US initiative's advocates scrutinized on standards

As states and school districts implement No Child Left Behind, the federal initiative to examine and improve education, the reform effort is coming under scrutiny itself.

Districts and states are buckling under the administrative detail mandated by the new law, according to a four-part study released last week by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. In addition, wide variation in the accountability of state standards dilutes the impact of the legislation, the study found.

"In a few places, they're gaming the system," said Gary Orfield, Civil Rights Project codirector. "Some states have very low proficiency levels and very low levels of adequate yearly progress. It's a coping mechanism but it renders the whole thing completely absurd."

The legislation also may wind up failing the very students it aims to help -- those in the poorest schools, which historically have logged the worst test scores, according to the study. In these schools teachers may concentrate on the subjects being tested and ignore others.

Meanwhile, these schools, which traditionally have fewer resources and greater needs, are expected to make as much progress as their wealthier counterparts, Orfield said. Those that fail can have funds taken away, under the law.

"That's not a good treatment for a sick school," he said. "It's as if you were to measure the temperature of everybody in a hospital waiting room and take medicine away from the ones that have a temperature."

The study suggested a number of changes to give the effort the best chance of success. "We need to do a serious review and figure out what parts of this are working and what aren't, and regroup about it without losing the good goals of the law," Orfield said.

But not everyone who's taken a close look at No Child Left Behind is a critic. In a forthcoming article in Education Next, James Peyser, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and Robert Costrell, chief economist in the Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance, dispute naysayer's critiques that the mandate is not sufficiently funded.

"The bottom line is that the claims of inadequacy are exaggerated and the claims that the federal government has not fulfilled its obligation are also exaggerated," Peyser said.

Focusing on Massachusetts, they argue that although federal spending must increase over time, for now it is adequate to support the reform initiatives. However, they also acknowledge that it's unclear how much it will cost to achieve the goal of bringing the vast majority of students to proficiency within the next decade.

"[No Child Left Behind] sets out clearly very ambitious goals for 2014, and I think we candidly stated that nobody knows if those goals can be met, never mind how much it costs to reach them," Costrell said. "But is it inappropriate to set high goals and see how far you can get? I think not."