The No Child Left Behind Act: Education Suffering Under the Weight of Bureaucracy

The problems that plague the American educational system are far too numerous and far too complex to completely address in this article. Rather, we will take a brief look at No Child Left Behind, its failings, and some new proposals that may help to improve the deteriorating situation in our public schools. As a few of you may know, my wife Allison is a third-grade teacher in a public school in Maryland. She has been at the same school for nine years and she is entirely devoted on a personal level to the process of teaching. She is great at what she does. I have been in attendance when she has received awards and when parents of developmentally-disabled students have showered her with gratitude through tear-filled eyes. In short, she loves teaching kids, especially the ones that may not be the best or the brightest – the ones that really need a good teacher. But she hates the bureaucratic burdens that have been thrust upon all public school teachers by the No Child Left Behind legislation. And although she acknowledges the good intentions behind the most basic premise of the legislation – that all children in America’s public education system meet certain educational performance standards – she is unwaveringly opposed to it and certain that it is hurting her students.

Allison is quick to blame George W. Bush for the failure of No Child Left Behind and he’s a pretty logical target, considering it was his administration’s proposal to begin with. And the Bush Administration has certainly proven to be less than adept at forward-thinking strategy implementation. But in fairness to the beleaguered president, he is probably not worthy of much blame in this instance. The original NCLB proposal sent to Congress was one of relative simplicity, giving more control to the states and pulling back the myriad federal funding programs, requirements, and regulations that had bogged down the American educational system for over four decades. The 1100-plus page NCLB bill that emerged from congressional debate bore little resemblance to the original 31-page blueprint submitted by Bush. But regardless of who in Congress is to blame for fundamentally altering the core intentions of the original proposal, there is little question that NCLB has been ineffective at its best – and an abysmal failure at its worst.

There is a very informative piece from The Heritage Foundation that discusses not only No Child Left Behind, its origins, and its predecessors, but also new ideas that are emerging under a plan known as The Charter State Option. The article assesses the effectiveness of NCLB as follows:

After five years and a spending increase of nearly $6 billion, the NCLB highlights the limits and challenges of federal involvement in education. American students are not on track to meet the law’s proficiency goals, and the NCLB has failed to accomplish two of the core objectives of President Bush’s original blueprint for education reform: significantly increasing state and local flexibility and substantially expanding parental choice options.

And while that is a relatively scathing review of the ultimate effectiveness of NCLB, the overall trend is that public schools are performing at roughly the same level they have been since the 1970s. So while NCLB didn’t do anything to improve the situation, it didn’t really hurt all that much either. The American educational system has essentially been stagnant for the last four decades.

The one constant during this extended era of minimal improvement has been the complex and far-reaching influence of the federal government on how children are educated in America’s schools. The current system of yearly standardized testing from third through eighth grade creates an extremely rigid curriculum that is geared entirely toward preparation for ill-conceived standardized tests. America is not a homogenous society and it is far more diverse in every aspect than most of the countries that we currently envy in terms of educational proficiency. As a result, every test administered in this country is going to be culturally biased for or against various groups. We’re using the term “culturally biased” here to illustrate the point, but it could be a matter of ethnicity, socio-economic status, language, or simple geography. Tests created to measure national standards are simply unable to effectively measure the success or failure of teachers and students that are as diverse as the neighborhoods they live in. Standardized testing on a national level may have been applicable and effective in the early 20th century and perhaps as late as the 1950s. But an overdue focus on human and civil rights in this country have exposed the glaring weaknesses with that approach since at least the 1960s.

In order to help break away from the federal stronghold on education and introduce some diversity and creativity into the nation’s approach to education, a plan was introduced in the 1990s by Bill Goodman (R-PA). His plan was known as the Academic Achievement for All Act (They really love to make these “acts” sound noble, don’t they?) and one of its primary components was allowing states to enter into a type of contractual agreement with the federal government, whereby states would be required to meet agreed-upon terms with the federal government in exchange for a single source of funding, to be allocated at the discretion of the states and local jurisdictions.

In late 1999, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida explained the potential benefits of a new approach using Florida’s real-world situation to illustrate his points:

Though the federal contribution to education in Florida is small, only about 7 percent of total spending, it takes more than 40 percent of the state’s education staff to oversee and administer federal dollars. In fact, in Florida, six times as many people are required to administer a federal education dollar as are required by a state dollar. And how much learning has the federal government achieved through these expenditures? No one knows.

Imagine what our states could do if we could spend more of our time and energy working to improve student achievement, rather than tediously complying with a dizzying array of federal rules. At the very least, the federal government should stop creating barriers for states that are taking new educational approaches.

Before this starts sounding too political (but he’s quoting The Heritage Foundation, for the love of insert deity here), let me state unequivocally that I am currently as independent as independent can be when it comes to my political leanings. In fact, that’s probably my point here more than anything else – let’s strip away the top and most burdensome layer of bureaucracy that is currently suffocating our educational system. Of course there should be significant educational funding from the federal level, but the federal government should not be micro-managing its allocation in areas such as curriculum development and teacher performance metrics. No Child Left Behind should itself be left behind as we start to look for more realistic ways to improve America’s public education system. It is not going to happen overnight and simple testing mandates and demands are not going to make any difference. The current system is fundamentally flawed and there are certainly numerous better ways to approach the problems that exist. But until the federal government cedes control of public education funding and directives to administrators at the state and local levels, the current level of performance is probably the best we can do.
We’ll revisit NCLB and related educational issues in the near future…

Tags: education, education jobs, education reform, no child left behind, teachers

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