No Demagogue Left Behind

...Look, for example, at how the NEA explains its highly publicized claim that the Bush administration has "left behind 3.8 million English language learners": "Full funding estimate is based on restoring the peak level of support per limited-English-proficient student as was funded under the antecedent program...

...Instead, they fret that current education spending is not adequate to cover the costs of instruction...

...But the additional nearly $9 billion Bush has poured into the system suggests that he is not starving the public schools in an "unprecedented manner," as has been alleged...

...Now he will be able to say that the administration has gone soft on even the law's most basic components...

...But they were immediately undercut when Paige and assistant secretary Raymond Simon began announcing a series of rewrites of the more controversial provisions of the No Child Left Behind law—each of which brought the legislation into line with an NEA demand...

...The group has never endorsed a Republican for president...

...Michelangelo is famously reported to have said that a good block of marble has a sculpture inside it, waiting to be revealed...

...But the teachers' union hated the provision—it threatened their own—and now that it has been successfully dispatched, they can claim sway over the administration, and boast of a conquest that will stiffen their future demands...

...The allegation that No Child Left Behind is an unfunded mandate is total nonsense, says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation...

...It turns out to be the same sleight of hand that has been used for the last 40 years—ever since the invention of the "federal education initiative...

...In this sense, No Child Left Behind is a blunt instrument: A school where only a single subgroup—say, the non-native speakers of English—is failing to reach proficiency is lumped under the heading "needs improvement" alongside a school where 18 out of 20 subgroups of students are failing...

...And since the tutoring, voucher, and "reorganization" components won't take effect until next year at the earliest for most schools, that left plenty of time for stories to appear in the media about schools, like Lan-gley, that had always done well on state assessments but were suddenly failing to meet the new Bush standards...

...Now, test results are broken down by sex, race, income, limited English proficiency, and special-education status...

...Here's how it works: There's a certain amount of education spending already on the books...

...For the first time ever, Republicans outpolled the Democrats on education...

...Which, when you think about it, isn't the least bit surprising...

...The administration has, however, opened the door to accountability with the "sunshine provisions" of No Child Left Behind...

...His administration's huge increases in education spending should dispel Kerry's "unfunded mandate" charge...

...According to the General Accounting Office, states will have to add, on average, eight or nine tests to their existing programs, for an additional cost of about $442 million in 2003, or roughly $9 per student...

...Faced with complaints that the "highly qualified teacher" rule was unduly burdensome, Bush's Department of Education was in a classic "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation...

...No Child Left Behind requires annual testing for math and reading in grades 3 through 8, and one more round of testing in grade 10, 11, or 12...

...But taken together, they could signal that Bush has decided to stand down and move into damage-control mode...

...Since schools don't even begin to feel consequences until they have failed for at least two years in a row, a fluke year should cause no trouble...

...And, more controversially, it applies stricter controls to the way the tests are administered, and how the data obtained are processed...

...What's more, a few schools have received "needs improvement" ratings solely because of attendance...

...It could be that No Child Left Behind costs, say, 43 percent more than existing federal requirements and therefore leaves states to go begging...

...The Department of Education's current appropriation for state assessments is $391 million—in addition to funding for half the tests already required but not implemented...

...The Bush reforms alone will account for fewer than half the total new tests...

...But many education experts question his conclusions, citing the lack of correlation between spending and educational achievement...

...When I was a school superintendent, the principals always wanted more money...

...Senator John Kerry was among the 47 Democratic senators who voted for No Child Left Behind...

...More than 1,000 pages long, No Child Left Behind lays out a scheme for educational improvement with a 12-year horizon...

...And, if the president gets the urge to be a real revolutionary, he can have a go at explaining that the problem isn't a lack of spending on schools...

...The president comes along with a series of reforms, some of which will make old programs redundant...

...In order to meet the law's requirements and avoid a "needs improvement" label (No Child Left Behind does not use the label "failing school"), each subgroup must show proficiency in reading and math, or make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward that goal...

...It is too soon to know whether No Child Left Behind will eventually cause any more kids to learn how to read...

...Taken individually, these may be sensible tweaks to an enormously complicated law...

...And many schools do...

...Achieving proficiency might be expensive," Finn concedes, "but the actual activities mandated in NCLB are fully funded...

...23, Paige called the NEA a "terrorist organization," a choice of words he later conceded was "inappropriate" and for which he was "truly sorry...

...Kennedy, for one, has consistently lauded the provision as among the best features of No Child Left Behind...

...While it is hard to see how "teaching to the test" detracts from class time if the ability to read and do math is what is being tested, this complaint has long been an NEA staple, and isn't likely to vanish, even under the force of logic...

...But this number, write James Peyser and Robert Costrell in Education NEXT magazine, includes tests that were required under previous law but never implemented...

...Starting with the maximum amount ever allotted to particular English instruction programs, the NEA figures out how many hypothetical immigrants that old hypothetical level of funding would cover, and then publicizes the resulting figure regardless of the situation in actual classrooms...

...This is not, by itself, evidence that the Bush reforms are fully funded...

...But that's tough to explain when someone is asking why a particular literacy program for rural schools has to go...

...Nonetheless, officials at Langley High School in prosperous Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, grumbled when they were told they needed improvement after attendance shortfalls among the relatively small minority population of the school showed up in their test results...

...Education Secretary Rod Paige is beginning to follow suggestions from the Association...

...But when "state and local districts started feeling the pinch" of the No Child Left Behind requirements, says Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Kennedy, Bush's ratings went down...

...But today he regularly elicits raucous applause from sympathetic crowds by bashing it—and Bush...

...Secretary Paige has said that he is considering further changes to the requirement that schools have 95 percent attendance on test day, and he has hinted at other modifications to come...

...After taking credit for Paige's other recent decisions to relax regulations governing the treatment of special-education students and non-native English speakers in compliance deadlines, the NEA's statement sets to work lobbying for future reforms: "Of course, much more needs to be done," it goes on, and then outlines a four-point plan for future changes, studded with the words "flexibility," "out-dated," and "workable...

...By looking more closely at subgroups of kids for the first time, the Bush reform gets to the heart of the matter—student performance...

...But Kennedy and Kerry don't complain primarily about the costs of testing...

...Still, two-thirds of fourth graders cannot read at grade level, and 88 percent of African-American and 85 percent of Hispanic students can't read proficiently, according to figures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress analyzed by Lewis Solomon, an economist at the Milken Family Foundation...

...Even as the NEA crows over its successes in press releases and letters to the editor, other education advocacy groups, typically those representing racial minorities and kids with ^^ disabilities, lament that No Child Left Behind shows signs of going the way of previous education initiatives—lots of money spent for feeble results and less accountability...

...But these are precisely the provisions that justify the sappy name of the law: No Child Left Behind...

...He was reading to school children, remember, when he heard about the attacks on September 11...

...In the past the smallest data unit was the school...

...But just how far below the surface does the status quo lie...

...But the law's numerous testing requirements, tight compliance deadlines, and consequences for schools that fail to measure up—extra tutoring, then vouchers, then "reorganization"—are making beneficiaries of the status quo nervous even before many of the requirements kick in...

...Is No Child Left Behind really just a reauthorization of preexisting federal education programs, with tougher rhetoric, a few more tests, and a lot more cash...

...Not No School Left Behind, or No Teacher Left Behind (though the NEA did issue a release announcing that "15,000 teachers have been left behind...

...The law requires more tests than any previous effort to improve education...

...As long as Bush accepts the NEA's premise that insufficient funding causes sub-par academic performance, Kerry (and Democrats) will retain the high ground on education, because they will always be willing to say they will spend more...

...Mathis's numbers have gained currency in the debate...

...Fact: Federal spending on elementary and secondary education in the category known as Title I has increased by 41 percent since 2001, bringing overall federal education spending to more than $35 billion...

...On February Katherine Mangu-Ward i^ a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...A provision requiring that at least 95 percent of every subgroup be present on testing day was included in the law to make sure that schools didn't encourage underperformers to skip the test...

...Bush would do well to take a page out of Simon's book when he faces Kerry in debate...

...And there's a lot to fight about...

...But the NEA was already rumbling its disapproval, and a short three weeks later, the odd couple's honeymoon was over...

...The most recent alteration—the one that occasioned the triumphant press release quoted above—was a revision of the "highly qualified teacher" rule, which requires teachers to have a bachelor's degree or the equivalent in every subject they teach...

...Teachers who cover multiple subjects are also given a break...

...But it does reveal who is learning and who isn't, and it places kids who fall behind on track to receive extra help...

...As for objections to the new, more stringent testing requirements, all Bush has to do is look Kerry in the eye and ask: "So, just how many Hispanic fourth graders don't need to learn to read proficiently...

...Nevertheless, Bush should be on a strong footing when he is questioned about funding and accountability...

...For one shining moment, Bush was the education president...

...An unfunded mandate is a requirement from Washington that the states do something—a requirement not accompanied by funding from Washington to pay for it...

...When Kerry and Kennedy brandish the word "unfunded," you can be sure that what's happening is a sleight of hand...

...When the next budget comes out, it shows funding for those old programs "slashed," as opponents invariably complain...

...Though the federal government is only a bit player in the financing of education—it has never covered more than 8 percent of the cost of K-12 education, the rest being provided by the states and localities—Kennedy is concerned that if "valuable class time will be taken up teaching to the test," Uncle Sam owes the states more...

...Kerry denounces the law as an "unfunded mandate," echoing the battle cry taken up by his colleague from Massachusetts, Kennedy, just a little over three weeks after both of them voted for the bill...

...These are valuable achievements Bush can claim when he faces Kerry—if he doesn't oblige the NEA with any further retreat...

...When today's first-graders graduate, we'll know whether it worked...

...William J. Mathis, a school superintendent and education finance professor in Vermont, reviewed cost estimates drawn up by 18 states and reported in the Phi Delta Kap-pan that public spending needs to increase between 20 percent and 35 percent to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind, an extra $85 billion to $150 billion a year...

...When I was director of education for the state of Arkansas, the superintendents always wanted more money...

...These are the law's biggest innovations: the requirement that testing data be broken down by subgroup within each school's population, and that every group of students demonstrate proficiency...

...Thus, the Bush reform requires 17 tests over the course of a public education where previous federal law required only 6. That might seem like a lot of tests, but when No Child Left Behind went into effect, five states already met or exceeded this requirement...

...In fact, several leading Democrats reportedly voted for No Child Left Behind only after expressing the belief that the accountability provisions would go the way of the dodo, as did similar aspects of comprehensive school reform, national board certification, and other bygone waves of high-minded innovation, while the money would keep flowing...

...The requirements were hardly excessive to begin with—there were several options for alternative certification for experienced teachers—but they are now more "flexible," says Paige...

...The NEA, along with its political action committee, had donated $2.8 million to Democrats in the last presidential election cycle...

...Of course, the reason is that the old program wasn't working...

...In the end, though, no amount of testing will make a difference if the results of the tests aren't used to hold someone accountable for failure...

...Since the "unfunded mandate" argument is the most common criticism lobbed at Bush, it deserves a closer look...

...Which brings us to the second most common objection to No Child Left Behind...

...We should certainly be able to educate 30 kids for that amount...

...As Rick Hess, education analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it: "If we are spending more than $300,000 to educate a classroom full of kids, and still not getting results, the problem is not that there is too little money...

...All that Bush's critics in the education establishment have to do is chip away at the special features of his plan until there's nothing left but the status quo underneath...

...A headline last week read: "Montana's Top Teacher Not Good Enough" after that state's Teacher of the Year failed to meet the "highly qualified" standard in biology, chemistry, and physics—all of which he teaches to middle schoolers...

...In the nearly four decades he has been involved with public education, he told the Washington Post, "nobody has ever had enough money...

...The NEA seems convinced that inside No Child Left Behind lurk the same old federal-aid-to-education programs they're used to, but with more money attached...

...Rather than calculating how much the stated goals of No Child Left Behind would cost, and then subtracting from allocated funds to discover if there is a shortfall, the NEA works backwards...

...While publicly castigating NEA for what he called 'obstructionist scare tactics,' U.S...

...One person with little patience for the "unfunded mandate" claim is Raymond Simon, the man in charge of implementing No Child Left Behind at the Education Department...

...Senator Edward Kennedy and Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, stood by, beaming with semi-forced smiles, while Bush signed the bipartisan bill...

...And the administration, says Finn, has "no stomach" for punishing individuals...

...Still, insisted Paige, the "NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children...

...The White House was eager to have George W. Bush and Sandra Feldman embrace," says a Kennedy spokesman, "and they did...

...When Bush's No Child Left Behind gathered steam in the fall of 2001, something miraculous happened...

...As a result, it's impossible to tell yet whether or not it is succeeding...

...Clearly, the ground on [No Child Left Behind] has shifted," said a statement released by the national teachers' union last week...

...They point to, among dozens of other examples, the District of Columbia public schools, which spend more than $13,000 per child (the national average is just under $8,000), yet consistently show among the lowest scores in the country...

...So the critics are agitating for modifications, and they've had some help from Secretary Paige...

...By signing the No Child Left Behind Act and then breaking his promise by not giving schools the resources to help meet new standards," says Kerry, "George Bush has undermined public education...

...From the day it became law—^January 8, 2002—Bush's education initiative promised trouble...

...In 2007, states will have to add science tests at three grade levels...

...Strong words...

...At this point those activities are almost entirely testing...

...New teachers at rural schools will be given an extra three years to comply, and current teachers will have until March 2007...