Left Behind? Try a Slower Pace

The semester’s grades may not be out just yet, but for our nation’s public schools, report cards are looking somewhat dismal. This year, according to newly released state-by-state data, the number of schools failing to reach testing targets under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was far greater than in any other year. Indeed, children are getting left behind, but not because they’re slow. It’s because the NCLB school bus is trying to go 70 miles per hour in the suburbs.

The original NCLB legislation had the lofty goal of bringing every student to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. While the ambition of lawmakers was admirable, the goal of reaching universal proficiency in less than a generation is patently absurd—especially when many states began with less than 15 percent proficiency rates. Rather than penalize schools now for the legislation’s lack of foresight, Congress should have revised expectations downward when the act came up for renewal in 2007.

The reason that this year has seen so many schools fail to meet federal standards is that state requirements were very poorly structured under NCLB. About half of the states had anticipated a huge struggle in immediately meeting federally mandated standards, so they chose plans that would start with lower standards and ramp up in subsequent years. California, for example, required only modest proficiency gains of 2.2 percent a year from 2001 until last year, when required percentage increases leapt up to 11 percent a year. The California state superintendent admitted he hoped that Congress would soften the federal law when it came up for reauthorization in 2007.

But the law wasn’t softened, and the huge increases now required mean that many schools which have had solid records of improving test scores over the past six years have been put on probation and are threatened with losing funding if they continue to fall short of these unreasonable standards.

Worse, the law affects each state differently and punishes those with rigorous exams. In a nod to states’ rights, the law was written to allow each state to set its own testing standards. As a result, states with relatively easy proficiency tests, such as Wisconsin or Mississippi, had few schools that failed to meet testing standards. States that were hardest hit were those with difficult proficiency tests, like South Carolina, where 83 percent of schools failed to meet their targets. The sharp disparity provides further proof that a nationwide benchmark of total proficiency by 2014 is an unworkable deadline.

Beyond the inconsistencies and idiocies of the testing regime, schools are also having a hard time reaching mandated proficiency standards because No Child Left Behind still suffers from severe underfunding. While it’s true that funding for the act increased at a rate five percent above inflation from 2001 to 2007, the Senate and the White House repeatedly requested less money than they were authorized to pay for some of NCLB’s provisions. In addition, compliance with some of the act’s provisions, such as improving the quality of teachers, requires extra money that the government has not provided. Without the money necessary to attract capable teachers and administrators or pay for textbooks or classroom aids, even more modest proficiency goals may exceed the grasp of many struggling schools.

Though the intense recession has threatened the amount of funding available to public services, it is still vital that we support our school system. The proper training of our nation’s youth will safeguard our future and provide a bulwark of human capital against future economic downturns. The money we spend today on education will pay dividends over a lifetime.