Routing

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), whichthe Bush administration claims as its proudestachievement in domestic policy, directly contra-dicts the principles of an “ownership society,”which the administration is promoting in areassuch as Social Security reform. The administra-tion recognizes that the educational policies ofthe last four decades, a period of almost uninter-rupted centralization, have failed, but its remedyis yet more centralization.

The NCLB statute is a reform strategy at warwith itself. It virtually guarantees massive evasionof its own intent, ordering state education agen-cies to do things that they mostly don’t want todo. Washington will be forced either to allow thestates great leeway in how they implement NCLBor to make NCLB more detailed, prescriptive, andtop-heavy. If Washington chooses the former, thestatute might as well not exist; if the latter, federalpolicymakers will increasingly resemble Sovietcentral planners trying to improve economic per-formance by micromanaging decisions fromMoscow. NCLB may end up giving us the worstpossible scenario: unconstitutional consolidationof power in Washington over the schools, with

that power being used to promote mediocrityrather than excellence.

It is too early to know for certain which sce-nario will prevail, but it is already clear that stateand local education officials are skillfully protect-ing their interests in ways that undermine theintent of NCLB. Especially telling has been theirwidespread dishonest reporting in at least fourareas: graduation rates, school violence, qualifiedteachers, and proficiency tests. As it becomesincreasingly clear that the states can satisfy therequirements of NCLB by lowering their stan-dards, there will likely be a “race to the bottom.”

Instead of using centralized decrees to turnmediocre institutions into excellent ones, as theyhave been trying but failing to do for the last sev-eral decades, the state and federal governmentsshould be empowering individual families to“vote with their feet” by transferring to theschools of their own choice.

The key locus for such revolutionary reforms isthe states. The best contribution the national gov-ernment can make to educational improvement isto avoid educational policymaking and allowstates to experiment with school choice programs.

No Child Left BehindThe Dangers of Centralized Education Policy

by Lawrence A. Uzzell

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lawrence A. Uzzell is an independent researcher and former staff member of the U.S. Department of Educationand the U.S. House and Senate committees on education.

Executive Summary

No. 544 May 31, 2005

Introduction

In domestic policy, the No Child LeftBehind (NCLB) education act is the Bushadministration’s top claim to visionary leader-ship. The president and his aides have com-pared NCLB to landmark programs such as theSocial Security Act or the Homestead Act. In hisacceptance speech at the 2004 Republican con-vention, President Bush stated that NCLB is“the most important federal education reformin history.”1 Both during and since the 2004election campaign, President Bush’s speecheshave depicted the 2002 act as an unqualifiedsuccess; even before his second inauguration,the president proposed to extend its provisionsfrom elementary schools to high schools.

Especially striking is the boast that Bushhas increased federal spending on educationfaster than any president since LyndonJohnson.2 That is a reversal as profound as theClinton administration’s embrace of sweepingwelfare reform in 1996; in both cases the partyin power accepted ideas long associated withits opponents. The Republican reversal is themore stunning of the two because most mem-bers of the president’s party on Capitol Hillchanged course with him. During the Repub-lican Party’s rise to majority status from the1960s to the 1990s, by contrast, it usuallyopposed centralized federal programs in edu-cation as in other areas of governance. Asrecently as 1996, the party’s platform pledgedto abolish the U.S. Department of Education.3

What ultimately matters is NCLB’s successnot as a one-shot campaign tactic but as a long-term strategy for bringing genuine reform tothe country’s dysfunctional public schools.With party loyalty keeping most congressionalRepublicans from criticizing the statute, itsskeptics currently find themselves marginal-ized in Washington. But in the long run NCLBshould and will be judged by its actual results.

Dangers of Centralization

No Child Left Behind was enacted in theform of a reauthorization of the 1965 Elemen-

tary and Secondary Education Act, one of thecenterpieces of President Lyndon Johnson’sGreat Society. Once it takes full effect, thestatute will require states that receive ESEA sub-sidies annually to test third to eighth grade stu-dents in reading and mathematics. By 2014 thestates must bring all of their students up to the“proficient” level on those tests. In the mean-time the states must demonstrate “adequateyearly progress” (AYP) toward the goal of 100percent proficiency—including progress towardeliminating achievement disparities betweenethnic subgroups. Schools that receive subsi-dies under the ESEA Title I program for disad-vantaged children and that repeatedly fall shortof their AYP targets are subject to an escalatingseries of corrective measures: allowing their stu-dents to transfer to other public schools aftertwo years,4 providing supplementary servicessuch as private tutoring after three years, andpossibly becoming subject to mandatoryrestructuring thereafter.

NCLB’s success will depend on whether itis possible to produce excellent educationalperformance through centralization. Itsadvocates are in a self-contradictory position.They recognize that the educational policiesof the last four decades, a period of almostuninterrupted centralization, have failed, buttheir remedy for that failure is yet more cen-tralization. While invoking the principles ofan “ownership society” on issues such asSocial Security reform, they are pursuingalmost the exact opposite model in schools.In a period of growing social mobility andindividual autonomy, they are promoting atop-down, Great Society model of reform—transferring power from individual parents,teachers, and principals to distant bureaucra-cies such as state education agencies.

Ironically, the Bush administration hasmade a key exception to its “ownership soci-ety” precisely in the area of social policy thatby its very nature is least susceptible to cen-tralization. Education is inherently personaland inherently value laden. The key relation-ships in schools are those between individualteachers and individual students: If theteachers are not committed and highly moti-

2

Ironically, the Bush

administrationhas made a keyexception to its

“ownership society” precisely

in the area ofsocial policy thatby its very nature

is least susceptibleto centralization.

vated, no centralized rule books or formulasare going to inspire peak performance fromtheir students. To use social science jargon,schools are “loosely coupled systems”; there-fore, decrees from centralized administratorshave little power to boost school perfor-mance but enormous power to impedeprogress. Indeed, before the mid–20th centu-ry such administrators were either nonexis-tent or mostly irrelevant; key decisions weremade at the level of the individual school byprincipals and teachers.5

Moreover, schooling inescapably involvesjudgments about truth and virtue, about whatkind of person a youngster should aspire to be.In an increasingly pluralistic society, Americansare inevitably going to disagree with each otherabout those judgments. Which historical fig-ures should children be encouraged to revere asheroes? What should they be taught aboutancient belief systems such as Christianity andIslam—and about modern ideologies such asfeminism and environmentalism? Should “tra-ditional values” such as piety, chastity, andasceticism be celebrated, ridiculed, or simplyignored? Americans in the 21st century have nomore chance of reaching consensus on thosequestions than of agreeing on what church (ifany) we should all attend. That is why we keepthe state out of controlling churches, just as wekeep it out of other value-forming institutionssuch as publishing and journalism. The morewe entrust such decisions to centralized stateagencies, the more conflicts we foment—con-flicts that in a truly free society would be unnec-essary. As legal scholar Stephen Arons observedin 1997: “One civic group after anotherattempts to impose its vision of good educa-tion, and all join in a struggle over the one truemorality to be adopted by the public schools.The outcomes of the conflicts over curriculum,texts, tests, and teachers seem less and less likeconstructive compromises that knit communi-ties together; more and more they resembleblood feuds, ideological wars, episodes of self-ishness wrapped in the rhetoric of rectitude.”6

Zero-sum “culture wars” for control ofcoercive state monopolies thus make ene-mies of people who could otherwise be

friends. Perhaps in some bygone era eachlocal public school reflected a local consen-sus. But in today’s ultra-mobile society, inwhich communities are less and less definedby geography, the only way to keep the cul-ture wars from engulfing the schools is acomprehensive strategy of parental choice.The key to rescuing our children from thebureaucratized government schools is radicaldecentralization: tuition tax credits, taxdeductions, and vouchers. Unfortunately,NCLB is taking us in precisely the oppositedirection.

Granted, NCLB does not explicitly call fornational curricula. The statute mandatesstandards for testing, not for curricula, and itleaves the specific content and design of thetests up to the states. But in the long run thetests will, at least to some degree, drive thecurricula, and that will loom even larger ifNCLB is extended to high school programsas well as to elementary-level reading andmath. The statute is already promoting cen-tralization within each state, to the detrimentof pluralism and local control. It couldbecome a force for national centralization aswell if future administrations should exerciseto its full potential their power to deny feder-al funding to states whose testing programsare deemed inadequate.

So far, the Bush administration has beencautious in exercising that power. During lastyear’s presidential election campaign, theadministration wanted to avoid headlinesabout conflicts with state education agencies;it tried to perpetuate as best it could the con-genial atmosphere of the bipartisan signingceremony when NCLB became law in January2002.7 Nevertheless, the states are restive.Many are complaining that NCLB is excessive-ly intrusive; dozens of state legislatures havepassed resolutions criticizing the statute.8

Such complaints are not necessarily unjusti-fied. Any statute as long and complicated asNCLB inevitably requires that state and localschool officials spend thousands of manhoursfilling out federal forms and complying withprocedural requirements from Washington—even if that red tape produces little or nothing

3

The key to rescuing our children from thebureaucratizedgovernmentschools is radicaldecentralization:tuition tax credits, taxdeductions, andvouchers.Unfortunately,NCLB is takingus in precisely theopposite direction.

in the way of genuine academic improvement.It would be not at all surprising if NCLBturned out to be both meddlesome and impo-tent, as have many previous federal programs.

The Bush administration, and futureadministrations, will now face a dilemma.The NCLB statute virtually guarantees mas-sive evasion of its own intent: It orders thestate education agencies to do things thatmany of them don’t want to do, such as insti-tute detailed, rigorous testing programs thatenable the public to distinguish successfulfrom unsuccessful schools, and it gives thoseagencies broad discretion about just how todo those things. The U.S. Department ofEducation has little role in creating contentstandards and assessments under NCLB; itonly decides whether to approve those creat-ed by the states. But as the states devise vari-ous tactics for evading both the letter and thespirit of the law, lawmakers will be forcedeither to let them get away with those tacticsor to continuously amend NCLB’s statutorytext (already about 1,100 pages long) andassociated regulations in order to keep upwith the states’ ever more inventive evasions.

If policymakers choose the former course,NCLB might as well not exist; it will just beone more drain on taxpayers, like scores ofprevious education programs, and one moresource of special-interest group subsidy—inthis case to the testing companies. But ifWashington policymakers instead choose toamend the statute, they will end up making itsteadily more detailed, prescriptive, and top-heavy. Washington’s education officials willmore and more resemble Soviet central plan-ners trying to improve economic perfor-mance by micromanaging decisions fromMoscow. Unlike Soviet bureaucrats, however,the federal government lacks a captive laborforce; the more centralized the systembecomes, the more likely those teachers andpotential teachers with the greatest creativityand leadership ability will be to seek careerselsewhere rather than accept being merepawns of the federal government. As a strate-gy for promoting “excellence,” centralizationwill be inherently self-defeating.

Thus, NCLB is a reform strategy at warwith itself: It can work only if federal officialsride tight herd on their state counterparts,overriding them whenever they sacrificereform to special-interest pressures. Theauthors of NCLB have already said that theywill do no such thing, rightly invoking prin-ciples such as states’ rights and the absenceof a constitutional warrant for federal con-trol of local schools. But if they were seriousabout those principles, they would neverhave enacted NCLB to begin with.9 On theother hand, if they decide to use NCLB as atool to muscle through fundamental reformsagainst the will of the entrenched specialinterests, they will find that they have to dis-card whatever remains of their constitutionalscruples. They or their successors may evenconclude that that is the best possible out-come: If the Constitution and the principlesit embodies stand in the way of urgentlyneeded reforms, then the devil take theConstitution. Many previous would-bereformers have made that judgment, fromthe advocates of centralized economic plan-ning who created the short-lived NationalRecovery Administration in the 1930s to theSupreme Court in its 1972 ban (also short-lived) on all forms of capital punishment.

Future historians, then, may look back onNCLB as simply one more phase in the grad-ual building of a national ministry of educa-tion—a ministry explicitly responsible notonly for testing but for curriculum contentand even for the administration of schools.Parents with complaints about their chil-dren’s textbooks or teachers would have totake those complaints, not to their localschool board, but to Washington. That sce-nario may seem far-fetched: There is no clearevidence that the proponents of NCLB con-sciously intend to create a national curricu-lum or a national, European-style ministry ofeducation. But few members of Congresswho voted for the 1965 Elementary andSecondary Education Act, which was only afew dozen pages long, consciously intendedto start down a path leading to ever moredetailed federal controls and culminating in

4

The NCLB statute virtually

guarantees massive evasion

of its own intent.

the 1,100-page NCLB. Once Washington setsup such regulatory and spending machines,they tend to acquire a life and logic of theirown. Moreover, one should consider that ittook only seven years from the congressionalelections of 1994 for many of that year’s“Republican revolutionaries” to reversecourse and vote for the most centralizingeducation bill in American history. It seemsnot at all implausible that Congress may bewilling to enact even more sweeping central-ization within the next decade—especially ifan increasingly comfortable Republicanmajority grows ever more accustomed tobloating the Department of Education’sbudget with “pork-barrel” earmarks for itspolitical allies.10

Setting aside its difficulties from thestandpoint of constitutionalism and the ruleof law, would such hypercentralization actu-ally bring genuine reform? Optimists mightsuggest that it could bring us back to theeducational standards of 1901, when theCollege Entrance Examination Board pub-lished a list of specific literary classics that itrecommended that every would-be collegefreshman should have read before matricu-lating.11 The firm, exacting standards ofthose educators stand in striking contrast tothe curricular relativism of the late 20th cen-tury, with its faddish lessons in popular cul-ture. If education means requiring a young-ster to learn things that he is unlikely to learnif left unsupervised, then perhaps centralizedcoercion is a good thing.

What that argument ignores is the crucialfact that in America, unlike much of Europeand Asia, curricular relativism and fragmen-tation have grown hand in hand with thegrowth of centralized power over educationpolicy in both Washington and the state cap-itals. The people who control the key institu-tions in this country’s government schoolestablishment—the teachers’ unions, theteacher-training institutions, the state educa-tion agencies, the career staff of the federaleducation colossus—are not Victorian-styleelitists seeking to mold the masses accordingto lofty standards of classical learning. Quite

the opposite. In today’s America, the massesare more elitist (in the desirable sense ofdemanding serious academic standards)than is the educational establishment withits focus on “self-esteem.” When given a freehand, American working-class parents makesounder educational choices than the estab-lishment tries to dictate to them. Consider,for example, the nearly total absence ofdestructive fads such as bilingual educationin private schools, even when those schoolshave large minority enrollments.12

Judging from the experience of the lastfour decades, NCLB may end up giving usthe worst possible scenario: unconstitutionalconsolidation in Washington of power overthe schools, with that power being used tofurther mediocrity rather than excellence.Experience shows that centralized govern-ment agencies are especially prone to captureby ideological factions that want to shieldchildren from unwelcome facts and opin-ions. In a 2001 study for the Cato Institute,Sheldon Richman cited the case of the pro-posed national history standards developedin the early 1990s by the National Center forHistory in the Schools at the University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles under a grant fromthe U.S. Department of Education and theNational Endowment for the Humanities.According to Richman, those draft standards“set off a firestorm of controversy led byLynne V. Cheney, who had chaired the NEHwhen the National Center was commis-sioned to write the standards. . . . Cheney con-demned the standards as an exercise that putWestern-bashing political correctness aheadof good history. She feared that an ‘officialknowledge’ would be adopted, ‘with theresult that much that is significant in ourpast will begin to disappear from ourschools.’ The irony is that, until the stan-dards were released, she favored in principlethe government’s adoption of an ‘officialknowledge.’”13

Richman rightly concluded that “we donot face a choice between government stan-dards for education and no standards at all,no more than we face a choice between gov-

5

When given a freehand, Americanworking-classparents makesounder educationalchoices than theestablishmenttries to dictate tothem.

ernment standards for computers and nostandards at all.”14 Those who call for educa-tional statism in the name of “standards”seem blind to the vital distinction betweenstandards set by private institutions andstandards set by government.

Covering Up Problems

More than any previous federal educationlaw, NCLB is dependent on quantitative dataabout test scores, graduation rates, violence inschools, and teachers’ knowledge of the sub-jects they teach. In practice, that means it isdependent on state and local school officials’telling the truth about matters about whichfudging the truth is both rewarding and easy.As education researchers Chester Finn of theThomas B. Fordham Institute and FrederickHess of the American Enterprise Instituterecently observed, the statute requires thoseofficials “to execute policies that clash withtheir own financial and reputational inter-ests.”15 As has been the case since the era ofeducation reform began two decades ago,state and local officials have skillfully protect-ed those interests. Especially telling has beentheir widespread dishonest reporting in atleast four areas: graduation rates, school vio-lence, qualified teachers, and proficiency tests.

Graduation RatesTo assess the seriousness of both the state

education agencies and the U.S. Departmentof Education, a good place to begin is thestates’ implementation of NCLB’s provisionson reporting high school graduation rates.Though counting the number of studentswho fail to finish school on time is trickierthan many laymen realize, in principle thistask should be less subject to honest dis-agreement than that of measuring academic“proficiency.” Moreover, NCLB does notmandate a nationwide goal for graduationrates, or ambitious year-by-year targets forincreasing those rates, unlike its goals of uni-versal proficiency in reading and math. Thestatute does not threaten penalties for

schools with low graduation rates; it merelyrequires that those rates be reported. Thus ifthe states are reporting those rates in waysthat are manifestly inaccurate, we are entitledto be skeptical about their reports on mattersthat are inherently less precise and more sub-ject to high-stakes consequences.

Sadly, dishonest reporting about gradua-tion rates turns out to be widespread. Forexample, in late 2003 California’s state depart-ment of education formally announced agraduation rate of 86.9 percent—even whilethe state’s own specialists were admittingunofficially that the true figure was about 70percent. Education researchers Jay Greene andGreg Forster of the Manhattan Institutefound similar “phony numbers” in Indiana,Texas, and other states; they accused the U.S.Department of Education of “allowing statesto use inflated figures to satisfy the [NCLB]requirements rather than demanding honeststatistics and real improvements.” The onlything unusual about California was thatbefore passage of NCLB it had been “one ofthe few honest exceptions” that reported itsgraduation rates truthfully, but “now it hasthe worst of both worlds: Its graduation rate isstill atrociously low, but it no longer officiallyadmits that it has a problem.”16

One method of making schools lookmore successful than they are is to look onlyat drop-out figures, not graduation figures.This method starts with the number of stu-dents who entered ninth grade, then sub-tracts only those individual students who arespecifically, unmistakably known to havedropped out over the succeeding four years.Students transferring to another school arenot counted as dropouts, even if they laterfail to graduate. In Greene and Forster’s view,“This method is accurate when it’s carriedout with precision, but in practice it has pro-duced shoddy numbers because keepingtrack of every student who leaves school is alogistical nightmare.” They prefer a methodbased on enrollment data: comparing thenumber of students who began ninth gradewith the number who graduate four yearslater, making adjustments for local popula-

6

Dishonest reporting about

graduation ratesturns out to be

widespread.

tion changes such as mass departures causedby economic downturns.17

In a detailed study published in 2001 andrevised in 2002, Greene concluded that the“estimated national public school gradua-tion rate in 1998 was 71 percent, slightlylower than the 74 percent originally report-ed.” That conclusion stood in stark contrastwith the figures published by the NationalCenter of Education Statistics, which hadfound a “high school completion rate” of 86percent.18 Thus, if Greene was right, the fed-eral number crunchers were missing abouthalf of the students who fail to graduate.

In December 2003 the Education Trust,which promotes high academic standards fordisadvantaged students, published a studyessentially agreeing with Greene’s methods—and using them to evaluate both the federaland the state governments’ implementationof NCLB. That study focused on the detailedreports that the states were required to beginsubmitting on their graduation rates inSeptember 2003—nearly two years after thestatute had been passed. Under NCLB thestates were supposed to calculate graduationrates according to the percentage of studentsearning regular diplomas—not alternative cre-dentials such as GEDs—within the standardnumber of years. The reports were supposedto include the graduation rates of specific sub-groups, such as children with limited profi-ciency in English, as well as those from variousethnic groups. But the Education Trust foundthat many of the states failed to comply withthose requirements: “Some states didn’treport any data at all, and many didn’t reportit disaggregated by student group. Severalcited an inability to collect this data. . . . Othershave reported data that differs greatly fromthe minimum graduation rate calculationrequired by NCLB. Instead, their calculationmethods portray a rosier picture in their statesthan external sources. . . .” Such foot-dragging,in the Education Trust’s view, was “inexcus-able” in light of the fact that states had rou-tinely been reporting enrollment data to thefederal department for many years beforeNCLB.19

Those states that did provide dataclaimed graduation rates ranging from ahigh of 97 percent in South Dakota to a lowof 63.7 percent in Nevada, with most statesreporting rates significantly higher thanGreene’s independent calculation. Somestates showed huge differences: For example,North Carolina reported a graduation rate of92.4 percent where Greene had estimated 63percent. On investigation it turned out thatNorth Carolina’s reported figures “were notbased on the percentage of students whoentered in the ninth grade and received adegree four years later, but on the percentageof diploma recipients who got their diplomain four years or less. In other words, studentswho drop out of high school are simplyexcluded from the calculations altogether.This means that, theoretically, if only 50 per-cent of students who enter ninth grade inNorth Carolina were to eventually obtain ahigh school diploma, but every one of those50 percent did so in four years or less, thenNorth Carolina would report a ‘graduationrate’ of 100 percent.”20

The U.S. Department of Education hasbeen less than rigorous in monitoring com-pliance with NCLB’s requirements. TheEducation Trust faulted the department forfailing to provide enforcement of the law’sprovisions on data reporting, which “thus farstates have flouted . . . failing to report dataor reporting misleading data with no conse-quence. The Department’s inaction is send-ing a strong message about priorities, onethat is at odds with the priorities expressed inthe law. . . . [Its] silence on the noncompliantreporting practices of states like NorthCarolina has been deafening.”21

The Washington, DC–based Urban Institutefound similar flaws. The institute’s ChristopherB. Swanson concluded that “a mere four statestook the high road of requiring both a firmfloor for graduation rates and also disaggregat-ing results for subgroups when determiningadequate yearly progress.”22

A year after the detailed study by theEducation Trust, the situation had notimproved. The Center on Education Policy, a

7

One method ofmaking schoolslook more successful thanthey are is to lookonly at drop-outfigures, not graduation figures.

research and advocacy group committed topublic schools, reported in a study publishedin the autumn of 2004 that the federaldepartment was actually allowing states tolower their targets for high school graduationrates. “In Maryland, schools and subgroupscan either meet the graduation rate target of81 percent in 2004 or show an improvementover the previous year of 1/10th of 1 percent.Similarly, Pennsylvania schools and sub-groups can either meet an 80 percent targetfor graduation or show progress toward thattarget.”23

If school districts and individual schoolscan get away with fudging their graduationrates, they will find it all too easy to reportmisleadingly high test score averages. When aschool’s test scores go up, it is vital to knowwhether that increase represents realimprovement or merely an increase in thenumber of dropouts among youngsters whowould have performed poorly if they hadtaken the tests and would thus have draggeddown the schoolwide average. Detailed, accu-rate reports of graduation rates are thus cru-cial to NCLB’s overall strategy. By failing toinsist on them, Washington policymakers areobeying the U.S. Constitution but violatingthe clear intent of the NCLB statute andundermining whatever chance that statutemight have of succeeding on its own terms.

School ViolenceWith a handful of exceptions, states are not

providing honest reports about which govern-ment schools are unsafe for students. NCLBostensibly requires the state education agen-cies to identify those schools that are “persis-tently dangerous.” It also requires the states togive students who attend such schools theright to transfer to other government schoolswithin the same school district. But thestatute never defines the term “persistentlydangerous” (just as it never defines the evenmore crucial term “proficiency”). Instead,NCLB’s Section 9532 leaves that definition upto the states, “in consultation with a represen-tative sample of local educational agencies.”The states need not even consult with the

police—or with any other outside experts.Thus the NCLB statute puts the federal offi-cials charged with implementing it into a con-tradictory position. Either they insist on forc-ing the states to tell uncomfortable truths anddo uncomfortable things—in which case theyare violating the Constitution, which leaveseducation policy to the states—or they let thestates get away with perpetuating the statusquo of mediocrity and deceit, in which caseNCLB might as well not exist.

The NCLB law invites self-serving duplici-ty, and state school officials are acceptingthat invitation. According to their NCLBreports, only three states have any persistent-ly dangerous schools at all. One of the threeis South Dakota, which admits to having twosuch schools, although South Dakota doesnot stand high on any objective observer’s listof places with the most severe crime or juve-nile delinquency. The other two states arePennsylvania, which acknowledges 14 persis-tently dangerous schools, and New Jersey,which admits to having 10 such schools.24

State school officials elsewhere insist thateven the most dysfunctional, crime-riddenparts of cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, LosAngeles, New York, and Washington do nothave even one unsafe school. Whether or notstate bureaucrats actually believe that claim,so far their federal counterparts have notpublicly challenged it.

Some states avoid telling the truth bycounting students charged with violent inci-dents as a percentage of a school’s total stu-dent body and setting the percentage requiredfor the persistently dangerous category sohigh that even the scariest schools will passmuster. Colorado, for example, adopted rulesin 2003 requiring that 45 violent incidentsmust be officially reported for each of twoconsecutive years in a school with fewer than299 students, or 360 incidents in one with2,100 students. The new rules excluded fightsnot leading to serious bodily injuries.25 “Thekey word here is persistent, which means aschool is dangerous on a daily basis,” said anofficial of the state education department.26

By that standard Colorado is easily able to

8

With a handful ofexceptions, statesare not providing

honest reportsabout which governmentschools areunsafe for

students.

announce that it does not have any persistent-ly dangerous schools.

In 2003 six states admitted to a total of 52such schools. But within months, two of thosestates, Nevada and Texas, claimed to havefound that they really had no persistently dan-gerous schools after reviewing their data.27

That reclassification reduced the officialnationwide total of unsafe schools to 38; in2004, as noted above, the total dropped fur-ther to 26.

The NCLB reports have thus been grow-ing more and more detached from reality,and states are learning from experience thatthey face no adverse consequences for hidingthe truth. Though NCLB cannot work evenon its own terms unless federal lawmakersimpose penalties for dishonest reporting,they lack the will to do so. They also lack con-stitutional authority to do so—but as notedearlier, if Washington took the Constitutionand its principles of decentralized govern-ment seriously, NCLB would not exist.

Qualified TeachersEveryone agrees that raising graduation

rates and reducing violence in schools wouldbe good, even if those improvements are dif-ficult to measure. More controversial isNCLB’s goal of ensuring that all schoolchil-dren have “highly qualified” teachers. In bothspirit and letter, the statute challenges long-standing assumptions about what a teacherneeds to know in order to be “qualified”—assumptions deeply entrenched in powerfulinstitutions such as teachers’ unions, schoolsof education, and state education agencies.

How much emphasis should teacher-train-ing and certification programs place on “howto teach”—as in the courses in pedagogyoffered to education majors—and how muchon “what to teach”—specific academic subjectssuch as biology or American history? NCLBreflects the view that the current system givestoo much weight to the former and too littleto the latter.28 It requires that by 2006 allteachers demonstrate competence in the sub-jects they teach. A teacher can meet thatrequirement either by having a bachelor’s

degree in the relevant subject or by meetingsome other standard set by the state andaccepted by the U.S. Department of Educa-tion. For example, states might require a rigor-ous, advanced test in content knowledge ofthe subject. But for teachers who are alreadyon the job, as distinct from new hires, NCLBgives the states great leeway—and many stateshave taken advantage of that leeway to adoptstandards so lax as to be meaningless.

For example, the standards issued last yearby the Maine Department of Education allowteachers to substitute a huge range of sup-posed credentials for passing an objective testor university coursework equivalent to amajor. They can earn “points” for attending aconference or workshop, serving as a mentorteacher or after-school tutor, being a “partici-pant in a state or national stakeholders group”or a member of a professional organization—or even just for writing a grant proposal.29 TheFlorida Department of Education grants 30points (of 100 needed) simply for satisfactoryperformance in a single in-class evaluation bya supervisor—even though those evaluationswere originally intended for purposes farbroader than measuring content knowledge.In open-ended fashion, Florida also awardspoints for “other appropriate related activityas determined by the school district.”30

In December the National Council onTeacher Quality, an independent researchcenter that advocates more rigorous subjectmatter training for teachers, published astate-by-state study of the response toNCLB’s teacher quality provisions. NCTQfound that “even with the 2006 deadlinelooming, only a handful of states appear will-ing to comply with the spirit of that portionof the law that seeks to correct the long-tol-erated, widespread and inadequate prepara-tion of American teachers in their subjectareas. Some states are indifferent or evenantagonistic about the prospect of declaringsignificant numbers of their active teachersunqualified.” The think tank’s presidentKate Walsh concluded: “In the short term,the prospects are dim for making genuinestrides in improving teacher quality. The

9

Most states areallowing teachersalready on thejob to bypass testing of content knowledge bygranting thempoints for anabsurdly widearray of “professionaldevelopment”activities.

law’s clarity on the academic preparationrequired of new teachers bodes a morepromising future, but where veteran teachersare concerned the law is doomed to disap-point, save in a minority of states.”31

Only one state, Colorado, has earned an“A” rating from NCTQ for demanding that allteachers either provide proof of academic con-tent courses nearly equivalent to an under-graduate major or passing a test of subjectmatter knowledge. Oregon has a similarrequirement for new teachers only. Four otherstates allow an academic minor rather thanthe major favored by NCLB. The remainingstates fall far short of the NCLB standard.

Most states are allowing teachers alreadyon the job to bypass testing of contentknowledge by granting them points for anabsurdly wide array of “professional develop-ment” activities that may be only tenuouslyrelated to real competence, such as atten-dance at short-term workshops or state con-ventions, participation on bureaucratic com-mittees, heading school clubs, or takingcourses outside the subjects they are nowteaching. The NCTQ study invoked theimage of “teachers scrambling up the stairsand into their attics to dig out antiquatedproof” of points earned decades ago.

During the nine years that remain beforeNCLB’s target of 100 percent proficiency by2014, the majority of the country’s mostinfluential teachers will be those who arealready on the job. Even as they are joined byyoung recruits who (one hopes) will havestronger qualifications, it is the senior teach-ers who will hold most decisionmaking posi-tions such as departmental chairs; it is onthem that NCLB’s success will largelydepend. At the current rate of progress, itseems unlikely that those teachers will bemuch closer to being “highly qualified” in2014 than they are today.

All the senior teachers, both qualified andunqualified, will retire eventually. By then, letus hope, most schools will have adopted gen-uinely demanding standards for hiring theirsuccessors. But NCLB leaves plenty of roomto continue avoiding such standards. The

states can adopt tests of content knowledgeas easy as they choose—and they will contin-ue to be under pressure from teachers’unions, schools of education, and otherinterest groups to avoid letting those testsbecome serious filters. According to the mostrecent available nationwide data, most of thestates that test for content knowledge “haveset the minimum passing score—or cutscore—so low as to screen out only the verylowest performing individuals.”32

Some states have responded to NCLB byactually lowering their testing requirementsfor teachers. Since the law’s enactment,Pennsylvania has dropped a test after findingthat too many middle school teachers failedit. Maryland, New Hampshire, and Virginiahave made their basic skills tests for teacherseasier to pass.33 Florida, Georgia, Illinois,Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia havelowered their requirements for teacherstrained out of state.34

Thus, on teacher training we are seeing aclear test: Will the federal government useNCLB to inspire, coax, or pressure state andlocal school officials to adopt reforms thatare contrary to those officials’ self-interest, orwill it allow states to evade the intent of thelaw by lowering standards? To date, the pre-vailing practice has been to allow flexibility,which in some states has resulted in loweringrather than raising standards.

Proficiency TestsTest scores that measure academic achieve-

ment are the most important of all the areas inwhich states are supposed to produce progressunder NCLB. Unfortunately, those scores arealso the easiest to manipulate through a vari-ety of statistical gimmicks that make schoolsseem more successful than they are. For NCLBto achieve its objectives, the state departmentsof education would have to act with a degreeof rigorous candor that would be unprece-dented in their history.35

In this, as in other areas, the NCLB statuteis schizophrenic. It gives the federal govern-ment a sweeping new role in promoting aca-demic excellence, but at the same time it

10

Some states have responded

to NCLB by actually lowering

their testingrequirements for

teachers.

leaves most of the key decisions, and thework of implementing them, in the hands ofthe state education agencies. For example,the word “proficiency” (including variantssuch as “proficient”) appears literally hun-dreds of times in the NCLB statute. It is atthe heart of the legislation’s basic purpose asexpressed in its opening sentence. (“The pur-pose of this title is to ensure that all childrenhave a fair, equal, and significant opportuni-ty to obtain a high-quality education andreach, at a minimum, proficiency on chal-lenging State academic achievement stan-dards and state academic assessments.”) Butstrikingly, this crucial term is never defined.While spending increased amounts of moneyin the name of academic proficiency andbuilding up new federal powers, all of whichwould horrify the original designers of ourlimited central government, NCLB leaves itentirely up to the states to decide just what“proficiency” means and how to measure it.

Under NCLB the states have manifoldopportunities to “game the system” of testingand reporting. They can use tests with ques-tions that are too easy. They can lower the“cut score”: the number of questions thatmust be answered correctly to establish a testtaker’s proficiency. They can switch tests everyfew years, muddying long-term comparisonsand creating the artificial appearance ofshort-term gains. They can abuse statisticaltechniques by treating the most wildly opti-mistic interpretation of a subgroup’s testresults as definitive even if there is only amicroscopic possibility that that interpreta-tion is correct. They can concentrate extratutoring and other resources on students whoare just slightly below the cut-score thresh-olds, neglecting those who are well below orwell above. They can fail to adopt rigorousprocedures to prevent or detect cheating. Inhopes that future lawmakers will relax NCLB,they can set their targets for “adequate yearlyprogress” in such a way that they committhemselves to only modest annual advancesat the outset but to much faster progress asthey near the 2014 deadline. As FrederickHess put it in a recent interview, “The whole

process invites gamesmanship.” He predictedthat the watering down of tests by the stateswould be “inevitable.”36

The decades-old National Assessment ofEducational Progress provides the most con-sistent available benchmark against which tomeasure the states’ testing programs. Since itis uniform from one state to another anddoes not trigger any adverse consequences(other than bad publicity) for states that dopoorly, it is far less vulnerable than the states’tests to self-serving manipulation. It also isclearly more demanding than most of thosetests, though many people believe it is notdemanding enough.37

NAEP’s reading test for fourth gradersfound that in 2003 only 30 percent of thosechildren nationwide were achieving at a levelat or above “proficient.” Not one state had asmany as half of its fourth graders reachingthat level in the NAEP test; the highest-achieving state was Connecticut at 43 per-cent. But in reporting the results from thetests that they had designed and adminis-tered themselves, all but eight states claimedproficiency levels above 50 percent. The profi-ciency figure that Mississippi reported fromits state test was 87 percent—even higher thanConnecticut’s self-reported 69 percent andabsurdly higher than Mississippi’s NAEPscore of 18 percent.38 Virginia, often praisedfor its leadership in education reforms such asits statewide “Standards of Learning,” report-ed that 73 percent were at or above “profi-ciency” in reading—compared with the NAEPfigure of 35 percent.39 Such astronomicalgaps make one wonder whether the comingtorrent of state reports on proficiency willmean anything at all.

Reinforcing such concerns is the mountingevidence that states are relaxing already estab-lished standards to make it easier to reach theNCLB target of universal math and reading“proficiency” by the year 2014. Some haveopenly adopted lower standards for NCLBthan for their own internal state assessments.Education researcher Denis Doyle observed inNovember 2002 that, “cynical as I am, I wassurprised at the speed and brazenness of states

11

The word “proficiency”appears literallyhundreds oftimes in theNCLB statute.But strikingly,this crucial termis never defined.

and localities lowering standards to complywith NCLB.”40 It is now possible for Louisianastudents to be classified as “proficient” in thestate’s NCLB reports even if their scores areonly at the lower, “basic” level on the scale thatthe state adopted in 1999. A Colorado studentcan now be “partially proficient” by state stan-dards but “fully proficient” by federal stan-dards. Connecticut has also embraced such adouble standard.41 Georgia has lowered thenumber of correct answers required to pass itsthird grade reading test.42 That NCLB wouldactually cause the lowering of standards wasnot what the White House and Congresspromised the nation when the statute was tri-umphantly enacted, but that is what we aregetting.

The states seem to have learned from thepainful example of Michigan, a pioneer inthe state-level testing and accountability thathelped lay the groundwork for NCLB.Precisely because Michigan had gone furtherthan almost any other state in adopting highstandards for academic outcomes, measuredby stringent tests, by the beginning of the2002–03 school year it found itself with more“failing” schools than any other state. NCLBwas making Michigan look worse than otherstates that had set the bar lower.43 Michiganresponded to this embarrassment by lower-ing the passing rate on its high schoolEnglish test from 75 percent to 42 percent—which helped reduce its reported number offailing schools from 1,500 to 216.44

A more subtle method of boosting appar-ent performance is the misuse of “confidenceintervals.” In its proper place, a confidenceinterval is an accepted statistical techniquefor taking into account the fact that quanti-tative measuring tools are inevitably subjectto some degree of error. Most of us are famil-iar with opinion polls that include marginsof error. For example, a pollster might reportthat 55 percent of his sample of voters are forcandidate Jones and 40 percent for candidateSmith. Depending on matters such as samplesize, the pollster might add that he has 90percent confidence that those figures areaccurate within five percentage points—or 95

percent confidence that they are accuratewithin 10 percentage points. The higher thelevel of confidence demanded, the wider therange around the reported result; thus in thishypothetical example the number of Jonessupporters would range from 50 to 60 per-cent if one demanded 90 percent confidencebut from 45 to 65 percent if one demanded95 percent confidence.

Richard Innes, a Kentucky educationresearcher who has worked on this issue withthe Bluegrass Institute, said in a telephoneinterview that state education officials inKentucky at first “panicked when NCLB cameout, but somebody came up with a brilliantsolution: Insist on a very high degree of cer-tainty.” Kentucky chose 99.5 percent confi-dence, which according to Innes is “a degree ofcertainty which nobody uses except for mat-ters such as equipment on airplanes; usuallyeducational statisticians settle for around 90percent.” Naturally, the resulting error range,the “confidence interval,” is extremely wide. AsKentucky interprets the NCLB rules—an inter-pretation accepted by the federal regulators—itis only necessary for the top edge of that rangeto be at or above the passing threshold for aschool to pronounce that it is meeting its tar-get number of students achieving proficiency.Innes said that in some smaller schools theconfidence interval has turned out to be aswide as 3 percent to 97 percent, with theschool needing an average score of only 50 per-cent to meet its proficiency target. “They areguaranteed to meet that standard,” he said.“It’s a con game.”45

More measured in its language thanInnes, but essentially supporting his analysis,was a September 2004 study of NCLB imple-mentation by the congressional oversightagency, the U.S. Government AccountabilityOffice. GAO found that

some states used statistical methods,such as confidence intervals, which mayresult in more of their schools reachingproficiency goals than states that do not.For instance, Tennessee—a state that ini-tially did not use confidence intervals but

12

There is mounting

evidence thatstates are relaxing

already established

standards tomake it easier toreach the NCLB

target of universalmath and reading

“proficiency” bythe year 2014.

later received approval to do so—re-ana-lyzed its data from 2002–03, applyingconfidence intervals. The application ofconfidence intervals substantially de-creased the number of schools not meet-ing state goals. The number of elemen-tary and middle schools not makingstate goals was reduced by over half—47percent to 22 percent. The application ofconfidence intervals can produce suchdifferences because the computed rangescan be large, especially when small num-bers of students make up groups orwhen scores vary significantly amongstudents. For example, in a Kentuckyhigh school, 16 percent of students withdisabilities scored at the proficient levelon a state test in 2004, and the goal was19 percent. However, when the stateapplied confidence intervals, the com-puted interval associated with 16 percentwas 0 to 33 percent. Because the stategoal—19 percent—was within the confi-dence interval, the state considered thisgroup to have met the goal.46

Yet another method the states use toevade NCLB’s intent is what former assistantsecretary of education Chester Finn hascalled the “balloon mortgage” tactic. In theo-ry, states are supposed to achieve “adequateyearly progress” at a steady pace between nowand 2014, the target year for 100 percent“proficiency.” They are not supposed to“backload” their accountability plans by set-ting goals of only tiny annual improvementsfor the next few years and then much largergains later.47 But in January 2003 Finnreported that federal officials had approvedNCLB plans from Ohio and Indiana in whichthose two states claimed that they would“squeeze half of the necessary achievementgrowth into the final quarter of the twelve-year period”—like a homeowner agreeing to alow interest rate during the first few years ofa mortgage and a higher rate later. As Finnput it, the state officials’ strategy is apparent-ly to “deliver a little in the next few years, andquite a lot down the road—but with any luck

somebody else will be on duty when the‘quite a lot’ time hits.”48

Finn suggested that

to believe that this approach is plausi-ble, you have to believe that academicgains will be made in U.S. schools at anaccelerating pace, indeed that as thegoing gets hardest—moving those last,toughest kids over the hump to profi-ciency—the rate of improvement willspeed up. . . . What I think is going on,cynic though you may call me, is thatclever folks in at least two states figuredout that, by the time 2011 rolls around,none of them will be responsible anylonger. They’ll all have moved on to newjobs, retired to their ranchettes, takenhigh-level posts in Washington, whatev-er. Nor will anybody from the BushAdministration still be in office afterJanuary 20, 2009. Hence the immenseachievement gains being promised forthose last three years of the NCLBtimetable will be somebody else’s prob-lem to deliver. The incumbents will, ineffect, have sold the property before theballoon part of the mortgage hits.49

A study published in July 2004 by thePublic Affairs Research Council of Louisianafound that as many as 20 states have nowsubmitted NCLB plans with similar back-loaded approaches. Some 17 of those statesbackloaded their projections for adequateyearly progress to “just after the 2007 ESEAre-authorization, apparently assuming thatthe goals will be modified substantially.”50

As state officials have become more familiarwith the NCLB statute and with the U.S.Department of Education’s interpretation of it,more of the states have joined the rush to relaxstandards. By September 2004, 47 states hadfiled requests for the U.S. Department ofEducation to approve changes to their NCLBplans that would in many cases make it easierfor them to show adequate yearly progress.51

Education Week reported of the encouraging fig-ures announced by many states that “while

13

NCLB seems to encourageschools to neglect the mostpromising students.

state press releases have largely attributed thegains to hard work and better test scores, atleast part of the reason stems from changes instate accountability plans and the additionalflexibility granted by the federal government.”For example, the number of schools claiming tohave met the annual progress targets in NorthCarolina jumped from 47 percent of all schoolsstatewide in the 2002–03 school year to 70 per-cent in 2003–04. The rise in Pennsylvania wasfrom 62 percent to 81 percent. While officials inboth states insisted that part of those gains rep-resented real improvement, they admitted toEducation Week that many of the numerical dif-ferences reflected the use of confidence inter-vals.52

Jack Jennings, head of the Center onEducation Policy, said in a December 8, 2004,interview that he thought that the federaldepartment had been “too rigid” during thefirst year and part of the second year afterNCLB was enacted but “became more flexibleafter state legislatures started to rebel.” He alsosuggested that the upcoming 2004 presiden-tial election caused the Bush administrationto “go easy.” In his view, the U.S. Departmentof Education has now been trying to accom-modate appeals from individual states—but,he said, “without understanding the impact ofthis on all the states as a whole.”53

In October 2004 the Center on EducationPolicy published a detailed analysis of requestsby states for changes in their NCLB account-ability plans and of the U.S. Department ofEducation’s responses to those requests.While cautioning that “to make an informedstatement on any state’s plan requires not onlya knowledge of what target of student profi-ciency a state has set, but also all the other fea-tures of the plan,” the analysis found that “thechanges, in total, give states and school dis-tricts more ‘wiggle room’ . . . [and] might beseen as allowing for short-term flexibility inimplementation while maintaining the law’slong-term overall direction.”54 All the changesspecifically cited had the effect of making iteasier for the states to report that they weremeeting the NCLB targets.

The effect of such concessions is not only

to encourage other states to seek similar con-cessions but also to make year-by-year com-parisons dubious. Parents and taxpayers maythink that schools are on track in meetingNCLB’s increasingly strict criteria for ade-quate yearly progress, when in fact the criteriaare simply being applied more leniently. Forexample, some state school officials initiallyfeared that nearly all their school districtswould be classified as needing improvementby the end of the 2003–04 school year, whenfor the first time they would be at risk of hav-ing fallen short of their adequate yearlyprogress targets for two consecutive years. Butthe federal regulators reduced that risk byallowing states to put school districts in the“needing improvement” category only if theyfailed to meet their targets at all three levels—elementary, middle, and high school—not justone or two of them. A North Carolina officialtold Education Week that nearly 85 or 90 per-cent of that state’s districts would have been inthat category if it had not been for the U.S.Department of Education’s new flexibility.55

Another problem with NCLB is the way itseems to encourage schools to neglect themost promising students. As a high-stakes sys-tem that threatens concrete, painful conse-quences for falling short, the statute gives edu-cators a perverse incentive to concentrate onlyon those students whose performance willmake the biggest difference in meeting thestated threshold. Educators have no incentiveunder NCLB to improve further the perfor-mance of students who are already well abovethe level of “proficiency.” Instead of working toturn superior students into outstanding stu-dents, schools that want to avoid unpleasantconsequences would be well advised to concen-trate on turning inferior students into barelyadequate students. NCLB thus subtly encour-ages them to neglect the gifted and talented.56

Cheating

More serious than “gaming the system” isoutright cheating: not just publicly bendingthe rules but secretly breaking them outright.

14

NCLB subtlyencourages

schools to neglectthe gifted and

talented.

Teachers who leak specific test questions tostudents in advance, or coach them while theyare being tested, or doctor the students’ answersheets before sending them off for scoring aremanifestly violating the stated policies of theirown school systems. Are the state educationagencies and local districts doing enough todetect and deter such cheating?

In December 2004 and January 2005, theDallas Morning News published a devastatingseries of articles about Texas schools with sus-picious anomalies, where “scores swung wildlyfrom year to year. Schools made test-scoreleaps from mediocre to stellar in a year’s time.”The scores then often “came crashing down”when those seemingly stellar students lefttheir elementary schools and went on to mid-dle schools.57 In June 2003 one teacher toldthe Houston School Board that she had beenencouraged to cheat and instructed on how todo so, but apparently neither the school boardnor the state education authorities respondedseriously to her charges until the Dallas news-paper blew the whistle. That teacher was fromWesley Elementary School—one of the mostfamous schools in Texas, lauded repeatedly byformer Houston school superintendent (andformer U.S. secretary of education) Rod Paigeas an example for others.58

Overall, the Morning News found such sus-picious test score anomalies at as many as400 schools statewide. It should be stressedthat this figure represents only about 5 per-cent of the state’s 7,700 schools.59 But it alsoshould be noted that Texas state educationofficials do not regularly monitor test resultsto seek such anomalies, though they do con-duct specific investigations in response tospecific complaints. For the most part theylet the local school districts police them-selves—a pattern that seems to be widespreadamong other states.60 The state educationagencies cannot have it both ways: if they aregoing to mandate centralized, statewide test-ing programs and use the results of thosetests to make centralized policy decisions,then they should take elementary steps tohelp ensure that the tests are honestly admin-istered.

On the one hand, NCLB requires thestates to put test score data on the publicrecord, which makes it easier for journalistslike those of the Dallas newspaper to studythem. But on the other hand, it does notrequire state plans to include any specificsafeguards against cheating. Since the statuteobviously increases the incentives for cheat-ing, there will probably be more of it in thefuture—both detected and undetected.

On balance, however, clandestine cheatingby individual teachers and principals will beless of a threat than systematic, statewidedumbing down of standards and tests and thewidespread dishonest reporting about thesupposed rigor of those standards. Educationresearcher John Chubb of Edison Schools pre-dicts that “as states find that it’s acceptable tosatisfy NCLB by lowering their standards,there will be a race to the bottom.”61

Prospects

As the years go by, the incentives for evad-ing the truth will continue to grow (as theadequate yearly progress targets get moreambitious). No future administration willhave the same stake in NCLB as the one thatlaunched it. If the Bush administration hasnot been willing so far to take the heat forwithholding NCLB grants from states thatfudge their numbers, why should futureadministrations be any bolder? Future presi-dents and secretaries of education may evendecide that they share the states’ interest incovering up the truth; the beginnings of sucha trend are already visible in the Bush admin-istration’s publicity campaign exaggeratingNCLB’s successes.62

The supporters of NCLB are not blind tothose dangers, and they have ideas aboutcountering them. One is that the U.S.Department of Education should publish anannual rating of the states’ accountability sys-tems, ranking them from best to worst.63 Thedepartment could also fine-tune its handlingof issues such as graduation rates and confi-dence intervals. But such fine-tuning will

15

With the passage of time,federal programstend to becomeeven more complicated,internally contradictory,and captive tovarious lobbieswith their owninconsistentobjectives.

work only if the department is willing to exer-cise to the full extent its powers under NCLBto reject state plans and deny state funding. Tomake the states implement the schizophrenicstatute seriously, federal education officialsmay even need to acquire additional powers—bringing still more centralization to a systemalready dysfunctionally overcentralized. More-over, a reform strategy based on such strongcontrol by Washington ultimately depends onthe assumption that somehow the federaldepartment will be immune to the interest-group pressures that warp decisionmakingwithin the state education agencies. AsMatthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institutehas observed, that idea “is based on unrealisticpolitical assumptions. The teachers unions arethe 800-pound gorilla; they are able to influ-ence the accountability process itself.” He con-cludes that “so far the public schools havebeen able to get away with distorting measure-ment of their results, and they will continue toget away with it.”64

If Ladner’s view seems too pessimistic, oneshould consider the experience of the twodecades since education reform emerged as amajor issue. Self-styled reformers, such as thefederal commission that published A Nation atRisk, the influential 1983 report in which theeducation establishment belatedly acknowl-edged the mediocrity of America’s schools,claimed to be opposed to “more of the same”—to merely spending more on the status quo.Nevertheless, “more of the same” is exactlywhat happened. Harvard economist CarolineM. Hoxby explains: “Powerful interest groupswere able to use the climate of urgency createdby the report to get their own preferred policiesenacted, even when the policies were not rec-ommended by Risk. For instance, per-pupilspending has risen sharply while class size hasfallen significantly. . . . The same interestgroups were able to block some Risk recom-mendations that would have required realchanges, such as lengthening the school yearand assigning more homework.”65

In some ways NCLB is less radical than ANation at Risk. To win the support of congres-sional allies of the public school establish-

ment, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA),the Bush administration dropped the mostfar-reaching elements of its original proposalin areas such as parental choice and blockgrants. Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust,which promotes accountability through sys-tematic testing, accurately predicted in 2001,as she observed the legislation being watereddown on Capitol Hill, that “we’re going to geta status quo bill at the end of the day.”66 The1,100-page statute did little to trim the tan-gle of education programs inherited fromdecades of federal empire building; it merelyimposed new provisions and requirementson top of those programs.67 Far from being acoherent reform plan, the bill left in place thestructures of the 1960s and 1970s, when thefederal government’s virtually exclusiveemphasis in education policy was on “equali-ty” rather than excellence—leaving futureadministrations free to revive that emphasis.

Some observers hope that the statute canbe fixed by further amendments, but experi-ence with most other large federal programs,from health care subsidies to the tax code,suggests the opposite. With the passage oftime, such programs tend to become evenmore complicated, internally contradictory,and captive to various lobbies with their owninconsistent objectives.

Before NCLB, several states imposedaccountability systems on schools withstatewide testing, reporting, and (supposedly)clear consequences for failure. Frederick Hessfound that over time those state systems havetended to drift from “tough” to “soft,” withstandards and penalties being relaxed as inter-est groups mobilize against them. As summa-rized by Martin West and Paul Peterson ofHarvard University’s Program on EducationPolicy and Governance, the findings of Hessand other researchers suggest that

keeping intact the necessary politicalwill over the long run is likely to be high-ly problematic. . . . If authentic account-ability is to be established, presidents,governors, and mayors, backed by awell-organized business community,

16

In the 1980s everyone of the stateswas found to beclaiming that itsstudents’ scoreson standardized

achievement testswere above the

average for all 50states—a

mathematicalimpossibility.

need to remain committed to the effort.Yet such leaders, with their numerousresponsibilities, are easily distracted.Fighting wars, preventing terrorism,maintaining economic growth, balanc-ing budgets, and many other issues, toounpredictable to anticipate, can easilyshift educational accountability to theback burner. When that happens, well-organized, narrow interests gain theupper hand. All in all, there is every rea-son to believe that tough, coerciveaccountability will gradually evolve intosomething softer, nicer, more accept-able to those directly affected.68

Even if national leaders remain undis-tracted, they will have to deal with schoolofficials who are endlessly ingenious at find-ing their way around unwelcome standards.One thinks not only of the current maneu-vers with confidence intervals and the likebut also of the “Lake Wobegon effect” of the1980s in which every one of the states wasfound to be claiming that its students’ scoreson standardized achievement tests wereabove the average for all 50 states—a mathe-matical impossibility. That fraud was uncov-ered not by government education expertsbut by an amateur activist, West Virginiapediatrician John Jacob Cannell.69

Conclusion andRecommendations

NCLB reflects an ideological strain that isnovel for Republican presidents: utopianism.As did the older, left-wing forms of utopi-anism, the Bush administration emphasizescollective action rather than individualresponsibility: NCLB implicitly treats studentsnot as individuals but as passive commoditiesmass-produced by state programs. In its plansfor extending NCLB to the high school level,the Bush administration has yet to signal thatit will even try to revive the parental choiceprovisions that were part of its original pro-posal in early 2001—and that it utterly failed

to defend against the implacable statistsamong Capitol Hill Democrats. As individualswho respond to incentives, both parents andstudents are for the most part curiouslyabsent from NCLB; its focus, like that of near-ly all federal education programs for the lastfour decades, is on administrative units suchas schools and school districts.

Utopianism usually ends up transformingrhetoric more than reality. In the real world,the chance that not one child in America willfall short of academic “proficiency” within adecade is the same as the chance that not onechild will be a juvenile delinquent: zero. By2014, if not before, NCLB will be seen to havefailed, just as the centralized education pro-grams enacted from the 1960s through the1990s have failed.70 But like those programs,NCLB may be so deeply entrenched by thenthat it will be difficult to repeal. In any case,it will have absorbed time, money, and energythat could otherwise have been spent onmore promising measures. Like the so-calledreform measures of the 1980s and 1990s,NCLB has not destroyed the chances of gen-uine, radical reforms in America’s profound-ly dysfunctional school system, but it hasalmost certainly postponed them.

It will always be true that some ofAmerica’s tens of thousands of schools areexcellent and some mediocre (or worse).Rather than continue to use centralized gov-ernment decrees (both state and federal) toturn mediocre institutions into excellentones, as they have been trying but failing todo for the last several decades, the state andfederal governments should empower indi-vidual families to “vote with their feet” bytransferring to the schools of their ownchoice. That strategy would bring threeadvantages that are absent from the monop-olistic command-and-control model embod-ied in NCLB. First, it would allow parents torescue their children from dysfunctionalschools immediately rather than continue towait for the public school establishment’sendless tinkerings with the status quo to pro-duce the glorious results that have long beenpromised but never arrive. Second, it would

17

Both parents and students arecuriously absentfrom NCLB; itsfocus is onadministrativeunits such asschools andschool districts.

allow families to pick schools that are com-patible with their own philosophical and reli-gious beliefs instead of locking them intopoisonous, zero-sum conflicts to determinewhich groups will win the power to imposetheir beliefs on other groups within the coer-cive, one-size-fits-all government schools.

Third, a reform model based on free mar-kets rather than state monopolies wouldunleash the dynamic force of competition.When schools know that they cannot taketheir customers for granted, they face a wholenew incentive structure: They have to concen-trate on producing solid results rather than onpaper compliance with top-down regulations.Nothing concentrates the mind as effectivelyas the threat of having to go out of business.Real, ongoing accountability to customerswho are free at any moment to take their chil-dren (and dollars) elsewhere is qualitativelydifferent from imitation accountability tocentralized government structures that canalmost always be coaxed or pressured intokeeping the money flowing to schools that aremanifestly failing. The latter model, as prac-ticed by so-called reform strategies such asNCLB, simply adds one more layer of bureauc-racy to a system that is far too bureaucratizedalready. As education researchers John Chubband Terry Moe observed 15 years ago in a now-classic study for the Brookings Institution,parental choice is a “revolutionary reform”rather than a “system-preserving” one: “Thewhole point of a thoroughgoing system ofchoice is to free the schools from these dis-abling constraints by sweeping away the oldinstitutions and replacing them with newones.”71

The key locus for such revolutionaryreforms is the states. Under the Constitutionit is the states that have legal responsibilityfor education. Even after decades of uncon-stitutional federal education programs, morethan 90 percent of government financing forelementary and secondary schools still comesfrom state and local taxes. Education is thusone of the most promising areas for takingadvantage of the flexibility and diversity thatthe nation’s Founders gave us: Let some

states try tuition tax credits or tax deduc-tions, let others try vouchers, and let all learnfrom each other’s experience.

This process has of course begun with theparental choice programs already enacted inWisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. Ineducation as in other areas, the 18th-centuryprinciples built into the country’s federalistdesign are better adapted to the challenges ofthe fast-moving, down-sizing, open-ended21st century than are the static, top-heavy,homogeneous structures left over from themid–20th century.

Notes1. Transcript of Bush’s speech, Washington Post,September 2, 2004, p. A01.

2. As the 2004 national Republican platform putit: “President Bush and Congressional Republicanshave provided the largest increase in federal educa-tion funding in history and the highest percentagegain since the 1960s. Support for elementary andsecondary education has had the largest increase inany single Presidential term since the 1960s—anincrease of nearly 50 percent since 2001.” Seewww.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf.

3. The 1996 Republican Party platform stated:“The federal government has no constitutionalauthority to be involved in school curricula or tocontrol jobs in the work place. That is why we willabolish the Department of Education, end feder-al meddling in our schools, and promote familychoice at all levels of learning. We therefore callfor prompt repeal of the Goals 2000 program andthe School-to-Work Act of 1994, which put newfederal controls, as well as unfunded mandates,on the States. We further urge that federalattempts to impose outcome- or performance-based education on local schools be ended.” Seehttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=R1996.

4. The school choice provisions fail to include pri-vate schools, and even the ostensible right to trans-fer to another public school has mostly proved to behollow in practice. See Lisa Snell, “No Way Out: TheNo Child Left Behind Act Provides Only the Illusionof School Choice,” Reason, October 2004, http://reason.com/0410/fe.is.no.shtml: “A February 2004report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard foundthat in 10 urban school districts with large concen-trations of children eligible to exercise school choiceunder NCLB, less than three percent of eligible stu-dents requested a transfer. Even with the small num-

18

The key locus for such revolutionaryreforms is the

states. Under theConstitution it is

the states thathave legal

responsibility foreducation.

ber of requests, no district in the study was able toapprove all or even most of the transfer requests. . . .A federally funded survey of Buffalo parents by theBrighter Choice Public School Project found that 75percent of the parents surveyed did not realize theirchildren attended a school designated as in need ofimprovement, which means it did not make ade-quate yearly progress in reading or math for twoconsecutive years. A full 92 percent said they wouldlike to switch schools. A comparable percentage ofparents in Albany also were unaware of the transferoption.”

5. For a more detailed discussion of these points,see Lawrence A. Uzzell, “Contradictions ofCentralized Education,” Cato Institute PolicyAnalysis no. 53, May 30, 1985.

6. Stephen Arons, Short Route to Chaos: Conscience,Community and the Re-constitution of AmericanSchooling (Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1997), p. 3.

7. At that January 8, 2002, ceremony Bush praisedSen. Edward Kennedy, Rep. George Miller, and othercongressional leaders who, in Bush’s words, “decid-ed to set partisan politics aside and focus on whatwas right for America.” See transcript of Bush’sremarks, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020108-1.html.

8. See Michael Dobbs, “New Rules for ‘No Child’Law Planned,” Washington Post, April 7, 2005, p.A13.

9. See James Madison, Federalist 45: “The powersdelegated by the proposed Constitution to thefederal government are few and defined. Thosewhich are to remain in the State governments arenumerous and indefinite. The former will be exer-cised principally on external objects, as war, peace,negotiation, and foreign commerce. . . . The pow-ers reserved to the several States will extend to allthe objects which, in the ordinary course ofaffairs, concern the lives, liberties and propertiesof the people, and the internal order, improve-ment, and prosperity of the State.” The TenthAmendment to the Constitution underscores thisdoctrine of enumerated powers: A claim of feder-al power not specifically authorized by Article I,Section 8, of the Constitution is illegitimate. Theword “education” does not once appear either inthe original Constitution or in any of its amend-ments.

10. See George Archibald, “Education EarmarksClog Budget Bill,” Washington Times, January 9,2005, http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050109-120809-9076r.htm: “The U.S. Departmentof Education is choking on congressional pork,struggling with mandates to spend about $400

million on 1,175 specified local projects as ear-marked by lawmakers in the omnibus appropria-tions bill enacted Dec. 8.” An official of the depart-ment’s Office for Innovation and Improvementtold Archibald that Congress had increased thatoffice’s number of mandated spending items from450 in 2004 to 700 in the new fiscal year. Accordingto the Washington Times article: “The projects rangefrom school district teacher training and curricu-lum development in specified areas to after-schoolprograms. Money also was mandated for groupspushing everything from the teaching of Jewishhistory and specific arts disciplines to weekendprograms for children with disabilities.” One of themandates provided $9.7 million for the EducationLeaders Council, a school reform group that hasbeen a federal contractor since 2002.

11. See E. D. Hirsch, “Cultural Literacy,” AmericanScholar, Spring 1983.

12. On March 21, 2005, the website of theNational Association for Bilingual Education,http://www.forcefinder.com/JobSeeker/JobList.aspx?abbr=NABE, listed only one private schoolopening for elementary teachers in its section forjobseekers—and that one opening was in apreschool Spanish-immersion program aimed atnative speakers of English. For a description ofthe many flawed and faddish methods intro-duced in public schools, see Andrew Coulson,Market Education: The Unknown History (NewBrunswick: Transaction, 1990), chap. 5. DianeRavitch describes efforts to use public schools forsocial engineering and other causes against par-ents’ wishes. See Diane Ravitch, Left Back: ACentury of Battles over School Reform (New York:Touchstone, 2000). See also James Coleman,“Public Schools, Private Schools, and the PublicInterest,” Public Interest, no. 64 (Summer 1981).

13. Sheldon Richman, “Parent Power: WhyNational Standards Won’t Improve Education,”Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 396, April 26,2001, p. 14. Others disagree. Retired University ofVirginia professor E. D. Hirsch, whose CoreKnowledge Foundation promotes the study ofspecific classic texts, would like to see the statesmandate such reading lists for all their schools.Hirsch worries, as he put it in “No Child LeftBehind: How to Ace Those Tests,” HooverInstitution Weekly Essay, May 12, 2004, that thestates are putting too much emphasis on “trivialtales and on constantly repeated content-poorexercises in ‘classifying’ and ‘finding the mainidea.’ The desperate response of the schools totest pressure has been to excise history, science,and the arts and replace them with still more suchexercises in reading.” For this he blames notNCLB itself, which he supports, but the states’response to it. He predicts that “the small initial

19

rise in reading scores yielded by these intense,misguided efforts will level off to everyone’s dis-appointment.”

14. Richman, p. 14.

15. Chester E. Finn Jr. and Frederick M. Hess, “OnLeaving No Child Behind,” Public Interest, Fall2004, p. 42.

16. Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, “Cooking theGraduation Numbers,” Los Angeles Times, December11, 2003, p. B17.

17. Ibid. See also Jay P. Greene and Marcus A.Winters, “Pushed Out or Pulled Up? Exit Examsand Dropout Rates in Public High Schools,”Manhattan Institute, May 2004.

18. Jay P. Greene, “High School Graduation Rates inthe United States,” prepared for the Black Alliancefor Educational Options, 2001, revised April 2002.“The discrepancy,” wrote Greene, “is largely causedby NCES’ counting of General EducationalDevelopment (GED) graduates and others withalternative credentials as high school graduates,and by its reliance on a methodology that is likely toundercount dropouts.” For Greene’s argumentsagainst treating the GED as the equivalent of a con-ventional high school diploma, see his article“GEDs Aren’t Worth the Paper They’re PrintedOn,” City Journal, Winter 2002, http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_1_geds_arent.html. He citesstudies finding that GED recipients perform onlyslightly better than dropouts in later earnings andother measures of success; for example, “almostthree-quarters of GED holders who enroll in com-munity colleges fail to finish their degrees, com-pared with 44 percent of high school graduates.” Healso finds that “jumping the GED hurdle . . .requires scant knowledge of the academic contentthat even our knowledge-lite high schools manageto get across.”

19. Education Trust, “Telling the Whole Truth (orNot) about High School Graduation: New StateData,” December 2003, p. 3, http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4DE8F2E0-4D08-4640-B3B0-013F6DC3865D/0/tellingthetruthgradrates.pdf:“These reports provide information about thenumber of students enrolled at each grade level dis-aggregated by student group. At the very least,states should be able to produce a reasonable grad-uation snapshot by using the data they alreadyhave to compare enrollments at the beginning ofhigh school to graduates four years later. Of thosestates that did report data, we found a significantrange in the reported graduation rates. . . . We ques-tion to what extent these differences are a functionof reality, and to what extent they are a function ofthe ways states have chosen to represent reality.”

20. Greene, “High School Graduation Rates in theUnited States.”

21. Ibid. As of January 2005, the www.schoolresults.org website funded by the U.S. Department ofEducation was reporting that North Carolina hada graduation rate of 97 percent. See http://www.schoolresults.org/App/SIP/SPSServlet/MenuRequest?StateID=34&LocLevelID=111&StateLocLevelID=178&LocationID=34&CatIndex=1&SectIndex=0&CompIndex=0&. The Education Trustalso found overly rosy reporting of the much-dis-cussed gap between white and nonwhite students:“In the majority of states that reported disaggre-gated data, the difference between the self-reportedgraduation rate data and Greene’s calculations waseven wider for Latino and African American stu-dents than for the overall student population.”Especially glaring was the discrepancy in Indiana,which reported a graduation rate of 88 percent forblacks. Greene’s figure was 53 percent. ForConnecticut the corresponding figures were 78.6percent and 56 percent; for Illinois, 74.5 percentand 53 percent. Moreover, the NCLB forms sent tothe states asked that they calculate high schoolgraduates only as a percentage of those enrolled at“the beginning of the school year,” not thoseenrolled at the beginning of ninth grade as specifi-cally stated in the NCLB statute. The EducationTrust’s analysis found that “the Department’ssloppiness has caused a great deal of confusionabout defining graduation rates and has opened aloophole big enough for states to hide thousandsof kids. States that strictly follow the language ofthe application form could technically be in com-pliance by reporting graduation rates based onlyon 12th graders, ignoring the fate of students whodrop out in the ninth, 10th, or 11th grades” (p. 3).

22. Christopher B. Swanson, “Graduation Rates:Real Kids, Real Numbers,” Principal Leadershipmagazine (Urban Institute), December 2004, p. 3.

23. Center on Education Policy, “Rule ChangeCould Help More Schools Meet Test Score Targetsfor the No Child Left Behind Act,” October 22,2004. Similarly, the Government AccountabilityOffice, the congressional oversight agency, notedin a September 2004 analysis that the U.S.Department of Education had given conditionalapproval to state NCLB plans that were still miss-ing elements needed to comply with the law suchas provision of performance targets, includinggraduation rates, and examples of their required“state report cards.” According to the GAO, “Somestates provided [the U.S. Department of]Education with definitions for how they would cal-culate their goals and targets and assurances thatthe information would be forthcoming, but didnot include the rates and percentages required bythe law. Education officials said that some of these

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states did not have enough data to report gradua-tion rates, but that the states defined how theywould do so once they began collecting such data.Education approved these state plans with the con-dition that states collect data on graduation ratesand define them in a manner consistent with theirplans. . . . However, the department did not have awritten process to track interim steps and docu-ment that states meet the identified conditionswithin a specified time frame. In the follow-up let-ters Education sent to most states, it did not indi-cate specific time frames for when it expected statesto demonstrate that they had met all NCLBArequirements. Education officials told us that theydid not have a written process to ensure states aretaking steps toward meeting the conditions set forfull approval or what actions the departmentwould take if states do not meet them.” U.S.Government Accountability Office, “No Child LeftBehind Act: Improvements Needed in Education’sProcess for Tracking States’ Implementation ofKey Provisions,” September 2004, p. 33.

24. “Persistently Dangerous Schools,” EducationWeek, December 8, 2004, p. S7.

25. Colorado Department of Education, “SafeSchool Choice Option,” May 13, 2003, http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeprevention/download/pdf/Safe_School_Choice_Policy.pdf.

26. “Colorado Reports No Dangerous Schools,”Associated Press, September 18, 2003.

27. Greg Toppo, “States Label Fewer SchoolsDangerous,” USA Today, October 21, 2003, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-10-21-schools-usat_x.htm.

28. For a detailed argument in favor of this view, seeAndrew J. Rotherham and Sara Mead, “TeacherQuality: Beyond No Child Left Behind. A Responseto Kaplan and Owings,” NASSP Bulletin (NationalAssociation of Secondary School Principals), June2003, pp. 75–76. Rotherham and Mead concludethat “requiring all teachers to possess strong con-tent knowledge in the subject or subjects they teachis an important step that is grounded in researchdemonstrating the importance of teacher contentknowledge for student achievement, particularly atthe secondary school level. . . . For example,researchers using data from the NationalEducational Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988found a benefit of about one-third of a grade levelof progress in mathematics for students whoseteachers had both a bachelor of arts and a masterof arts in mathematics and almost three-quartersof a grade level of growth for those students whoseteachers had certification in mathematics (whichincluded a significant core of mathematics cours-es). Likewise, an analysis using data from the

National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) found that in math and science, studentswhose teachers majored or minored in the subjectthey teach outperform their peers by 40% of a gradelevel. These are powerful indications of the positiveeffect of rigorous subject-area training and peda-gogical training that is specifically designed forteaching a particular academic subject.” They alsofind that “even though there are many candidatesto teach in some disciplines, certain subjects sufferfrom acute shortages, particularly math, science,and special education. . . . USDOE figures showthat about one in four high school math teachersand one in five high school science teachers lack amajor or minor in their field. . . .” Moreover, theyconclude that “teachers who demonstrate strongverbal skills or score highly on tests of these skillsgenerate better student achievement than thosewith lower scores. For example, a study of studentsand teachers in Alabama found that teachers’ ACTscores accounted for 15% of the predicted achieve-ment of their pupils, more than double the effectof class size, two-and-one-half times the effect ofteachers’ possession of a master’s degree, and morethan five times the effect of teacher experience. . . .A national study involving more than 300 highschools demonstrated that teachers educated atselective colleges with stiff entrance and gradua-tion requirements had a positive effect on studentlearning that exceeded class size reduction or gen-eral increase in per pupil expenditure. According toUSDOE statistics, teachers are drawn dispropor-tionately from students with low scores on testssuch as the SAT and ACT. . . . Moreover, studentswith high SAT or ACT scores are more likely to beamong those who leave teaching within the firstfew years. This evidence, uncomfortable as it maybe, cannot be ignored because it is indicative of aserious adverse selection problem.”

29. Maine Department of Education, The MaineHOUSSE (High Objective Uniform State Standard ofEvaluation) Content Knowledge Rubrics, April 2004,pp. 9–10, http://mainegov-images.informe.org/education/HQTP/HOUSSE%20Rubric%20Presentation.pdf.

30. Florida Department of Education, FloridaNCLB Highly Qualified “Experienced” Teachers High,Objective, Uniform State Standard of Evaluation(HOUSSE) Plan, Teachers of Academic Core ContentCourses, n.d., p. 2, http://info.fldoe.org/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-2439/Forms.pdf.

31. National Council on Teacher Quality, “Educa-tion Think Tank Evaluates Standards for America’sVeteran Teachers; Questions Effectiveness of StatePlans,” news release, December 21, 2004. The fullreport, “Searching the Attic: How States areResponding to the Nation’s Goal of Placing a HighlyQualified Teacher in Every Classroom,” December

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2004, is available via the NCTQ website, http://www.nctq.org/. “Searching the Attic,” p. 1, notedthat NCLB contains a “glaring ambiguity: thenotable absence of a federal definition for theamount of coursework that constitutes a collegemajor or minor. A number of states accept 24 credithours as a college major, while most of the nation’smore selective colleges view 30 credit hours as thenorm.”

32. U.S. Department of Education, Office ofPostsecondary Education, “Meeting the HighlyQualified Teacher Challenge: The Secretary’sThird Annual Report on Teacher Quality,” July2004. This report also found that only nine of thestate agencies viewed any of their accreditedteacher-training programs as being low perform-ing or at risk of being low performing, for a totalof only 25 programs out of about 1,200 in theentire country. Only half the states are even will-ing to let the general public know the percentageof would-be teachers from specific programs whofail state teacher-licensing tests—even thoughthey are required to report those figures toWashington.

33. These actions lowering standards go unmen-tioned on the U.S. Department of Education’swebsite on how “NCLB Is Making a Difference,”http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/importance/difference/index.html. The brief, state-by-statereports published there make the federal depart-ment look more like a cheerleader than a sterntaskmaster insisting on high standards.

34. George A. Clowes, “States Lower Standards for‘Highly Qualified’ Teachers,” School Reform News(Heartland Institute), September 1, 2004.

35. See, for example, Caroline M. Hoxby,“Reforms for Whom?” Education Next (HooverInstitution), Spring 2003, http://www.educationnext.org/20032/47.html.

36. Telephone interview with Frederick Hess,December 16, 2004.

37. See 2004 Brown Center Report on AmericanEducation (Washington: Brookings InstitutionPress, November 2004), p. 3: “The NAEP has pub-licly released more than 500 items from its math-ematics tests. In the first section of this report,after reviewing test data released in 2004, we ana-lyze a sample of NAEP items and discover that themathematics required to solve many of the prob-lems is extraordinarily easy. Most of the arith-metic one would need to know to solve the aver-age item on the eighth grade NAEP is taught bythe end of third grade.”

38. “Test Mismatch,” Education Week, January 6,

2005. Only two states, South Carolina andMissouri, had point spreads smaller than 10between the NAEP scores on fourth grade readingproficiency and the scores from their own tests. InMissouri the two figures were identical.

39. “State Data Tables” accompanying Ronald A.Skinner, “State of the States,” Education Week,January 6, 2005, pp. 77–80. That discrepancy castsgrave doubt on Virginia’s claim on its “statereport card” that 79 percent of all students weremeeting the state performance target in English.See “Commonwealth of Virginia AchievementResults, Percentage of Students Passing for2003–2004,” http://pen2.vak12ed.edu/cgibin/broker?_service=doe_prod&_program=prodcode.st_report_select_page.sas.

40. Denis Doyle, “Lowering the Bar,” The DoyleReport, SchoolNet, November 2, 2002, http://www.thedoylereport.com/default_article.aspx?page_id=viewpoint&id=664&archive=1.

41. See David J. Hoff, “States Revise the Meaningof ‘Proficient,’” Education Week, October 9, 2002,p. 1, where Hoff notes: “When Louisiana estab-lished its accountability system in 1999, it set as agoal that all students would reach the ‘basic’achievement level by 2009, and that all studentswould score at the proficient mark 10 years afterthat. The state purposely set its achievement lev-els to match the high standards of the federallysponsored National Assessment of EducationalProgress, or NAEP, said Rodney R. Watson, thestate’s assistant superintendent for student andschool performance. The state decided to makethe basic level its goal under the No Child LeftBehind Act, he said, because it was aligned withthe state’s target for 2009 and still representssolid academic achievement. On last spring’s statetests, 17 percent of Louisiana 8th graders scoredat either the proficient or ‘advanced’ level on anEnglish/language arts test, while 31 percent ratedin the basic category. In mathematics, 1 percent of8th graders were advanced, 4 percent were profi-cient, and 37 percent were basic. By comparison,the state’s 7th and 9th graders rated just belowthe national average on the composite score ofthe Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. While the statedecided that its basic achievement level would begood enough for proficiency under the federallaw, it decided against changing the name of theachievement level. ‘It would have looked like wewere dumbing down the standards,’ Mr. Watsonsaid. Instead, the state board of educationchanged the name of the state’s proficient catego-ry to ‘mastery.’”

42. Matthew Ladner, “States Lower AccountabilityBar to Boost Pass Rates,” School Reform News(Heartland Institute), September 1, 2004.

22

43. David A. DeSchryver, “NCLB a DramaticChange for Title I Testing, But Too Much So?”The Doyle Report, November 5, 2002.

44. Ladner.

45. Telephone interview with Richard Innes,December 21, 2004. Innes added that he fears themisuse of confidence intervals might create anincentive for organizing deliberately smallschools—smaller than the optimum size neededfor rigorous courses in specialized subjects suchas physics. His November 3, 2003, testimony onthis subject to the Kentucky state legislature isavailable at http://www.bipps.org/pubs/perspectives/pdf/gradrates.pdf.

46. See U.S. Government Accountability Office,No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements Needed inEducation’s Process for Tracking States’Implementation of Key Provisions, September 2004,p. 21. Also worth noting on this point is the analy-sis of Derek Redelman, director of education pol-icy for the Hudson Institute, in “Using Statisticsto Subvert NCLB,” School Reform News (HeartlandInstitute), November 1, 2003, p. 1. Redelmanfound that “the passing rates being promised tothe U.S. Department of Education are not in factthe benchmarks being enforced in many states. InIndiana, for example, state education officialslauded two schools in the town of Marion for hav-ing shown sufficient improvement that they wereremoved this year from the ‘needs improvement’list. But a quick review of the data reveals one ofthe schools, Center Elementary, had actuallydeclined in performance—falling from 55 percentpassing in 2001–2002 to 43 percent passing in2002–2003.” Redelman also noted that “someobservers have also suggested the flexibility isbeing applied in the wrong place. If individual testscores are where variability occurs, then statesought to consider that when they set individualpass rates—not use that variability as a reason forlowering the number of students required toexceed the passing bar. Still others point out thatusing confidence limits is appropriate only forsampling data, not for hard counts like thoseused in determining pass rates.”

47. Secretary of Education Rod Paige even sent aletter to state school officers on July 24, 2002,stating that “a State’s definition of AYP is basedon expectations for growth in student achieve-ment that is continuous and substantial. . . .Accountability systems must establish proficien-cy goals statewide . . . that progressively increaseto reflect 100 percent proficiency for all studentsby 2013–14. These goals must increase at steadyand consistent increments during the 12-yeartimeline, although not necessarily annuallythroughout the 12 years (i.e., States cannot estab-

lish goals that will require the most substantialprogress toward the end of the 12-year timeline).”

48. Chester E. Finn Jr., “Adequate Yearly Progressor Balloon Mortgage?” Education Gadfly (ThomasB. Fordham Institute), January 30, 2003, http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/gadfly/issue.cfm?id=9#367.

49. Ibid.: “Ohio and Indiana each opted to set 5intermediate goals, which effectively creates sixachievement targets (since 100% proficiencycomes in the period between goal #5 and 2014).And guess what? The first three of those targetseach spans a three-year period (i.e. they’re to beattained in 2005, 2008 and 2011). But the finalthree are just a single year apart. In other words,these states are promising to make as much aca-demic growth in the one year from 2011 to 2012as in the three-year period 2002–5; they say theyexpect as sizable achievement gains between 2012and 2013 as between 2005 and 2008; and theyclaim that their students will make as muchprogress from 2013 to 2014 as from 2008 to 2011.. . . [Thus] half the total gain to be made by Ohioand Indiana students will—if you believe it—bemade in the last three years of the NCLBtimetable, from 2011 to 2014.”

50. Stephanie Franks, NCLB: A Steep Climb Ahead,Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, July2004, pp. 6–7. In Louisiana itself, this study foundthat the state’s annual targets for improvement inmathematics proficiency assume “that gains instudent achievement within the last three years ofthe growth plan can be equal to gains throughoutthe first nine years.”

51. Lynn Olson, “Data Show Schools MakingProgress on Federal Goals,” Education Week,September 8, 2004, p. 1.

52. Ibid.

53. Interview with Jack Jennings, December 5,2004.

54. “Rule Change Could Help More Schools MeetTest Score Targets for the No Child Left BehindAct,” Center on Education Policy, October 22,2004, p. 8. Among those changes were the follow-ing: (1) Amending their NCLB accountabilityplans to make more use of confidence intervals.In their original accountability plans, “about halfthe states” had used confidence intervals. Otherstates then seemed to learn from their example;another 12 states have now “either introduced theuse of confidence intervals or changed the waythey plan to use them to determine AdequateYearly Progress.” (2) Identifying schools as need-ing improvement only if they have missed targets

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in the same subject, math or reading, for two con-secutive years—rather than in either of those twosubjects. (3) Allowing states to average two orthree years of test score data, rather than use justone year, in calculating the percentage of studentswho have reached “proficiency”—a change“intended to minimize the effect of fluctuationsin group test scores that occur due to measure-ment error or changes in the composition of aschool’s student body.” (4) Similarly allowingstates to average two or three years of data on par-ticipation rates in testing for the purpose of meet-ing the rule that 95 percent of all students (bothwithin each school and within certain ethnic oreconomic subgroups in a school) must take therequired tests for measuring adequate yearlyprogress. Thus, for example, “a 94% participationrate one year could be balanced by a 96% partici-pation rate the following or previous year”—a pro-cedure that, as the analysis correctly noted, would“bring only temporary relief.” One could make agood case that some of those changes, such as thelast two above, are reasonable accommodationsto school systems trying to meet complicated newrules. Nevertheless, one must also be struck by thefact that all of the changes are in the direction ofmaking the system more lenient—not in the direc-tion of making it more stringent.

55. Lynn Olson.

56. Allan Olson of the Northwest EvaluationAssociation, which provides test developmentand test analysis services for public school sys-tems, said in a December 22, 2004, telephoneinterview that he sees some evidence that this hasindeed been happening. His researchers have fre-quently found schools where students near thecut-score level have been making disproportion-ately fast academic progress. Students who arejust slightly below that level turn out to be pro-gressing faster than would ordinarily be expected,while those who are far above or far below it areprogressing more slowly than would ordinarily beexpected. He has asked a research team to studythis phenomenon in more detail and expects itsfindings to be complete in the spring of 2005.Olson said that he worries that NCLB’s account-ability model is too simplistic; he would prefer “amodel rich with information from across the fullspectrum of abilities, not just about children clus-tered around the cut-score point.” In his view, thecurrent rules force states to use tests that are justat grade level, which makes it harder for them “todo a good job of testing children who are wellabove or well below grade level.” He would like tosee more detailed measuring systems, includingmeasures of individual children’s academicgrowth: “Simply moving children above the line isnot an adequate indicator.” A useful discussion ofthe problem may be found in John Cronin, How

Strong Is the Incentive for Educators to Game theAdequate Yearly Progress Requirements of the No ChildLeft Behind Act? Northwest Evaluation Associ-ation, September 2003. See especially p. 4:“Imagine a track coach is assigned a group of 100athletes who will compete in the high jump. Thehigh jumping ability of each of these athletes iswidely varied but known. Forty-five of the athletescan currently jump proficiently; which is definedas high jumping five feet. The coach is told thatshe will receive $1,000 for every additional stu-dent that jumps five feet after a four-week train-ing period (if coaches only lived in such a world).The coach will also be docked $1,000 for everystudent currently jumping five feet who fails tojump five feet on the test. If coaches wanted tomanage or ‘game’ this system to maximize theirincome, what would they do? First they wouldfind all the athletes who jump near five feet, eitherjust above five feet or just below. Then they wouldcoach those athletes feverishly to assure as manyof them as possible jump above five feet at the endof the training period. In the meantime, rationalcoaches would give the seven-foot high jumpersin this group four weeks off because they aremore likely to get injured practicing than they areto lose two feet on their jump. They would alsospend little time with the three-foot high jumpersbecause their prospects for jumping five feet with-in four weeks are poor. In short, the best strategiesfor our coaches is to game the system by focusingtheir energies on the small number of highjumpers who have the best immediate prospectsfor improving to five feet. We can only hope thatcoaches are more altruistic than rational, becauseonly an altruist would put her full energies intoensuring all these athletes receive the coachingthey deserve.”

57. Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker,“Celebrated School Accused of Cheating,” DallasMorning News, January 12, 2005.

58. Joshua Benton, “Cheating Allegations GoBack to 2003,” Dallas Morning News, December 30,2004, http://www.educationnext.org/20041/68.html.

59. Brian A. Jacob and Steven D. Levitt found asimilar proportion (3 to 6 percent of classroomsin Chicago’s public schools) in their study “ToCatch a Cheat,” Education Next, Winter 2004.

60. Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, “Texas Takes Aimat Tainted Testing Program,” Education Week,January 19, 2005, p. 1.

61. Telephone interview with John Chubb,January 5, 2005. At the same time, Chubb stressedthat he thinks NCLB “has the potential [hisemphasis] to be the most important new educa-

24

tion policy in the United States since Brown v.Board of Education.”

62. For example, see the section of theDepartment of Education’s website “NCLB IsMaking a Difference,” which provides about apage of carefully selected reports from each state,designed to convey the impression that thestatute is an unmixed success. The first item list-ed is the amount by which federal educationfunding for that state has increased under theBush administration. No critical comment is pro-vided on the states’ distortions of informationabout matters such as graduation rates, unsafeschools, and confidence intervals. See http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/importance/difference/index.html.

63. Telephone interview with John Chubb.

64. Interview with Matthew Ladner, December14, 2004. Ladner also noted that parents don’tlike to hear that their own school or school dis-trict is failing, even if they have a low opinion ofgovernment schools in general; for one thing theyoften have an investment in a house the resalevalue of which is partly dependent on the localschools’ reputation.

65. Hoxby.

66. Quoted in Paul A. Gigot, “Teddy Takes Georgeto School: Bush’s Education Plan Is PotemkinReform,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2001, A14.

67. Erik W. Robelen, “ESEA to Boost Federal Role

in Education,” Education Week, January 9, 2002, p. 1.

68. Martin R. West, and Paul E. Peterson, “ThePolitics and Practice of Accountability,” in No ChildLeft Behind? The Politics and Practice of Accountability(Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2003),p. 12.

69. For examples of how state departments ofeducation have traditionally misused or misre-ported test data, see “Education Official SaysAchievement Tests Paint Unrealistic Picture,”Associated Press, February 9, 1988. In the mid-1980s, a number of states succeeded in creatingthe false impression that they had actually enact-ed merit pay for teachers; see Lawrence A. Uzzell,“Where Is the ‘Merit’ in New Merit-Pay Plans?”Education Week, September 14, 1983.

70. See, for example, Cato Handbook for Congress:Policy Recommendations for the 108th Congress(Washington: Cato Institute, January 2003), pp.295–303; Paul E. Peterson, “Little Gain in StudentAchievement,” in Our Schools and Our Future: AreWe Still at Risk? (Palo Alto: Hoover Institution,2003); Uzzell, “Contradictions of CentralizedEducation”; Frank Armbruster, Our Children’sCrippled Future (New York: Quadrangle/New YorkTimes, 1977); and Paul Copperman, The LiteracyHoax: The Decline of Reading, Writing and Learning inthe Public Schools and What We Can Do about It (NewYork: William Morrow, 1978).

71. John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, Politics,Markets, and America’s Schools (Washington: Brook-ings Institution Press, 1990), p. 217.

25

OTHER STUDIES IN THE POLICY ANALYSIS SERIES

543. The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spendersby Stephen Slivinski (May 3, 2005)

542. Corruption in the Public Schools: The Market Is the Answer by Neal McCluskey (April 14, 2005)

541. Flying the Unfriendly Skies: Defending against the Threat of Shoulder-Fired Missiles by Chalres V. Peña (April 19, 2005)

540. The Affirmative Action Myth by Marie Gryphon (April 6, 2005)

539. $400 Billion Defense Budget Unnecessary to Fight War on Terrorism by Charles V. Peña (March 28, 2005)

538. Liberating the Roads: Reforming U.S. Highway Policy by Gabriel Roth (March 17, 2005)

537. Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2004 by Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski (March 1, 2005)

536. Options for Tax Reform by Chris Edwards (February 24, 2005)

535. Robin Hood in Reverse: The Case against Economic Development Takings by Ilya Somin (February 22, 2005)

534. Peer-to-Peer Networking and Digital Rights Management: How Market Tools Can Solve Copyright Problems by Michael A. Einhorn and Bill Rosenblatt (February 17, 2005)

533. Who Killed Telecom? Why the Official Story Is Wrong by Lawrence Gasman (February 7, 2005)

532. Health Care in a Free Society: Rebutting the Myths of National HealthInsurance by John C. Goodman (January 27, 2005)

531. Making College More Expensive: The Unintended Consequences ofFederal Tuition Aid by Gary Wolfram (January 25, 2005)

530. Rethinking Electricity Restructuring by Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor(November 30, 2004)

529. Implementing Welfare Reform: A State Report Card by Jenifer Zeigler (October 19, 2004)

528. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Housing Finance: Why True Privatization Is Good Public Policy by Lawrence J. White (October 7, 2004)

527. Health Care Regulation: A $169 Billion Hidden Tax by Christopher J. Conover (October 4, 2004)

526. Iraq’s Odious Debts by Patricia Adams (September 28, 2004)

525. When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy by Ilya Somin (September 22, 2004)

524. Three Myths about Voter Turnout in the United States by John Samples (September 14, 2004)

523. How to Reduce the Cost of Federal Pension Insurance by Richard A. Ippolito (August 24, 2004)

522. Budget Reforms to Solve New York City’s High-Tax Crisis by Raymond J. Keating (August 17, 2004)

521. Drug Reimportation: The Free Market Solution by Roger Pilon (August 4, 2004)

520. Understanding Privacy—And the Real Threats to It by Jim Harper (August 4, 2004)

519. Nuclear Deterrence, Preventive War, and Counterproliferation by Jeffrey Record (July 8, 2004)

518. A Lesson in Waste: Where Does All the Federal Education Money Go?by Neal McCluskey (July 7, 2004)

517. Deficits, Interest Rates, and Taxes: Myths and Realities by Alan Reynolds (June 29, 2004)

516. European Union Defense Policy: An American Perspective by Leslie S. Lebl (June 24, 2004)

515. Downsizing the Federal Government by Chris Edwards (June 2, 2004)

514. Can Tort Reform and Federalism Coexist? by Michael I. Krauss and RobertA. Levy (April 14, 2004)

513. South Africa’s War against Malaria: Lessons for the Developing Worldby Richard Tren and Roger Bate (March 25, 2004)

512. The Syria Accountability Act: Taking the Wrong Road to Damascus by Claude Salhani (March 18, 2004)

511. Education and Indoctrination in the Muslim World: Is There a Problem? What Can We Do about It? by Andrew Coulson (March 11, 2004)

510. Restoring the U.S. House of Representatives: A Skeptical Look at CurrentProposals by Ronald Keith Gaddie (February 17, 2004)

509. Mrs. Clinton Has Entered the Race: The 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidates’ Proposals to Reform Health Insurance by Michael F. Cannon(February 5, 2004)

508. Compulsory Licensing vs. the Three “Golden Oldies”: Property Rights, Contracts, and Markets by Robert P. Merges (January 15, 2004)

507. “Net Neutrality”: Digital Discrimination or Regulatory Gamesmanshipin Cyberspace? by Adam D. Thierer (January 12, 2004)

506. Cleaning Up New York States’s Budget Mess by Raymond J. Keating(January 7, 2004)

505. Can Iraq Be Democratic? by Patrick Basham (January 5, 2004)

504. The High Costs of Federal Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential Appliances by Ronald J. Sutherland (December 23, 2003)

503. Deployed in the U.S.A.: The Creeping Militarization of the Home Frontby Gene Healy (December 17, 2003)

502. Iraq: The Wrong War by Charles V. Peña (December 15, 2003)

501. Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking by Radley Balko (December 5, 2003)

500. The Failures of Taxpayer Financing of Presidential Campaigns by John Samples (November 25, 2003)

499. Mini-Nukes and Preemptive Policy: A Dangerous Combination by Charles V. Peña (November 19, 2003)

498. Public and Private Rule Making in Securities Markets by Paul G. Mahoney(November 13, 2003)

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