October 2007

Congress and the Bush administration are wrestling with proposals to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While debate has focused on the provisions regarding testing, teacher quality, and identifying schools in need of improvement, little attention has been paid to the law’s ambitious cascade of remedies and sanctions that take effect when schools and districts are deemed persistently failing. These measures include NCLB’s public school choice (that is, the opportunity to attend another school); supplemental educational services, which include free tutoring services offered to low-income students in failing schools; and restructuring requirements, which force low-performing schools to implement major reforms.

In their new book, No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB (AEI Press, 2007), AEI director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation president Chester E. Finn Jr. analyze the NCLB remedies and what needs to be done to make them work as intended. At an AEI book forum on October 16, 2007, Jack Dale, Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent; Dianne Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights; and Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools joined the authors to discuss the lessons learned, what is and is not working, and what this means for the reauthorization and implementation of NCLB.

Frederick M. Hess
AEI

No Remedy Left Behind focuses on one important part of NCLB that has attracted less research and attention—the law’s innovative remedies that apply to chronically failing schools. The book notes that educational accountability under NCLB appears to be less about pragmatic behavior-changing expectations and more about fealty to a noble, even millennial, aspiration. NCLB promises to make persistently low-performing schools operate profoundly differently, but compliance-style activity is much more prevalent at the state and local level than creative and proactive solution design.

NCLB’s remedies, notably the school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) provisions, are not being used much or are being deployed in their mildest forms. SES poses a particular challenge, as it is founded on a hodgepodge of theories and compromises that tend to conflict. For instance, parents rely on schools for information about choice, but schools have little reason to steer parents to outside providers. NCLB works very differently from state to state. In states with advanced accountability systems, the law has at times impeded and complicated homegrown improvement strategies.

On the positive side, NCLB has in some places created political cover for state, district, or local officials to take bold actions, prompting otherwise painful changes. Perhaps NCLB’s greatest contribution is the wealth of school district and state-level performance data it is providing. But NCLB does a woeful job of gathering data pertaining to its own implementation and effectiveness.

In retrospect, it is problematic that NCLB was configured to rely on the “machinery” of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which depends on state education agencies and local school districts for implementation—the very agencies that the NCLB-style reform regimen seeks to alter.

Chester E. Finn Jr.
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

No Remedy Left Behind makes several recommendations. First, the government should forego NCLB’s finely calibrated sanctions and adopt a simpler model that leaves room for creative and entrepreneurial solutions. Struggling schools should first enter a flexible four-to-five-year “blanket phase” during which they can implement whatever types of reform they see fit. But if schools are still failing after this blanket phase, they should be closed abruptly. Second, all schools should be measured against uniform national standards and tests at least in the core subjects. Third, Washington should adopt a model in which the federal government provides escalating freedom for states that implement a high-quality accountability regimen. Fourth, adequate yearly progress (AYP) identification needs to happen faster and differentiate between the level and scope of school failure. Fifth, parents especially need better, faster, and clearer information regarding their options.

Sixth, we must strengthen the evaluation and oversight of SES providers. Seventh, we need more options in order to make NCLB choice real, including interdistrict choice and the creation of greater capacity via a flood of high-performing charter schools. Eighth, we need to recognize that many states and districts lack the capacity to reform schools as NCLB requires and may need expert help from school turnaround specialists. Ninth, Congress should tie concrete incentives and consequences to individual educators or school or district leaders. Finally, we need better information about NCLB implementation in the form of a comprehensive national database.

Michael Casserly
Council of the Great City Schools

First, the sanctions seem to have led to more pain avoidance than better instruction because there are too many loopholes in the law. Second, the law has become an exercise in compliance rather than a motivator of good instruction. Third, the annually cascading sanctions have been counterproductive, requiring school districts to engage in an ever changing series of strategies. Fourth, the AYP system does not work; we need a set of national standards and tests. Fifth, the legislation is woefully weak in helping states and locals build the capacity to actually implement the law. Finally, many of the components of the law are poorly grounded in the research, making it hard for the law’s proponents to argue convincingly that the law itself is responsible for rising test scores in cities.

The most significant issues regarding the remedies are whether to continue them. The emerging research at the national state and local level indicates that neither the choice nor the SES provision of the law has much effect on student achievement, nor do they really act as true sanctions. The effects of the corrective action and restructuring provisions are no better.

Jack Dale
Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools

The current policy debate about whether to establish national standards has two components: what content area would be expected and what kind of national assessment would be used? National standards are a better goal than aspirational standards. There are no sanctions or incentives under NCLB—only public pressure—motivating states to have equivalent standards. Students need equal outcomes, not equal access. With equal outcomes, though, minimum competencies must be identified.

Parents view the AYP measurement as laughably unrealistic. The majority of students who have the option to transfer or use SES are the students already performing at or above grade level. Resources are being plowed into supporting children and families who are wise enough to know how to access these services.

One of the major shortcomings of NCLB is that there are no carrots; there are only sticks, labels, and sanctions. There are no incentives for innovation. It is naïve to think that there will be a “magic bullet” in restructuring schools. Constructive discourse on system interventions is needed, not isolated individual examples.

Dianne Piché
Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights

This notion that NCLB is a nonworkable hodgepodge of theories of action and approaches is not correct. There are key places in this law, such as the transfer and SES options, where we have promising provisions that are mutually exclusive on a theoretical level but come together politically to help bring about change. From a civil rights perspective, these NCLB remedies are bedrock. In particular, the right to transfer needs to be expanded to include interdistrict choice in places where capacity is limited.

What happens on the ground needs to inform federal policy. The best educators and leaders do not need a long laundry list of what to do; they need to be empowered to effect change. One school improvement process is not necessarily going to work better than another. There are instances where teachers are coming together at the building level with the administration and crafting school improvement plans that work, even agreeing voluntarily to change the terms of their collective bargaining agreements. Then there are instances where it is appropriate for the state to intervene as the constitutional entity responsible ultimately for public education.

It is also very important that Congress allow for some differentiation of consequences or status of schools. Congress should also consider shifting Title I from what has largely been an entitlement program to a competitive grant program that is a combination of formula-based programs.

AEI research assistant Rosemary Kendrick prepared this summary.