Connecticut and No Child Left Behind

One of the big news items earlier this week revolved around Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's announcement that the state of Connecticut was suing the federal government because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an un(der)funded state mandate (full disclosure: Blumenthal is a politcian that I like and would vote for, for governor if he decides to run).

Now I have no doubt that this lawsuit will go nowhere. But winning is not Blumenthal's reasoning for going through with his threat. Instead Blumenthal gets to reopen the debate on NCLB, while also getting some free national publicity.

So because it is up for debate, why don't we do just that.

I for one, do not see what the big deal about NCLB is. It seems like a pretty agreeable piece of legislation. Federal government forces testing and transparency in return for money. Hell, Ted Kennedy wrote the damn bill. But seriously, everything we know about competition in other sectors informs us that market approaches work. In fact, experience from individual state programs shows that testing has worked. Late last month the National Asessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has periodically tested a representative sample of 9, 13, and 17 years olds since the early 1970s, had some welcome news (as reported by The Economist):

This year's report contained two striking results. The first is that America's
nine-year-olds posted their best scores in reading and maths since the tests
were introduced (in 1971 in reading and 1973 in maths). The second is that the
gap between white students and minorities is narrowing. The nine-year-olds who
made the biggest gains of all were blacks, traditionally the most educationally
deprived group in American society.

No one can argue about good news like that, until it comes to taking credit for that good news. The Bush administration was quick to attribute NCLB for the gain in testing, a dubious assertion given that it has been in effect for all of one year. But I do think this bodes well for the success of NCLB because NCLB is merely a federal program based upon similar state programs. Programs that I believe deserve credit for the boost in the NEAP's scoring. The other awesome thing about the NEAP's results is that minorities are closing the gap. This flies in the face of what many anti-testing advocates have told us about the biases of standardized tests, The Economist paraphrases the arguments:

Peter Sacks, author of a 2000 book on the subject, called them (standardized
tests) “abusive”, “meaningless” and “what amounts to the academic lynching of
children of colour”. Others think the tests say black 17-year-olds can read no
better than white 13-year-olds because that, alas, is the case.

The Economist continues:

Test scores are excellent predictors of success in later life. Black men, on
average, earn less than white men, a disparity often blamed on discrimination in
the job market. But a study by George Farkas and Keven Vicknair found that if
one compares black men with whites with similar scores on standardised tests,
the blacks earned slightly more. Another study found that the gap was merely
reduced by three-quarters. Either way, it would appear that literacy and
numeracy are rather important if you want to get on in life. Why this should
shock anyone is baffling.

I can not stress how great this is if it is true. What it means is that there is finally a way for the horrendous school systems that many poor urban areas have, to quantify their mediocrity. Finally, Connecticut will have to publish Greenwich's numbers next to New Haven and Hartford's. Providing incentives for states to have all their school districts performing at a high level seems like a great thing, that can do wonders for the state of public education in much of the country.

So then the question turns to, just why is Blumenthal making such a big stink about this all. Well Blumenthal does have a point or two. Connecticut has been testing for over a decade. Blumenthal claims this has been done to great success, yet NCLB requires his state to test children more (Connecticut now tests every other year, NCLB requires more frequent testing) and that this would come at a great cost. This is really three points in one.

First, Blumenthal is raising the issue of cost. Namely that more frequent testing will cost the state a couple million over a couple of years and that this sucks. Second, the added cost of testing ought to be paid for by the federal government, not the states. And third, and this is the veiled argument, that more frequent testing, or even testing of any kind, will not achieve anything (I think this is given purely for the teacher's unions support).

So lets have it. On the first and second argument I think that the price tag is not that onerous. The federal government frequently losses and gains more money that it projects. I refuse to believe that Connecticut does not have the couple million necessary to get the ball rolling. Especially when doing so can reap such rich rewards.

But it is pretty clear that money is not the reason this is such big news. States squabble about money all the time and it does not cause front page news or lead editorials. Also, the National Education Association (or NEAMBLA as Jon Stewart would say) has not lobbied every state to do as Connecticut did because it is an underfunded mandate. The main areas of contention are accountability and how accountability is measured.

The NEA and other teacher's unions have a long history of avoiding accountability. They have lynched Arnold Schwarzeneger over his attempts to make firing bad teachers easier. They are opposed to paying teachers different salaries based on their field of teaching. This of course means that gym teachers get paid the same as a physics teacher. All of these are just ridiculous, and ultimately harmful to the American public school system. They are shameful attempts to protect and inflate salaries of cushy school jobs.

But the other area of contention surrounds how accountability is measured. The frequent argument used against testing is that testing causes schools to only teach to the test. H. Kaye Griffin, president of Connecticut's statewide superintendent organization voiced this opinion:

Griffin...warned that there are serious problems with the No Child Left Behind program beyond funding.

Griffin said that it would "be impossible not to spend an inordinate amount
of time" preparing Connecticut schoolchildren for the new and extensive rounds
of testing being mandated by the federal law — time that should be used for more
than simply how to pass a specific test.

And this is true, but if the test is curriculum based, why is this bad? If the tests require teachers to teach math effectively, how can you go wrong? Isn't that what any ordinary quiz or test does? Tests the material taught. Furthermore, how can schools decry testing when they are simultaneously ramping up the number of AP classes; classes that exist only to teach to one test. Sure the statewide tests can be imperfect. But then the debate should be about what an effective test is and how it should be properly implemented, not whether we should test at all.

Honestly I believe that a lot of Democrats do not like NCLB because it was passed by President Bush and it carries a cocky PATRIOT Act like name that symbolizes so much of what Democrats despise in President Bush. But if you look past the name and see what it intends to accomplish on a nationwide scale, no lack of federal funding ought to inhibit NCLB's implementation.

-Mr. Alec