taken
out—after all, assessments can’t be both ‘multiple’ and ‘same…[for] all
students’ at the same time."
Prohibit National Standards, Testing, and Curriculum. In addition to
allowing testing flexibility, any potential reauthorization of ESEA
should maintain and strengthen prohibitions on the federal direction of
curriculum. Since 2009, the Obama Administration has used a combination
of federal funding and incentives to prompt states to adopt the Common
Core standards and tests. There is growing dissatisfaction with Common
Core among parents, who have expressed particular concern about the
federal government increasing control over local school policy through
the initiative. Any reauthorization should contain language reiterating
that the federal government is already prohibited in three federal laws
(the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Department of
Education Organization Act, and the General Education Provisions Act)
from directing standards, assessments, or curricula, along with a
global prohibition on the federal government directing or incentivizing
the adoption of standards, assessments, and curricula.
Eliminate Federal Teacher Licensure Regulations. Although both the
House and Senate versions move toward smarter policy on teacher
evaluation—they both eliminate the Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT)
mandate in federal law that prescriptively dictates from the federal
level that teachers must hold paper certifications—the House version
replaces the HQT regulation with yet another federal mandate that
states use growth models to assess student achievement. Although
evaluating student growth over time is smart policy, it should not be a
federal mandate.
Current Reauthorization Proposals Fall Short
The two proposals offered by the House and Senate Education Committees
fail to adequately limit federal intervention in education and do not
put policy on a path toward restoring state and local control of
education. They also fail to offer options to empower parents, such as
enabling states to make their Title I dollars portable to public and
private schools of choice. Bold reforms are needed, and they are
missing from the current legislative efforts to deal with No Child Left
Behind. Policymakers should empower states to completely exit the
600-page law in order to begin the process of devolving education
authority back to states and localities, and, ultimately, families.
—Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education Policy in
the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage
Foundation.
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