NCLB Target Out of Reach

Well, duh! No one, even the most optimistic educator, actually believes that the NCLB goal of 100% proficiency among students is achievable.

No Child Left Behind, the landmark federal education law, sets a lofty standard: that all students tested in reading and math will reach grade level by 2014. Even when the law was enacted five years ago, almost no one believed that standard was realistic.

But now, as Congress begins to debate renewing the law, lawmakers and education officials are confronting the reality of the approaching deadline and the difficult political choice between sticking with the vision of universal proficiency or backing away from it.

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

But the fact of the matter is that some children are going to get left behind. I think that the goal of the law, despite its "rhetorical brilliance" is to force school districts to take a good hard long look at how they go about the process of educating our children.

Even the the reauthorization and original bill's sponsors understood that the goal is not 100% achievable.

In a joint House-Senate hearing yesterday, senior Democrats and Republicans said they would work toward renewal of the law. But in interviews in the days before the hearing, some key lawmakers said that universal proficiency is all but impossible to meet.

"The idea of 100 percent is, in any legislation, not achievable," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate education committee. "There isn't a member of Congress or a parent or a student that doesn't understand that."

Kennedy added that the law's universal proficiency standard served to inspire students and teachers. But "it's too early in the process to predict whether we'll consider changes" to the 2014 deadline, he said.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. education secretary and supporter of the law, said Americans don't want politicians to lower standards.

"Are we going to rewrite the Declaration of Independence and say only 85 percent of men are created equal?" Alexander asked. "Most of our politics in America is about the disappointment of not meeting the high goals we set for ourselves."

Just because a goal is difficult, even impossible, reach does not mean it is not a worthy goal. Politically, President Bush and Congressional leaderes cannot look Americans in the eye and say, "only 90% of kids will be proficient and therefore that will be our goal." The implicit message is that some kids will fail and maybe beyond help. We all know that some kids will fail, but who gets to make that triage decsion. Politically, President Bush won't be in office in 2014 and Ted Kennedy may nor may not make it, along with other leaders. So passing the buck for the hard choices is done and it is nothing new.

But we are still left with the problem of dealing with that percentage, however, small or large it will be, of achieving proficiency. Maybe 100% can't reach proficiency, but we must make the effort to perhaps get them to basic.