NCLB Extension/Renewal A Tough Road for President

As the Baltimore Sun reports, getting NCLB renewed will be a difficult test for the much beleagured President. While the act, which used to be called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, will be renewed in some format, that question will be what will the renewal contain.

"If I do say so modestly, it is the jewel in the crown of his domestic achievements," said Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who was a White House policy adviser when the law was enacted. "Obviously, he is very committed."

Spellings plotted legislative strategy last week with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California, the Democrats who chair Congress' education committees, and senior Republican lawmakers.

"If you care about resources, this is the time to act. If you care about competitiveness, and high schools, like Bill Gates does and our governors do, this is the time to act," Spellings said in an interview. "I'm very concerned that if we don't act this year, having this sort of thing in play in the middle of a presidential campaign becomes much more difficult."

Spellings is correct, that trying to renew NCLB in a Presidential year will be difficult, but what will be more difficult what will be contained in the bill. Democrats are demanding more money for public schools and while the numbers will certainly be big on teh federal level, at best the federal govenrment will only be able to kick in about 10 percent of school spending (up from the current 8 percent). So that leaves the question of what else will be in the bill.

One thing that may be in jeopardy is the reliance on high stakes testing. But testing in and of itself is not a bad thing. The problem is that testing as it stands now does not match up with what is expected to be taught or if it is, the test cannot completely test what should be taught without the test being monumentally long. Here too is the issue of federal mandates, local curricula and state tests and definitions meeting a cacophony of demands that no one can decipher or implement.

One thing that must not and cannot be removed from the law is the disaggregation of scores. The one good thing that just about everyone can agree on is that NCLB shed a much brighter light on test scores for various demographic groups, preventing schools and school districts from hiding poor performance by some groups behind the excellent performance of a smaller percentage of students. I have not heard any serious proposal that would remove that requirement, but proponents of NCLB must never cave on that item.