Reviewed by Kenneth J. Bernstein April 23, 2007 This volume is one of the series known as the Peter Lang Primers in Education, which are intended to provide brief and concise introductions or supplements to specific topics in education. The volume was timely in its publication on an issue of major importance in education. No Child Left Behind, originally signed into law in January 8, 2002, is the current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the first version of which became law as part of the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration in 1965. It is up for reauthorization this year (2007). It has been a subject of great deal of controversy, with both strong advocates and equally strong opponents of many of the provisions of the law. One unfortunate part of the discourse about the act has been the lack of understanding of the specifics of the act. For example, one will often read that the measurement of the progress made by schools in moving students towards proficiency in the assessed areas of reading and mathematics is Annual Yearly Progress whereas the technical term is Adequate Yearly Progress. While this may seem like a trivial matter, it is unfortunately indicative of the lack of understanding of much of the detail of the Act. The authors are both well-known in the field of education policy. Petrilli in fact served in the Education Department of the current administration, where he helped coordinate a number of the more controversial parts of the legislation, such as alternative teacher certification, public school choice, and supplemental services provisions. He is now a Vice President for National Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, whose president, Chester B. Finn, Jr., served in the Department of Education in the administration of the first President Bush. Frederick M. Hess is at American Enterprise Institute, where is a resident scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies. Some readers may therefore have a concern whether the authors’ affiliations with organizations on one side of the various educational dispute have prepared a volume that would therefore be unbalanced. In general they have not: the book is by and large a dispassionate and fair examination of the history of the creation of the legislation, the provisions of the law, and the responses in the larger educational community to issues and concerns either addressed or created by the provisions of the law. It would be fair to say, however, that the authors do not fully present some important concerns of critics, and in general write as if the intent of the law was beneficial. Despite these cautions, the book is, in general, a useful general explanation of many of the important features of and issue about NCLB. The authors make clear their intent for the volume in the Introduction: This volume considers the key elements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), how they are intended to work, how they are being implemented, and the law’s prospects. We do not attempt to assess the merits of NCLB, to evaluate whether the law has been “successful,” or to provide recommendations. This book is for people who want to understand the law, not for people who are seeking a defense, a critique, or an evaluation. They conclude that introduction with the following words on p.2: Whether NCLB is a “good law” and whether it is working as intended are questions about which reasonable observers will disagree. Our aim is explain the law more fully, outline its features, and explain its implementation so that you, the reader, can reach your own verdict. A fair reading of this work is that the authors tilt towards answering the first question in the affirmative, and the presentation seems perhaps unintentionally to nudge the reader in that direction. They do not even implicitly answer the second question, although both authors participated in a recent public forum (November 30, 2006, at American Enterprise Institute, and co-convened by Hess) where when former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch summarized the day’s events that no one believed that any provision of the law was working as intended, neither gentleman raised an objection. (Note 1) One does not in reading the book detect any sense of their disappointment in the implementation of the law. No Child Left Behind is a complicated piece of legislation, with a history that might be equally convoluted. The authors do a balanced job of presenting both. The book has 5 chapters (pages of each in parentheses):
The first four chapters each conclude with a glossary of important terminology in easily accessible language, for example: Reauthorization – is the legislative process of renewing a program that is set to expire, sometimes with significant changes (p.26). In addition, the authors provide explanations of key technical terms in the margin of the text as they are first introduced. The is also an appendix entitled “The Many Programs of NCLB” which has five pages of charts detailing program names, Section of the Law in which each program is found, the purpose of the program, the type of program , and the FY 2005 authorization for funding (pp. 136-140). The work also provides extensive references: there are twelve pages of endnotes (pp. 141-152), with a total of 163 notes. These are distributed as follows: Chapter 1―32; Chapter 2―27; Chapter 3―58; Chapter 4―3; Chapter 5―35; Appendix―8. (Note: The references in the Appendix are in the nature of explication, rather than being citations of external sources). A wide range of opinions is represented among the sources cited. Thus one finds critics from both the “right” (Lawrence Uzzell of CATO Institute) and the “left” (Alfie Kohn and Nel Noddings). Looking at the distribution of notes among the chapters highlights something of importance: most of the public rhetoric about NCLB has been about the Testing, Accountability and Choice provisions of the law, yet the authors offer many more references about the Highly Qualified Teacher Provision. This provision is probably less well understood, and as the authors note about the requirement that all children be taught by such a teacher by the end of the 2005-2006 school year, While such a requirement may sound commonsensical, it amounted to an enormous expansion of the federal government’s involvement in education policies that had once be left to the states. (p. 63) The book lacks an index, which limits the ability of the
reader to use it as a reference. Writing an essay on a book like this presents a certain amount
of difficulty. First, there is no doubt that the authors are
knowledgeable about the subject. Second, they are in this slim
volume attempting a very difficult –if not impossible
– task: to help non-experts understand the details of a
very complicated law, and to fairly represent the differing
points of view about it. Both authors were supporters of the
idea of the intent of the legislation, Petrilli from within the
government and Hess from an outside entity. They are rightly
able to point at bi-partisan support for the intent of the
legislation, which as they note extended beyond so-called
“centrist” Democrats: …the highly qualified teacher language was championed by liberal Representative George Miller of California. The highest-ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Miller supported the NCLB assessment and accountability provisions but also believed that the federal government had to focus on teacher quality if schools were to have any chance of reaching the new expectations (p. 64). And yet ultimately there is something unsettling about the
book. It is not possible to determine how much of that is due to
the authors’ personal support of the intent of the
legislation. There are a number of occasions in which their
support is implicit, but what seems to missing is the complete
context of the opposing point of view. For example, in chapter
two, which addresses the contentious issues of testing and
accountability, we find the authors making a critical
statement: While many schools were “in need of improvement” under the old ESEA statute prior to 2001, few districts were so identified before the 2004-2005 school year. As a result, during 2005-2006 the implementation of this provision was just starting to take shape. It remains to be seen whether states are willing to take the decisive “corrective” actions in their failing district, how they will proceed, and how effective these efforts will be (p. 57). It is interesting that in a law which has among its other
provisions a requirement for using “scientifically based
research” the authors do not acknowledge the point of many
critics that the “corrective” actions specified in
the law totally lack any research base to their effectiveness.
Further, the entire basis of finding a school not making AYP has
been an area of much of the criticism of the law. When the
authors address this (pp. 33-44), it is within a context with
which not all would agree. This context, which the authors state
clearly just before the section on AYP, is key to understanding
the law, and also key to understanding the presentation of the
authors: Standards and assessments in and of themselves can shed light on educational performance but do not necessarily have consequences or lead to change. Making accountability consequential requires policymakers to link sanctions or rewards to results. This requires policymakers to first answer a few basic questions. How much student achievement is enough? Is the goal for students to reach a set bar or to make progress over time? Should attention be focused on the average performance of a school’s students or the performance of individual subgroups, like African-American or poor children? No Child Left Behind’s answer to these questions is a formula known as “adequate yearly progress.” (p.33) Further up on the same page the book notes the hope of the
laws authors that “public outcry over lackluster scores
will force schools to raise their sights and focus on students
who have been left behind.” Thus key to understanding
the intent of the law is this belief that potential punitive
sanctions will have the positive consequence of improving
education, and that the way to achieve this is by disaggregation
of scores by subgroups, and that a school be found not to meet
AYP if any subgroup fails to be making progress towards the
impossible goal of 100% proficiency in both Reading and Math by
2014. In fairness, the authors do mention this as one of four
key points critics raise about the bill (pp. 24-25.
Similarly, when detailed criticism is offered, it is often
only from one side of the educational spectrum. Thus in a
detailed discussion of “high objective uniform state
standard of evaluation” (HOUSSE), a key provision of the
Highly Qualified Teacher Provision as applied to experienced
teachers, we find references to the work of Terry Moe, who is
identified as a Stanford University Professor, and to the work of
the National Council on Teacher Quality. The authors do not
inform you that Moe is also a fellow of the Hoover Institute,
where he is on the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education and that
his position at Stanford is as a professor of Political Science,
not of education (http://www.hoover.org/bios/moe.html).
Similarly the reader is not informed that one can find statements
at NCTQ such as “In particular, schools must put an end to
the obsolete notion that teacher compensation, determined by a
uniform salary schedule, should be immune from market
forces.” (www.nctq.org/nctq/research/1144350920434.doc).
I am not arguing that
the particular points of views of the sources cited necessarily
disqualify them, but if the reader is made aware of such points
of view, and can also see the absence of expression on this issue
from those with a differing point of view, it may raise questions
as to the actual balance of the presentation, which can therefore
be somewhat disconcerting. Those knowledgeable about the players in educational
policy are likely to already be informed of the point of view of
such sources, but the casual reader seeking greater understanding
about the issue is likely to lack such prior knowledge. It is
even perhaps even more disturbing to read the blurb provided by
the publisher on an unnumbered page at the end of the
book:
Peter Lang Primers are designed to provide a brief and concise introduction or supplement to specific topics in education. Although sophisticated in content, these primers are written in an accessible style, making them perfect for undergraduate and graduate classroom use. The reference to Terry Moe is not the only instance of an incomplete identification of someone being cited as a source. Richard Colvin is described as “Professor” at Columbia University Teachers College. He is in fact the Director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media (www.tc.columbia.edu/hechinger/AboutUs.asp?ThemeId=4&Id=HechStaff), prior to which he was a journalist writing about education. His name is NOT listed among the faculty for Teachers College (www.tc.columbia.edu/abouttc/faculty.htm). Mr. Colvin’s observations would be valuable and worth knowing in the context in which they were presented were he properly identified as to his position, which is why it is disturbing that he is presented to the reader in a manner that at least is misleading. In the previous paragraphs I have highlighted some examples of how the book might be perceived as perhaps somewhat unbalanced in its presentation. And yet at the beginning I described the volume as in general a fair assessment and as a useful resource. The first chapter clearly demonstrates this. Many people who read about disagreements on NCLB have little awareness of the broader context from which it derives. This chapter provides a succinct summary of Federal education policy over the past half century. It rightly provides information about the failed efforts to advance a federal role in public schools beyond that of court-ordered desegregation during the Eisenhower administration. The authors remind us that during the 1950’s urban Democrats often advocated support for Catholic schools in their district while Republicans were strongly opposed to any Federal role. They explain the context for the first major federal intervention in the 1960’s, and give a fair evaluation of how the first version of ESEA was accomplished, quoting Ted Sizer as saying “ESEA was a political masterpiece, outside of its effect on education. Everybody had a finger in the pie.” (p.10) This specifically applied to how Title I funds could be used, as well as the fact that the vast majority of school districts in the nation received some Title I funds. The history of subsequent efforts of education reform are covered similarly – with dispatch, but with sufficient detail to illuminate the relevant history. Besides the various federal endeavors, including the ‘Sustaining Effects” studies of the 1970s, A Nation at Risk, and Goals 2000, they take time to ensure the reader understands the development of the idea of Charter schools in Minnesota in the 1990s. Thus the reader has access to a solid summary of the historic context from which the ideas for NCLB were derived. And the discussions of the negotiations that took place in the drafting of the bill are reasonably covered, although the negotiations are described largely in terms of the White House without naming individuals and the various Congressional figures on both sides of the Capitol and both political parties. Here one might perhaps have wanted to see some explanation of the roles played by key staff members Bush brought with him to Washington, especially given how heavily the original White House proposal was based on actions taken by Bush as Governor of Texas. While current Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is named as providing recent flexibility in the regulations implementing NCLB, no mention is made of the role played by Sandy Kress, whom many view as having played the most significant role on behalf of the White House, and who has become a somewhat controversial figure because of his representation of clients who seemingly benefit from the law. This however is a minor omission, one that perhaps is of interest to those intimately involved with the details of educational policy and the players, and its omission from a book aimed at a more general audience is not significant. In Chapter 2, which deals with those portions of the law of which the public seems most aware and are therefore most contentious, the authors do a thorough job of pointing out some of the limits of the reach of the law, although they do occasionally leave some obvious conclusions unstated, leaving it to the reader to recognize the implications of what has just been read. Thus in discussing charter schools they note that not only are “new” schools nut subject to AYP calculations until they have two years of achievement data, but also because of their size benefit from the subgroups size requirements – they will have to report data on only a few subgroups. It might help if the authors made clear that this presents a very unlevel playing field tilted in the direction of charters as compared to regular public schools, although the careful reader should be able to draw the conclusion. Similarly, the extensive discussion of public school choice provides the context of public school choice that existed in many cities before implementation of NCLB, which is a fair statement. It also reminds readers that lack of capacity of receiving schools is not considered an acceptable reason for school systems to fail to provide choice, and points at the provision of schools being required to provide a portion of Title I funds for transportation to enable choice. But nowhere do the authors point out that any funds expended on transportation to facilitate choice are funds that are potentially subtracted from those available for instructional purposes. And while the authors rightly point out the reluctance of principals at receiving schools to accept transferring students for fear of lowering the receiving school’s test scores – something that leads to principals underestimating available space in an attempt to discourage such transfers, the authors do not address one major flaw of the transfer portion of the legislation. The parents of any students at a “failing” school is entitled to request a transfer of their children, even if those students are scoring at the highest level of proficiency. One could fairly say that this is a serious flaw in the legislation – removal of such students is (a) not something that necessarily will lead to better learning on the part of the sending school, and (b) will inevitably result in lower overall scores for the sending school, having lost higher scoring students, potentially resulting in a cycle that looks remarkably like an unbreakable death spiral of continued loss of higher scoring students and of the funds that go with them, including potentially the funds required to transport them to the receiving school. Like many other provisions of NCLB, this transfer process is not buttressed by any preexisting evidence as to its efficacy. The authors touch on this indirectly: NCLB, for the first time, sought to explicitly link public school choice to the goal of improving student achievement. Rather than an escape hatch for a few disgruntled parents, NCLB-style choice is intended to be a systemic solution to a structural problem. Whether it will have the hoped-for effect remains an open question. (p. 47) Hess and Petrilli argue that the fears of some critics of
schools choice that it will lead to social stratification, racial
segregation and a reduced commitment to public education are not
as yet proven with respect to public school choice, although they
acknowledge some validity to the concern with respect to charter
schools and vouchers. What is interesting is that provide an
endnoted reference to the concerns of critics (who are not
identified in the text) but provide no evidence in the text for
their assertions of what they describe as those concerns
“have been relatively muted with regard to the NCLB public
choice provision and public choice programs in general”
(p.49) – the reader simply has to accept their assertion
that such is the case. One would think that two experts with
their knowledge of the literature would easily be able to provide
a citation, even if in an endnote, to support these assertions,
particular in a book where the authors assert that they want to
provide the information to allow the reader to reach his own
conclusions about NCLB. It is tempting to continue through the book, examining what
the authors do well, and where problems such as those already
identified seem to reoccur. But that would be a somewhat
redundant process, adding little to the information a reader of
this essay needs to determine whether the book is worth reading.
And before I can offer a final assessment on that critical
question, I feel obligated to explore a serious problem in much
literature on educational policy. Most who engage in it do so
because of strongly held beliefs about the nature of schools and
education, and even when attempting to be balanced are prone to
focus on those things that are supportive of the positions one
advocates. Thus it is perhaps unfortunate that the casual reader
would not know before starting the book that both Hess and
Petrilli were strong advocates of NCLB when it was first
proposed,. Please note that in making this statement I am not
implying that the book is deliberately unbalanced. It is not.
But although in general they do a decent job of presenting the
basic factual information, one may want to be able to assess
whether the apparent imbalances identified in this essay are in
any way the result of their preexisting positions on NCLB and
similar policy matters. The biographical information provided
on the back of book provide a hint, but only for those who have a
decent familiarity with organizations and publications in the
field. The casual reader, especially undergraduate students, is
unlikely to have that knowledge base, and thus will be dependent
upon any information the classroom instructor would provide, or
else would have to take the initiative to explore the background
of the authors on her own. Similarly, the simple biographical information, including
co-authorship of a monograph on what was then the Bush education
proposal in 2001, does not help the reader of this review to know
what possible biases or preexisting positions I bring to the
writing of this essay. In fairness, I am publicly opposed to the
entire approach of NCLB, have been since before it became law,
having unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Members and Senators
not to support it. I noted in the review the disappointment of
the authors in how the law has functioned, and I should probably
similarly note that my own observations of the its functioning,
largely from the perspective of a classroom teacher but also as a
continuing observer of and participant in discussion of
educational policy, is that it has in general been a negative
influence upon public schools. But neither the orientation of the authors nor of the essayist
are necessarily an impediment. It is possible for one who is an
advocate on an issue to nevertheless address it fairly. I do
believe it is incumbent upon anyone participating in the process
to ensure that any casual reader be informed as to preexisting
positions on the issues at hand. And there should in the case of
a reviewer be no prior relationship, affirmative or negative,
that could possibly sway the writing of the review. I know
neither author, have read works by both of them, with some of
which I have agreed and with others I have had strong
disagreement. Thus let me be clear. On the whole I believe this slender
volume is useful, worth the time, effort and expense of reading.
I have attempted to point out a few areas that concern me, but
also recognize that I may be more sensitive on these points
because of my own attitudes towards NCLB. In general the authors
have done a solid job of providing basic information about NCLB.
They appropriately place the law in the context of previous
Federal endeavors in public education, do a reasonable job of
exploring the political dynamics that have been part of creating
the legislative package, and appropriately raise issues that
should be of concern to the reader. Some of the points on which
I offer criticism may be more a function of space than of any
deliberate bias on the part of the authors. And they do offer
some cogent quotations from critics in the main text of the work,
albeit not as consistently as I might prefer. Further, on the
some most contentious areas of NCLB, the evidence that is now
part of the discussion, such as the apparent fraud and
manipulation in the Reading First program, were not known at the
time the book went to print, and thus the authors cannot be
criticized for not addressing them. The authors conclude this short book with a powerful paragraph
that is as cogent an expression of the hopes of the proponents of
NCLB as I have seen. While I disagree with part of its
formulation, it does give, I think, a fair sense of how the
authors have attempted to approach the task of this volume, an at
least by implication points at many of the concerns that
opponents have raised against NCLB. In fairness to Hess and
Petrilli, I will let them have the last word and end with that
paragraph: Political support is only the beginning. Federal statutes seldom succeed in changing behavior through good intentions or powerful rhetoric. When they work, it is generally because they are sensibly designed, understood by citizens and voters, and effectively use mandates and incentives in a measured fashion. Scholars in the 1960s and 1970s explained the surprisingly disappointing results of widely heralded Great Society programs by recognizing that Washington’s money and direction are often no match for real-world complexities. Will No Child Left Behind turn out to be another such sobering lesson, or a case of Federal law making a dramatic difference, for tens of millions of America’s children. The answer is not yet clear. Forty years after the unsatisfying result of the Elementary and Secondary education Act and fifty years after the unfulfilled promise of Brown, a bipartisan coalition crafted a law designed to honor our common dreams for America’s children. Whether their monumental effort will come to fruition, we will have to determine, together, in the years ahead. (p. 134) Note 1. “Fixing Failing Schools: Is the NCLB Toolkit Working?” available at http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.1351/summary.asp. Independent scholar Gerald Bracey blogged about the event here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/ from which I quote the following: "But as the law enters its fifth year, even its supporters can no longer ignore that the law is imploding. On November 30, Frederick Hess, Education Director for the American Enterprise Institute and Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation convened a conference, "Fixing Failing Schools: Are the Tools in the NCLB Toolkit Working?" I attended. About the Reviewer Kenneth J. Bernstein is a National Board Certified Social
Studies teacher. He holds degrees in music from Haverford,
Religions from St. Charles Seminary, and teaching from Johns
Hopkins University. He did extensive doctoral studies in
educational administration and policy studies at The Catholic
University of America, and additional studies in reading
education at the University of Virginia. He has served as a
peer reviewer for a number of professional publications,
including Current Issues in Education and Teachers
College Record. He is coauthor of Rotberg, I; Bernstein, K.
J. & Ritter, S. B. (July, 2001). No Child Left Behind:
Views about the potential impact of the Bush administration's
education proposals. Washington, DC: Institute for Education
Policy Studies. |
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Hess, Frederick M., & Petrilli, Michael J. (2006). No Child Left Behind. Reviewed by Kenneth J. Bernstein
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