After years of dancing around Congress to help states evade the No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration thinks it’s time to go back to the legislative drawing board. No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era school accountability law, must be rewritten, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan plans to say in a speech Monday, according to prepared remarks. And despite an ever-growing chorus against required standardized testing, tests must remain mandatory, Duncan is expected to say, because “parents, teachers and students have both the right and the need to know how much progress all students are making each year.” But, as Duncan stated last summer, the law must “ensure that tests — and preparation for them — don’t take excessive time away…
After years of dancing around Congress to help states evade the No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration thinks it’s time to go back to the legislative drawing board.
No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era school accountability law, must be rewritten, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan plans to say in a speech Monday, according to prepared remarks. And despite an ever-growing chorus against required standardized testing, tests must remain mandatory, Duncan is expected to say, because “parents, teachers and students have both the right and the need to know how much progress all students are making each year.”
But, as Duncan stated last summer, the law must “ensure that tests — and preparation for them — don’t take excessive time away from instruction.” So the administration will call for placing limits on the time states spend on standardized testing and test preparation.
The speech comes as Congress renews its bid to rewrite the sweeping federal education law. It also comes at a moment when sentiments against standardized testing have reached a fever pitch. In recent months, some teachers, parents and advocates from both sides of the political aisle have voiced concerns in light of new tests associated with the Common Core State Standards and the implementation of teacher evaluations based on those scores.
NCLB, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush, mandated the annual standardized testing of public school students in reading and math in some grades, and it doled out consequences based on those test results.
Since then, while schools have made progress by showing increased minority test scores and posting the highest-ever high school graduation rates, Duncan will say, “we cannot allow ourselves to believe we are yet doing justice by all of our young people. Not when other countries are leaping ahead of us.”
The United States is on a precipice, Duncan is expected to say: “Congress faces a choice. One path continues to move us toward that promise of equity; the other walks away from it” and would “turn back the clock.”
While many have lauded NCLB for exposing the differences in educational attainment between racial and socioeconomic groups, even its biggest cheerleaders have come to criticize the law for using blunt metrics for measuring student achievement.
In his Monday speech held at a Washington, D.C., public school, Duncan is expected to address NCLB’s perceived shortcomings: its crude metrics, the alleged focus it removed from the arts by testing reading and math, and the morale-dampening effect the law is said to have had on teachers. “The arts, history, foreign languages, and advanced math and science are essentials, not luxuries,” Duncan is expected to say. “Teachers deserve to be paid in a way that reflects the importance of the work they do.”
Duncan timed the speech to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the speech during which Lyndon B. Johnson called for “full educational opportunity as our first national goal.” That speech led to the creation of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the civil rights law that was later retooled and rebranded as NCLB. But the law, Duncan is expected to say, has become “tired, prescriptive.”
“No Child Left Behind created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed, or to reward success,” Duncan is expected to say. “We need to do precisely the reverse.”
Presenting a legislative fix to NCLB is a new tact for the federal government, at least since the turn of the decade. In 2008, President Barack Obama campaigned on rewriting NCLB, and when he came into office, he gave Congress a 2011 deadline for the task. NCLB expired in 2007, and despite a few fits and starts — and a Republican bill passed by the House of Representatives — it has not been renewed, though it still remains in effect.
So the administration used executive action to help states get out from under the law. It allowed states to request waivers from the law’s strictest facets, in exchange for agreeing to implement several Obama-favored education reforms, such as test-based teacher evaluations, revamped systems for holding schools accountable and the use of common educational standards.
Though the administration stated that rewriting the law itself would be optimal, it had all but given up on hopes of a bipartisan overhaul, much to the chagrin of some members of Congress. So Duncan’s speech represents a sea change in administration policy toward federal education law.
Duncan’s prescriptions for a new NCLB include several perennial administration favorites: improved access to “high-quality preschool,” better supports for low-income schools, “genuinely helpful” teacher evaluation systems that “take into account student learning growth,” and high standards.
In terms of reducing the burden of testing, “we want to work with Congress to urge states and districts to review and streamline the tests they are giving and eliminate redundant and unnecessary tests,” Duncan is expected to say. “We’ll urge Congress to have states set limits on the amount of time spent on state- and district-wide standardized testing, and notify parents if they exceed these limits.”
Duncan is expected to address politicians who want to end testing entirely. “I’m concerned about where a Republican-only ESEA reauthorization might be headed,” Duncan is expected to say of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. “Will we work together to ensure every parent’s right to know every year how much progress her child is making in school? Or is that optional?”
Duncan might be addressing Republicans such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the former secretary of education who is the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee chairman as of this month.
“Of course we should be asking the question: Are there too many tests? Every teacher and parent is asking that question, and if there’s going to be a requirement for 17 tests in reading, math and science, we need to make sure that’s justified,” Alexander said in a statement to The Huffington Post. He added, “Secretary Duncan’s recommendations are welcome.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a former preschool teacher who just became the HELP Committee’s ranking member, said she is pleased about Duncan’s foray into the legislative process. “I am very glad that Secretary Duncan is so focused on reforming this broken law in a way that works for our students and makes sure no child falls through the cracks,” said Murray, who was briefed on the speech in advance. “I am looking forward to working with him, Chairman Alexander, and all our colleagues on a truly bipartisan bill to get this done.”
Bits of the speech were leaked to the press in the days leading up to Duncan’s announcement, giving interest groups and advocates intent on making their mark in the law a chance to promulgate their perspectives over the weekend.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, said, “It is time to return to the law’s moral and legal roots as a vehicle to ensure civil rights,” according to a statement. She listed “the fixation on high-stakes tests that has eclipsed all other learning and accountability measures” among the factors that have “undermined that goal.”
A coalition of civil rights groups, organized by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, sent out a long list of NCLB principles, such as the adoption of “college and career-ready state standards” that includes “access to early childhood education” and “annual, statewide assessments.”
The Council of Chief State School Officers similarly called for regular standardized testing in grades 3-8 and high school in the already-mandated subjects, as well as testing in science at least three times between third grade and the end of high school.
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No Child Left Behind Rewrite Should Limit Standardized Testing, Duncan Plans To Say
