When Congress takes up reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whether in 2010 or later, the results will define the nation's education policy for years to come. One of the challenges is reconciling sharp differences about how to amend the landmark bill.

How can the Obama administration and Congress put together a winning majority for reauthorization of ESEA? What should change, what should remain more or less the same, and why?

As Congress and the Obama administration consider reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, it’s imperative to keep in mind the following five keys to make sure what happens in Washington works in public schools and classrooms across America.

1. We have to get the law right this time.

The current version of ESEA, known as No Child Left Behind, unfairly measures schools and students based solely on test scores at the expense of preparing them with 21st century skills. Such overemphasis on standardized testing, combined with a lack of funding, has forced schools to narrow the curriculum and divert resources from art, music, social studies and physical education to teach to the test.

We have to move away from that failed model. Schools need greater flexibility, better quality tests, multiple ways of measuring school quality and student learning, and improving the profession of teaching.

2. We should keep in mind that children are more than standardized test scores.

Instead of building a nation of test takers, we should focus on preparing students to think and solve problems so they can succeed in the real world.

Today, we live in an interdependent, rapidly changing world, and our public school system must adapt to the needs of the new global economy. Every student will need to graduate from high school, pursue postsecondary educational options, and focus on a lifetime of learning because many of tomorrow’s jobs have not even been conceived of today.

If we continue to focus narrowly on test scores to determine so many aspects of public education, students will receive basic test prep instead of the rich, challenging, engaging education they deserve.

ESEA could include using student growth and multiple measures, and using data to improve instruction to increase the focus on professional development for teachers and continual instructional improvement rather than to only hold schools accountable.

3. We must focus on the whole teacher again.

We have to treat teachers and education support staff like the professionals that they are.

We know that a great public school for every student starts with a great teacher. Congress will have a tremendous opportunity to put the right policy in place, a policy that elevates the profession of teaching and respects the work that our support staff provides to students.

What does that look like?

We know teacher preparation matters when it comes to teacher effectiveness. ESEA could devote financial support to improving teacher preparation programs and working with education stakeholders like NEA to expand mentoring programs, provide targeted professional development for educators and expand school leadership initiatives.

Congress also could strengthen the promise of “grow your own” approaches like Urban Teacher Residencies by helping them to expand to help schools outside of urban areas such as high-needs rural schools or those schools serving Native American students.

Congress could provide incentives to states that create world-class teacher preparation programs and call for the creation of a national education institute to provide a rigorous and relevant master’s degree in education and accept college graduates that are in the top third of class rankings. In exchange for free tuition, graduates would commit to teach in the nation’s highest needs schools for at least six years.

We should explore alternative compensation packages that reward teachers for their skill and knowledge, pay more for working in hard-to-staff schools, and include teachers as “essential partners” in any teacher compensation reform effort.

4. We have to address the economic inequities and disparities facing public education.

It’s important to recall that 1965 was one of the most notable years in the history of education in America. That year, as part of his War on Poverty, President Lyndon Johnson signed ESEA into law to reduce inequity by directing resources to poor and minority children and signed the Higher Education Act (HEA) to provide more opportunities and access to postsecondary opportunities for lower and middle-income families. “Poverty has many roots,” Johnson said, “but the taproot is ignorance.”

Poverty is still an issue in this country, and unfortunately we still have schools that lack resources, committed and effective leadership, and enough great teachers and education support professionals to reach every student. Schools in struggling communities too often have high dropout rates, and the cycle of poverty continues.

We have an opportunity to put a spotlight on what works to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

We must focus on turning around struggling, priority schools of all regions of the country that serve diverse groups of students.

5. Cooperation and collaboration are needed to achieve systemic and sustainable reform efforts.

We’re off to a solid start with the Obama administration, which has called for greater cooperation, more flexibility for states and school districts, better quality tests, multiple ways of measuring school quality and student learning, and recruiting and training more teachers.

Involving teachers and other education stakeholders in designing and implementing a more flexible ESEA is the key to making sure what happens in Washington works in schools and communities across America. It would be a welcome recognition of the role that teachers play in transforming education and preparing students for the 21st century.

As we all prepare to help reauthorize ESEA, and if we keep these five key points in mind, it is within the realm of possibility to not only imagine a reauthorized law that includes more flexible accountability measures, but to make that law a reality.

It’s easy to envision a reauthorized ESEA that encourages states to set high common standards, not lower them.

It’s easy to imagine a great public school for every student where quality programs and services exist, and where high expectations and common standards aligned with rigorous and comprehensive curriculums, as well as high-quality assessments for all students, are the norm.

Imagine a great public school with modern facilities and up-to-date materials and technology for all, along with small class sizes and strong leadership that collaborates among and with all education professionals in the school system.

Let’s help make it a reality.

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Wanted to offer some additional thoughts to the discussion.

ESEA is going to be competing for Congress and the Administration's attention next year with a long list of other priorities. Health care is now creeping into the 2010 legislative schedule. Cap and Trade has stalled (in fact our colleagues over at the NJ Energy blog were just discussing this). The Administration is also trying to advance a financial regulatory reform plan which is facing bipartisan concerns from moderate Democrats and Republicans. And WIA is due for reauthorization and could be pushed to the front of the legislative priority line given 10.2% unemployment, the Administration's interest additional job stimulus, and members heading into mid-term elections.

Besides shaping the legislative calendar, these other issues are important because they'll set the dynamics of ESEA reauthorization. If these packages pass along party lines, it will be much more difficult to pull together a bipartisan coalition to get an ESEA bill to the president's desk.

In terms of policy, there does seem to be a growing consensus around certain broad priorities: teacher effectiveness, common standards, addressing the dropout crisis, and turning around low performing schools. But the problem is in the details. Everyone wants to turn around low-performing schools, but there's little consensus about the most effective way to do so (most of what is included in the Administration's four intervention models is already built-into or allowed under NCLB). Everyone supports more effective teachers but there is still considerable debate about how to best measure a teacher's performance (as evidenced by the Administration adding a nebulous "multiple measures" for teacher evaluations in the final Race to the Top guidance which could be used to compromise reform). There is support for "extending the learning day" but opposition to the SES providers that have done just that for the last eight years.

The challenge isn't simply resolving these policy issues, but also trying to figure out what the Federal role is in either requiring or incentivizing reforms in these areas.

The only way to get through this labyrinth is to have strong Congressional leadership in shaping the agenda and debate - the roles that Senators Kennedy and Gregg, and Congressmen Miller and Boehner played in NCLB reauthorization. It will also require a greater willingness to embrace bipartisan ideas than what we've currently seen in the stimulus and healthcare debate.

One path forward is to build a coalition around having ESEA address the worst of the worse schools - the bottom 5% that Secretary Duncan has referenced. These are the schools that pretty much everyone can agree are failing, no matter which measure one uses which makes it difficult to argue against some sort of Federal intervention. Teacher effectiveness - particularly a strong pay for performance plan - could attract a winning bi-partisan majority through both incentive grants as well as required interventions in low-performing schools. SES 2.0 could be a way for the Administration to attract Republican support to its extended learning day agenda. Differentiated accountability - such as what Florida has under the A+ plan could also be a way meet the Secretary's desire to flip NCLB to have the Federal government be prescriptive with the goals, but defer to the states on the interventions.

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Results. Accountability. Closing the Achievement Gap.

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) must include all the things mentioned here and more. I strongly agree with UNCF’s Michael L. Lomax when he talks about the goal of getting more of our young people graduating from high school and successfully entering a meaningful post secondary experience.

And as Pedro A. Noguera said, NCLB held districts responsible for raising achievement for all children. Let’s not forget that point. After all, at its heart, by requiring in law that we, as a country, measure the progress of every child, we are essentially saying that every child has potential. There’s been a lot of “slip between the cup and the lip” regarding the implementation of this law but the thought that as a country we are on the path of treating every one of our citizens as having potential is really quite profound.

As the president of an organization dedicated to helping students attend and graduate from college, I am looking to reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready to do college coursework.

About two thirds of American students fail to graduate from high school ready for college -- half that for low income students of color. Approximately 30% of all entering college students take at least one remedial course. Depending on the type of institution and state, the share of students that are academically unprepared for college can range from 24% to 42%, and over a third of institutions (both two-year and four-year) report that the share is growing. For historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), particularly those that embrace open enrollment admissions policies, a significantly large percentage (typically 50% or more) of incoming freshmen are not college-ready.

Many colleges help non-college-ready students catch up by offering remedial courses. But although these courses require students to pay college tuition, they carry no college credit. This forces students to burn through the financial help students get from their families and financial aid at a much faster rate, requiring many to take five or six years or more to graduate and others to leave school entirely. In fact, fully half the students taking remedial courses drop out of college. It's a disaster for students, colleges, and our country.

As it reauthorizes ESEA, there are three important steps Congress should take to make sure that many more students graduate from high school college-ready.

1. Get the goal right. Ensure that every state has college-ready standards to make sure that students have good options when they graduate from high school.

2. Hold schools accountable for college-ready graduation rates. Persistent school-to-school differentials within school districts indicate that we have to look at data by high school, not by school system. Schools that are struggling need help to improve. But we cannot afford chronic failure.

3. Support student achievement. Students struggling to reach college-ready standards may need personalized support such as extended day/year calendars and targeted tutoring,

As a member of the bipartisan Aspen Institute Commission on No Child Left Behind, I am committed to a thoughtful and engaging dialog from all sides on the best ways to successfully reauthorize this landmark legislation. America needs more college graduates and many more minority college graduates. A reauthorized ESEA with strong reforms will sharply increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready not only to go to college but to succeed in college.

ESEA must tackle issues of high standards and remediation in the upcoming legislation. These are not optional issues. They are mandatory.

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Libby Doggett, deputy director of the Pew Center on the States, submitted the following:

A winning majority will be difficult, but might be more likely if ESEA reauthorization focuses intensively on education reform strategies that work. Policy makers want to invest in programs proven to improve children’s cognitive, social and emotional skills; increase their educational attainment; close the achievement gap; and enhance the quality and productivity of the nation’s workforce. High-quality pre-kindergarten is one such strategy. In fact, it is the first step to school reform and an indispensable part of our education system. In New Jersey’s low-income Abbott school districts and in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools, high-quality early education was integral in turning schools around and improving student achievement. We need new federal funding for pre-k and we need it in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Democrat and Republican governors, with support from state legislatures, have increased state funding for early education to more than $5 billion and enrollment in state pre-k has grown by more than 40 percent since 2004. But despite these impressive gains, less than 30 percent of the nation’s three and four year olds are served by state-funded pre-k. Federal action is needed urgently to reinforce states’ progress and accelerate the growth of quality pre-k programs.

During the campaign, President Obama pledged $10 billion a year in new investments in early education including high-quality, voluntary pre-k for all three-and four-year old children. He described a new Early Learning Challenge Grant to support evidence-based state programs for children from birth to five years old and linked this agenda to significant expansions of Head Start and Early Head Start.

The federal economic recovery package made a down-payment on the administration’s early education promises. But since then, the federal budget, the stimulus package and initial guidance on the new Race to the Top competitive grants have all failed to provide needed, focused support for state pre-k. The Early Learning Challenge Fund, strongly supported by the administration and the early childhood community, is important in terms of collaboration and promoting quality programs, but it is unlikely to provide states significant new funds for pre-k. For Americans to really race to the top, we need to ensure that all children are at the same starting line.

Difficult economic times demand that we revisit how – and how wisely – we spend limited public resources. As Congress takes up ESEA, it has the opportunity to help get our country “out of the catch-up business,” as Secretary Duncan puts it, by investing public resources in an education reform strategy that research shows helps children succeed in school—and as a bonus provides up to $7 back for every dollar invested. This is change that can be made possible by including federal support for high-quality pre-k in the reauthorization of ESEA.

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After 7 years of NCLB implementation, the most anyone can say for what it has accomplished is that the law has "paved the way for a sustained national dialogue on closing the achievement gap and improving our schools." Paved the way for a dialogue? Is this sufficient justification for a law that has narrowed the curriculum (and thus widened the achievement gap in areas other than math and reading), turned schools into test-prep factories, substituted word-calling for literacy, demoralized many teachers and parents (and turned others into cynics), misidentified failing and successful schools alike, and squelched local initiative in just about the only area of American life where, in many communities, it was still possible (prior to NCLB) to practice small-d democracy?

During the last few months, my colleagues and I in the "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education" campaign have had many conversations with Washington policy advocates, and executive and Congressional staffers from both parties. Few deny the negative consequences of NCLB described above. Yet almost all hold to the vain hope that these problems can be fixed with minor adjustments. They have no idea what these adjustments might be – all are waiting for someone else to present them.

Yet no "fixes" address the fundamental problems. The most popular – substituting growth for level scores in math and reading – will do nothing to prevent the narrowing of curriculum or the test obsession in low-performing schools. National standards in math and reading alone, however well-designed, will also reinforce the narrowing and will do nothing to ensure that curriculum in math and reading themselves reflects these standards or that tests are well-aligned to them (as no high-stakes, single test for purposes of accountability can be). So the attitude is to wait, and wait, and wait, for someone else to propose a miracle cure.

On top of these insuperable substantive problems, there are the political ones for re-authorization of NCLB-type policies. Many of the Republicans who supported NCLB in 2001, now that Democrats are in control of Congress and the presidency, have re-discovered their faith in the local control of education. Democrats in both houses of Congress who were first elected in 2006 and 2008, after NCLB's effects began to be felt in their states and districts, campaigned against the law and cannot be counted upon to support a re-authorization of its fundamental federal accountability principles. Many Democrats (like Senator Kennedy) who supported the law in 2001 did so because they believed they had a deal with President Bush for substantially more education funding in return for NCLB support. That was when there was a federal budget surplus. With today's deficits, they cannot likely be bought again. This all leaves very few possible supporters in Congress, not a majority by any means.

And then there is the rest of the agenda. Energy. Unemployment and job creation. Financial institution and regulatory reform. War. Perhaps more health care. Budgetary tightening and entitlement reform. In 2001, President Bush inherited a nation at peace and in fiscal surplus. By the time 9/11 came to distract us, drafting and passage of NCLB was almost complete. In today's very different environment, does anyone seriously believe that the president will engage in arm-twisting or political bribery to re-enact NCLB-type education policy, even if he believed in it? (And, as I have written here and elsewhere, the president's and Secretary Duncan's views are seriously conflicted.)

In the meetings I have described above, my colleagues and I have presented an alternative. It returns education decision making and initiative to the states. It requires states to develop accountability systems that rely primarily on qualitative evaluation of schools, with test scores only one factor. It acknowledges that development of such qualitative evaluation systems will take time and experimentation. And it is willing to run the risk that some states may blunder, rather than ensure that the federal government again forces its blunders upon everyone.

We described this alternative in the accountability statement of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign. The policy makers to whom we have presented it acknowledge that such an accountability system is a reasonable alternative to NCLB, one that avoids the corruptions stimulated by the existing law. They acknowledge that no other reasonable alternative has been presented. All that holds them back is a fear of challenging what they falsely believe to be a national consensus in favor of NCLB-type policies. I don't know for how much longer they will continue to hold back.

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It boils down to leadership. As others including Secretary Paige have noted, President Bush and the “Big Four”—Senators Kennedy and Gregg, and Congressmen Miller and Boehner—set other differences aside and exerted substantial personal leadership in drafting and building support for NCLB/ESEA. The result of their effort was far from perfect, but it paved the way for a sustained national dialogue on closing the achievement gap and improving our schools—a remarkable feat for a piece of federal education legislation.

That national dialogue (often a sharp-tongued debate) continues today, and that same concerted leadership will be necessary among the new power players to successfully reauthorize ESEA. President Obama and Secretary Duncan, Senators Harkin and Enzi, and Reps. Miller and Kline have their work cut out for them. While broad support for the law’s primary goal—closing the achievement gap—remains, the strong bipartisan coalition that united around the law’s core principles of meaningful accountability, transparent data, effective teachers and increased options for parents has largely evaporated. The composition of Congress has changed substantially. Vocal members on both sides of the aisle, many of whom were elected after the law was enacted, oppose NCLB for myriad reasons—and some campaigned on jettisoning or radically altering it.

Yet there is common ground to be found. It starts with engaging Congress. To date, the Administration has moved forward with its education agenda largely without Congress. That can’t happen on ESEA reauthorization, where Congress must step up to lead the legislative process. To jumpstart that process, however, the Administration should work to educate Members on both sides of the aisle about the importance of improving the law to meet shared goals—including strengthening the nation’s competitiveness. As Congress brings its own ideas to the table, the coalition of stakeholders who want to see reauthorization succeed will broaden, and the Administration can support them in drafting a solid reauthorization bill.

The ARRA reform assurances offer a good place to start. We’ve already seen how the carrot of Race to the Top funding has enticed some states to begin addressing barriers to innovation such as data firewalls and charter school caps—changes that reform-oriented members of both parties can get behind. The assurances stem from priorities long held on both sides of the aisle, and we need to build on them. Of course, the details matter greatly. Particular attention will need to be given to getting bipartisan support for improving the law’s teacher effectiveness and accountability provisions, both of which were thorny in 2001 (and in 2007, when Chairman Miller and then-Ranking Member McKeon released a “discussion draft” bill), and are no less contentious now.

Building on our 2007 reauthorization blueprint and drawing on commissioners’ on-the-ground experience, the Commission will continue its outreach and research process and develop updated recommendations in the coming months. When reauthorization conversations begin in earnest, the great challenge for reformers will be to ensure that our national commitment to accountability and the success of all children endures—and that we do not allow the illusion of progress driven by ARRA funding in some states and districts to distract us from the need to broaden the reach of those reforms. The next ESEA must expand, support, and incent the ARRA priority reforms—while continuing to hold schools accountable for educating all children. If it does not do these things, it doesn’t deserve our support.

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It’s time to rekindle the spirit of the 2001 iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, perhaps better known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In 2001 NCLB was crafted and enacted in a bipartisan spirit by liberals and conservatives alike who had become deeply frustrated with and concerned about a serious problem in our public education system — a problem that manifested itself in millions of children failing to receive the kind of education they both needed and deserved.

On the cover of the NCLB Bill are these words: “An Act to Close The Achievement Gap with Accountability, Flexibility and Choice, So That No Child is Left Behind.” The achievement gap—the persistent and significant disparities in educational achievement and attainment between groups of students as determined by standardized academic measures—is the major civil rights issues of our time.

Notwithstanding NCLB’s laudable goal, this time around reauthorization will require an even stronger commitment to reach across the aisle in Congress and to motivate all those responsible for the implementation of the nation’s education policies. It will require a firm desire on the part of all those involved to seek a win for our children.

I believe that part of the criticism directed at NCLB is due to the fact that it asks some very basic questions about our education system, questions that challenge not only the fundamental structure of our system but also our commitment to providing a high-quality education to all our children. This challenge, I believe, has led NCLB’s critics to muddy the waters around the origins, the purpose, and, at times, the actual requirements of the law, turning the measure into a political football.

While not perfect, NCLB does perhaps expose the motives of its critics and those at the centers of power — specifically the teachers unions and other guardians of the status quo — that have long defended a culture that resists change.

The questions that need to be asked– and answered-- are the same today as they were in 2001 when NCLB was passed in the House of Representatives by a 381 to 41 margin and when Senator Ted Kennedy joined Senator Gregg and the White House to shepherd the measure through the Senate in a remarkable show of nonpartisan solidarity.

• After providing over $525 billion per year for education, what should the American people expect from their investment?
• How does one introduce accountability into a system that in the past has had no appreciable measure of accountability?
• Should there be a minimum level of academic achievement expected from all children?
• Should there be any expectation that children read and do math at grade level after eight years of public schooling?
• Do parents have a right to determine what the best academic environment is for their children?
• And if so, how far does that right go? Do we expect that, in this country, all children should be educated to high levels?

No Child Left Behind rests on a few basic premises. The first premise is that our system of public education must have specific expectations for student achievement in the areas of mathematics and language arts, and that we should measure each student’s ability to reach those expectations. The second premise is that we should provide remediation opportunities for students who struggle. The third premise is that districts and states should be held accountable to parents and taxpayers for student achievement. And the fourth and final premise is that federal education dollars should be tied to accountability. In other words, money should be targeted to promote the academic achievement of our most disadvantaged children, and the results of these efforts must be reported.

The latter premise has caused more of a stir than perhaps any other aspect of NCLB because it marks yet another historic step toward a greater federal role in our traditionally decentralized education system. It is important to point out; however, that NCLB gave states and local school districts great discretion in establishing their student achievement goals and in determining how to meet those goals. They also retained authority over nearly every aspect of the law that affects the classroom.

There are those who present themselves as embracing the spirit of NCLB but have problems with how it is implemented, or with what they view as the impractical nature of its approach. Some critics claim that NCLB fails to take into account that all children are different, or that it forces teachers to teach to the test and destroys the opportunity for critical thinking. Others assert that NCLB is underfunded, or that its true mission is to destroy public education and lead to the privatization of all public schools.

In examining the criticism directed at No Child Left Behind, it is important first to step back and ask a more fundamental question: If there were no federal law shaping public education, what would be the purpose of the public education system in our society? Would there be an expectation that children read and do math on grade level? In other words, would parents, educators, taxpayers, and state and local policymakers have any expectations for student performance on their own accord, absent federal law?

I have said it before, and I will say it again: As the time for reauthorization approaches, I hope that policy leaders and educators from across the country will have the foresight and fortitude to have the hard conversations that will be needed to see these changes through. If we fail to do what must be done, I believe we will have failed as a nation to shoulder our most fundamental responsibility: to educate all students to high levels — truly, to leave no child behind.

Now to the fundamental question: How can the Obama administration and Congress put together a winning majority for reauthorization of ESEA? I suggest two steps: first, recapture the authentic bipartisan spirit which birthed and managed the enactment of NCLB by duplicating the collaborative leadership of the Big Four—liberals Kennedy and Miller working cooperatively with conservatives Gregg and Boehner. Second, adopt the position that the primary purpose of the law is to enhance the interest of children, not adults. Adult interests will be enhanced through the enhancement of children’s interest.

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NCLB should not be reauthorized, although the Elementary and Secondary Education Act should be. NCLB, as Secretary Arne Duncan said, is a "toxic brand." It has earned its bad reputation by overemphasizing testing and accountability. It is a law that is punitive, offering lots of sticks and no carrots. Its remedies don't work. Its sanctions don't work. The rate of progress on national tests has actually slowed since the implementation of NCLB. Test score gains on NAEP were larger in the years preceding NCLB than since it was adopted. This is the case in reading and math, and it is the case for students in fourth grade and eighth grade. It is true for low-income students. Testing and accountability are a management strategy, not an education strategy. Maybe it works in business to emphasize incentives and sanctions, but the evidence of the past several years is that this approach has not improved education. No high-performing nation has narrowed its curriculum only to math and reading. This is no way to produce a generation of scientists, engineers, and innovators. This is no way to spur creativity and insight. NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency for every subgroup is ridiculous. States have dumbed down their standards in an effort to comply with this unrealistic and unrealizable goal. At last count, some 35% of the nation's public schools failed to make "adequate yearly progress." In Massachusetts, which is the highest performing state in the nation, half the public schools failed to make AYP. The privatizers are licking their chops, waiting for more public schools to be closed and replaced by charter schools and privately managed schools. We need federal legislation that helps schools improve, especially schools where there are concentrations of low-income children. That was the original purpose of ESEA. We need federal legislation that recognizes that schools and educators thrive on collaboration, not competition and market forces. NCLB deserves to be buried, sooner rather than later

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No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an important first step in reducing the inequities in our public school system; however, millions of students in our country remain “left behind.” Our inner cities continue to graduate less than half of their students of color; each year 1.2 million students fail to graduate on time. It is clear that the President and Secretary are doing everything in their power to make good on the “no child left behind promise,” but they cannot go it alone. An ESEA that both requires and supports states to close the achievement gap is critical.

The ESEA must include a number of provisions, but none are more important than those that will ensure an effective teacher in every classroom. (See the Education Equality Project’s position paper on Teacher Quality.) The rationale is most succinctly put by the Brookings Institute: “Without the right people standing in front of the classroom, school reform is a futile exercise.”

By replacing the Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) provision within ESEA with a framework for Highly Effective Teachers we could make dramatic progress towards improving teacher quality across-the-board. Currently, the law leaves the definition of HQT up to the states and, save for a few outliers, most states have not enforced any real rigor in this definition. This loop-hole has left us with a deeply uneven playing field: out-of-field teachers are more than twice as likely to teach core classes in high-poverty and high-minority schools as they are in low-poverty and low-minority schools. (Yesterday, Kati Haycock, Education Trust’s President and a signatory of the Education Equality Project made a detailed statement on HQT that clearly elucidates the issue.)

A Highly Effective Teacher provision would focus on what we know impacts student learning and provide states with clear guidance and support. Specifically, the Highly Effective Teacher provision would include:

- Certification based on demonstrated learning gains

- Differentiated pay for high-demand subjects (i.e., math, science, special education) and high-need schools

- Performance pay for highly effective teachers (i.e., significant metric increases and/or bonuses for teachers who demonstrate dramatic improvement in student learning as assessed by a number of metrics)

- Portable defined-contribution pensions, thereby eliminating the current disincentive for teachers to change school districts or teach in charter schools

We know these changes will not be easy to achieve. The new bargain will require a coalition of reform-minded Republicans and Democrats working across the aisle, putting children first and partisan politics last. The passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 is a prime example of bipartisan collaboration, relying on the leadership of the late Senator Kennedy (D-MA) to build support for a policy that was the brain-child of President Bush and Secretary Spellings. The Education Equality Project is a coalition of politically diverse allies (e.g., Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Mayor Cory Booker, former Secretary Margaret Spellings, Representative John Conyers (D-MI)), gambling on the strategy that making unlikely allies, challenging the status quo, and always asking ourselves: Will this help children succeed? Will this narrow the achievement gap? – is the way to transform our schools.

In his speech last week in Wisconsin, President Obama could not have been more clear, nor inspiring, on this need for bipartisanship. “It's been Democrat versus Republican, it’s been voucher versus public schools, it's been more money versus more reform. In some cases, people have seen schools as sort of a political spoil having to do with jobs and contracts instead of what we're teaching kids. And this status quo has held back our children, it's held back our economy, and it's held back our country for too long. It's time to stop just talking about education reform and start actually doing it. It's time to make education America's national mission. “

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As soon as people find out I work around the country in education, they invariably ask, “What do you think of NCLB?” My real answer would take up the rest of their evening and bore them to tears, so I’ve made up a short answer: “Everything about NCLB is wrong -- except for the fact that it exists.” Without it, we’d be going nowhere. With it, we seem to be heading into some Twilight Zone version of what the Eisenhower Era would have been like if it’d had computer-adaptive-testing. But even though I don’t like where the train is going, at least I have a train. And you know how little boys love trains.

Sandy Kress makes a good case for two important points: NCLB’s accountability must be strengthened and the current political climate is not likely encourage consensus on this issue. Gone are the days, apparently, when Liberal Lions would extend a paw to Compassionate Conservatives. From Mr. Kress’s two propositions, I draw the conclusion that NCLB’s accountability will be weakened simply in an effort to pass a bill of some kind. Like Sandy, I am troubled by this possibility, as I’m sure many of you are as well.

However, that’s prediction, not policy. And though Mr. Kress is on the money with his analysis, and persuasive in his passionate appeal, I hope things go better than his cogent analysis suggests.

In theory, no one is against better schools, so obviously the devil is in the details. One potential irony I see is that a Democratic administration will probably push more of what Republicans liked about NCLB in the first place: testing and accountability. No Democrat wants to be considered soft on crime, soft on terrorism, or soft on testing. So there is one possibility for consensus: have Democrats put up a Republican bill. We still have Guantanamo, we still fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current administration still supports the DOMA, and it hasn’t changed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” How would it hurt the President and Secretary Duncan, or almost any Democrat, to make the reauthorization as palatable to Republicans as possible? (Besides, I'll bet Olympia Snowe could use a break on this one.)

Second strategy: secure consensus on ends before means. Upon which key results can it be said that virtually all Democrats and Republicans agree? I can think of at least three: higher student achievement, better teacher quality, lower high school dropout rate. These positions can be unified politically if we just do one thing that everyone agrees needs to be done: change the way we test our kids. So start by agreeing that the focus of the reauthorization will be on the creation of mechanisms that will help us achieve a small number goals we all believe in. Then commit to doing a serious rehab on our approach to testing. (I have an idea on this below.)

Third strategy: Have the federal government pick up the tab for testing. NCLB is an indirect way to stick states with an unfunded mandate. Testing systems are not cheap and states are quite poor at the moment. Will Utah be the first domino to tip, followed by other states with small populations? Why not use an RttT-like strategy and say, “Dear States, we’ll pay for the tests if you meet the following requirements: (1) You can’t go around making them easier all the time; (2) You can’t teach to the test every minute of he day; (3) Scores will be tied to teachers; Etc. (Or, again, just try out my testing idea below.)

Unfortunately, if the reauthorization comes too close to the mid-term election, Republicans may simply feel like opposing it to make Obama look bad – and to wait and see if they end up in better shape after the election, especially in a near-fillibuster-proof Senate where, if they ever wanted to, Democrats could flex some muscles they don’t even seem to know they have. This “wait and win” Republican strategy is a tempting two-fer (block Obama; win seats) and the longer reauthorization is put off, the more tempting it becomes.

(And they call economics the “dismal science.”)

Even though I know it’s a losing proposition, I’d like to take a shot at redesigning NCLB in some significant way and engaging in detailed discussion about the pros and cons of various ideas.

But before we talk about the “what”, let’s revisit the “when”. Mr. Vander Ark advocates putting off reauthorization for an additional year. His reasoning is that in the next 12-months we may see new and promising practices come out of RttT and i3 that could guide us in making better choices for NCLB 2.0. As I have said before, his idea makes sense. But his notion would, I think, need to be pushed even harder to yield good results.

Maybe I’ve got too much time on my hands these days, but I actually re-read RttT, i3, and – believe it or not – I attempted to read all of NCLB. (What was I thinking?) With regard to the timing of reauthorization and the potential availability of new ideas, I don’t see how RttT or i3 grants could yield innovations that were conceived, implemented, validated, and packaged within the next year. In my experience, three years is the minimum amount of time necessary to create and codify a significant educational practice, model, or process; five is more likely. Postponing reauthorization until we have something good to reauthorize is the right idea (explored in more detail below); hoping this will happen in a year seems optimistic. That said, Mr. Vander Ark has much more experience in this area than I do, and I sincerely hope his timeline prevails over mine.

The set of reforms comprised by NCLB 1.0 is not inspiring. Tweaking them here and there is not likely to produce much improvement. And without significant improvement in NCLB, I believe we face “reform fatigue” in the coming decade. How many people, pundits, and philanthropists can keep giving of their money and their minds beyond a 15- or 20-year time span? I don’t even like consulting any more in an NCLB 1.0-driven world. It’s just too depressing to see my once-inspired clients so scared to try anything new that they end up with test-prep-dominated, “Beaver Cleaver” curricula.

Now, let’s talk about changing NCLB itself.

0. (AND I CALL THIS “RECOMMENDATION ZERO” INTENTIONALLY BECAUSE IT HAS A 0% CHANCE OF BEING ADOPTED). Let’s call for a hiatus in reform in order to foster a period of intense research and rejuvenation. I recommend five years during which NCLB should be repealed in its entirety so that public and private organizations have time to develop significant innovations in an education culture that may finally embrace innovation if we just turn off the heat for a little while (knowing, of course, that the burner will be back on full force by a date certain).

If you haven’t worked in 15-25 schools in the last couple of years, you really should just try popping your head in the door, speaking (privately and off the record) with a few teachers and principals, and asking yourself, “How fed up are these people with working so hard to achieve so little?” Most folks in education are the ones who “work hard and follow the rules” and many feel cruelly manipulated by NCLB.

We can’t pump out versions of reform the way Microsoft pumps out versions of Windows. We need shiny new “Apple” reforms with cool products "that just work" and maybe even a nifty ad campaign, too. Seriously folks, it does not look like we are going to get NCLB right in the near future. Let’s take Mr. Vander Ark’s postponement idea and super-size it. At the same time, let’s take some RttT-like cash and create some real innovations in education. Then we can rebuild NCLB like Apple built OSX instead of the way Microsoft built Vista.

Having at least attempted to read the ESEA of 2001, I did notice some simple patterns of language that could easily be addressed in reauthorization.

1. ELIMINATE PET PROGRAMS. The most egregious of these in NCBL 1.0 was Reading First. By my count, at least $6 billion was spent on early reading instruction for no significant gain. Recent research shows that kids in RF-approved programs are better word callers but that their comprehension is no better than kids in non-RF-approved programs. There could be many reasons why this happened, and I’m sure RF-supporters will fight to the death to make them known. I have made an extensive study over the years of early reading and of RF, in particular, including the ridiculous reading programs that were approved through it, and I conclude that the program was wildly successful at the wrong thing simply because it was based on a flawed model of reading – and suspect science. Why we didn’t just use Marie Clay’s work and Reading Recovery as the basis for RF is beyond me. In any case, let’s not spend any more dribs and drabs of what little money we have on small-scale projects, especially those with specious scientific backgrounds.

RECOMMDATION: Get small programs out of NCLB and keep the focus on accountability.


2. ILL-DEFINED LANGUAGE. Throughout the ESEA of 2001, we find phrases like “high quality teachers” and “challenging academic content standards” and “challenging student academic achievement standards” and “high student achievement” and “scientifically based” etc. Let’s be clear: these terms may be well-intentioned, but we all know they are meaningless and, ironically, have been rendered even more meaningless by their use as part of NCLB over the last seven years.

RECOMMENDATION: Redefine important concepts in meaningful terms by “indexing” them to reality.

Take the word “challenging.” In the context of NCLB, this is just a euphemism for hard tests. And where do we all go now for hard tests? NAEP, SAT, ACT, TIMMS, PISA. I swear that in seven years I’ve never heard anyone say “Gosh, that Wisconsin reading test is a real humdinger, ain’t it, Bob, especially where rigor, reliability, and validity of data are concerned!”

On the “challenging academic standards front” we may be making some progress through CCSSI but we’re perhaps as much as a decade away from this work actually making a difference in the lives of teachers and kids nationwide – and let’s not forget that the “rigor” part of the standards equation will always come back to a test – and the National Governor’s Association, and CCSSI project in general, support the notion that each state should be free to create their own testing systems and set their own passing benchmarks. Tell me again, why do we think is a good idea? Didn't we learn our lesson last time about what life is like with 50 different tests -- and passing scores that change with the whims of politics?

Personally, I can not believe that we are going to repeat the worst mistake we’ve ever made in education reform by allowing 50 states to create 50 different tests again – and to tacitly approve their efforts to fool around with their tests, their data, their passing scores, their procedures, etc. If data is so important to us, why do we accept bad data from the States? Why do we codify into law their right to produce it? And why did we create an incentive system that has facilitated what Secretary Duncan terms “The Race to the Bottom”?

As for my favorite term, “scientifically based”, we have two resources – crammed into one agency – that are pretty good: The IES Gold Standards and the What Works Clearinghouse (also part of IES). As a result of NCLB, the issue of scientifically-based educational practice has achieved full-fledged unicorn status. What percentage of studies in the US have met IES Gold standards and are listed as approved by the What Works Clearinghouse? I’ll bet it’s less than 5% of those submitted, and if you press me, I’ll say it’s even lower than that. Regardless, we have an approach to defining what “scientifically based” means in education. Why not use it? The phase “scientifically based” works for no one without a real-world definition. And I don’t think most people understand how damaging this one tiny problem with NCLB has been.

Worse that that, keeping “scientifically based” undefined cuts both ways as major publishers release “fake” research in order to win adoptions. Just last week I had to burst a superintendent’s bubble by showing him that all submitted studies for a major reading program have been deemed invalid by the What Works Clearninghouse. According to our own government there is no valid research support for a reading program which we, the taxpayers, have been spending millions of dollars on for years. NCLB 2.0 could solve the problem easily. Ideally, we would define valid research and create criteria for responsible innovation as well.

RECOMMENDATION: Replace key terms and concepts with their real-world definitions. If we suspect the definitions will change, gather all terms and definitions in an appendix so they can be easily be updated and referenced.


3. LACK OF PRACTICAL ACCOUNTABILITY. The irony of passing accountability legislation without useful ways of applying accountability is something we should note now and address in the future through NCLB 2.0. I have worked with schools that have missed AYP 3-4 years in a row; nothing happens. I have been with even more schools in “corrective action”; much paper is shuffled, many look nervous, but again nothing happens. Perhaps strangest of all are the schools I have worked with who have ventured into to the depths of year 7 and beyond. Nothing has ever happened by way of any form of accountability to any school I have ever worked with -- and I do not advertise talismanic powers in this regard. While the law currently provides for “things to happen”, they rarely do. In fact, I have never seen a school closed, a staff fired, or even a principal let go for failure to improve student achievement (for other reasons, yes; for anything having to do with teaching or learning, never). What we have is a kind of public embarrassment system, not an accountability system. Shame is a motivator. But not a very reliable one.

RECOMMENDATION: Design a unified approach to accountability that works faster than the current one and that frames accountability in terms of concrete actions that are meaningful to the people who work in districts and schools. Let’s at least talk about the “nuclear” option. I’ll tell you what motivates me: when my business isn’t making any money or when my boss is out for my head. It’s not pretty. It’s not fun. But for many people, true change only occurs through tangible direct and very logical motivation. And the most logical motivation I know for many Americans is a potential loss of or change in their employment status. Let’s not pussyfoot around on this one. We all know what we’re talking about when we talk about “tying teachers to test scores”. But remember, teachers aren’t the only people who should be held to account. In fact, they are the last in a long and sorry chain. First up, school board members, superintendents, and district office administrators. Leadership starts at the top and so too should accountability. Building principals would be next. Then, after all that has been figured out, then – and only then – is it right to bring direct accountability to the classroom.

I like to note every chance I get, that the only group held directly responsible for their performance in our current system are children. They can’t vote. They don’t make money. Marian Wright Edelman can't protect them all. We must never forget that they are compelled by law to put up with the laws for which we advocate. They are the most vulnerable human beings in the system. And they are the only ones who may currently find their lives altered significantly by high-stakes testing. Everyone else in the system is either protected or given a free pass.


4. FIX TESTING. Most of the problems associated with NCLB could be fixed or at least mitigated by a smartly designed testing system. If the devil is in the details, then it’s time to give the devil his due, use the resources we have at hand, and actually fix this problem. Contrary to the Rumsfeldian logic of “going to school with the tests we have”, we’d all be better off if we simply used the tests we trust.

Here’s a solution. I’m sure there are many things wrong with it. And I do welcome anyone who will take a moment to point them out to me.

1. Test at grades 4 and 8 only with the NAEP. Yes, this would require changes in the NAEP. But scaling the NAEP to serve higher numbers of kids is not rocket science. The test should also be given via computer-adaptive-testing. This means getting enough computers into schools but we all want to do that anyway. I recommend testing in reading, writing, and math. But I’m happy to toss in science, too, if someone insists.

2. Test at grade 11 with the SAT or ACT. We could set three passing “bands”: Basic would mean a student scored high enough to meet the minimum acceptable score for admittance to a 2-year college in his state. Proficient would mean that a student scored higher than the median score for admittance to all public 4-year colleges in his state; Advanced would mean that a student scored higher than the top score for admittance to the top 4-year college in his state. Basic achievers would know they had a shot to get into a 2-year college; Proficient achievers would have a shot to get into the bottom 50% of state 4-year institutions; Advanced kids whould have a shot at any public 4-year school in the state. This would be known as “college-readiness” and it would replace the useless definitions we are arguing over now. You’re either ready for college or you’re not. And we might as well use admissions standards as the bar. It’s better than arguing over things like who has 21st century skills or who learned more facts about Western Civilization.

3. Additional HS grad options. Obviously, kids who scored below Basic would not receive high school diplomas – right away. But why couldn’t they just stay in school or choose to come back at some point in the future? I’ve seen how this works in other countries. You can’t let 25-year old juniors play on the basketball team but you can let them repeat geometry. Who knows? After a few years in the world of work, they might figure out that going to college isn’t such a bad deal after all.

4. Abolish the GED. Why, if we want kids to graduate from conventional high schools, do we offer them the tantalizing psychological bribe of a so-called “equivalency” degree? The GED is in no way, shape, or form equivalent to taking classes in high school. In a society where a college education is the currency of the day, and a good high school education is the only way to get there, offering a different and patently inferior way to meet this important goal simply doesn’t make sense. If you disagree, ask yourself this: “Would you want a child of yours to enter high school at 9th grade with his or her sites set on dropping out at age 16 and taking the GED?”

This approach to testing would have several important advantages over the current approach as outlined in NCLB 1.0:

1. One nation, one set of tests. No more issues related to which state’s test is harder or easier than another. Kids cross state lines all the time. Why should education depend on geography? Kids in Texas deserve the same quality of schooling that kids in Massachusetts seem to be getting at the moment.

2. No more test-prep foolishness. When do SAT-takers prep for the SAT? Right before they take it – not every day of their lives. At present, the NAEP cannot be prepped for because no one knows ahead of time whether they are going to take it or what it looks like. In the model described here, everyone would know when they were taking it, but with computer-adaptive-testing, they would have a much harder time predicting what would be on any individual child’s test. Who knows? Our country might even go back to teaching again.

3. No more bogus data from the states. Why do we all trust NAEP test data over state test data? Because we know the states fudge their data for political reasons, and we know that the folks who handle the NAEP don’t make such self-interested calculations. Letting states run their own testing systems is like letting the fox into the henhouse. Given how much we all lust over data these days, you’d think we’d be willing to do what it takes to get numbers we could trust.

4. Less narrowing of the curriculum. With less testing and less test-prep, teachers could go back to actually teaching subjects again. Maybe we’d have time for BOTH content and skills? (Oh no, Common Core and P21 would have to stop fighting!)

5. No unfunded mandates for the states. No state testing means no state testing systems to fund. What senator or representative wouldn’t do cartwheels over that? With fewer tests to fund, the national budget for testing would be considerably smaller, and the government could probably pick it up without too much trouble.

6. No standards to argue about. Has anyone ever noticed that the tests we trust the most (SAT, ACT, NAEP, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) don’t have standards documents associated with them? With the right testing system, standards are not needed. Or, if you happen to be a diehard standards fan, you can take the CCSSI model – or anybody else’s – and make it work for your state, district, school, or classroom. In short, if we fix testing, we can have our cake (standards) and eat it, too (consistent rigor and valid achievement data). And if we get too "fat", we can dump standards any time and just rely on the tests like we do now with the ACT, SAT, NAEP, etc.

I do not believe I have seen any research that conclusively supports the notion of a country testing its kids more than three times during their school career. Grades 4, 8, and 11 should be fine. And states would, of course, be free to create their own formative assessments if they wanted to. Smart testing means testing at key points in the system – and learning at all the other points.

What many countries do well, that we do poorly, is provide high-quality targeted intervention in pre-testing grades. NCLB 2.0 should be redirect all SES money (because it doesn’t seems to have helped much except to line the pockets of tutoring companies) and these funds should go toward developing the best scientifically-researched targeted interventions for reading, math, and writing at grades 1, 3, 7, and 10. Kids who don’t pass 4th and 8th grade tests should be retained at least one year and given focused help. But any intervention and retention component of NCLB 2.0 should be carefully weighed and, if enacted, phased in slowly over a multi-year period.

If what I have described above has fatal flaws in it, let me know. At the same time, feel free to try patching them up with your own good ideas. Testing needs to be fixed – and fast. Also, those of us who have long opposed testing – and I count myself in that group – need to move on and realize that high-stakes testing is now a fixture of our culture, for better or worse; I, for one, will start working with it andnot against it because I no longer feel it is constructive to keep closing the barn door when the cow ran out years ago. Despite a willingness I have perceived on the part of many to solider on with the tests we have, I don’t think any of us could honestly look each other in the eyes and say “NCLB 2.0 represents the future of education in our country,” if we don’t fix testing.

We can fix NCLB, and I believe that fixing it right is the best political strategy for achieving consensus during reauthorization.

So, we can play politics and fund our pet programs and puff up our chests during big speeches at Rotary Club meetings, and pat ourselves on the back about rigorous educations for our kids and high-quality teachers and college-readiness – or we can just make NCLB work. The ball is in our court, and it’s time to stop practicing our backhand.

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since I wrote about this very topic in a column for U.S. News and World Report this week, I'll share my article as a response

link to article here, text below

The languishing reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is turning lawmakers into educational Michael Corleones, pulling them back into a business many fervently wish was over. Although the landmark education law is overdue for its scheduled five-year overhaul, contentiousness left the last Congress unable to even get a bill out of committee. This year other issues like the economic recovery bill, healthcare, and the "card check" unionization bill made it easy for Congress to put off the tough work of revamping the law.

Undeterred, after a national "listening tour" Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he wants to see a new version of the law passed early next year. Duncan's challenge is to ensure that when Congress finally does finish its work, the emphasis on underserved students, accountability, and reform are maintained.

The path to success is daunting because serious fault lines lie just below the surface of the seemingly broad support for reforming America's education system. Debate over No Child reauthorization is likely where they will spill into the open on Capitol Hill.

Because of the structure of the economic recovery act, Congress had little control over what Secretary Duncan did with key parts of the $100 billion in stimulus money dedicated to education. So far Duncan and President Obama have pleasantly surprised many observers by holding a tough line on reform. That, of course, has not endeared them to education's array of interest groups. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten recently derided Duncan's policies as "Bush III" in the Washington Post.

Yet if special interest groups and less reform-friendly members of Congress can't change Duncan's plans for "Race to the Top" school reform competition among states, they can work their will on the reauthorization process for the No Child law. Indications are that they're planning to do exactly that in a political environment favoring them.

The legislative coalition that supported the 2001 law is gone. Sen. Ted Kennedy died earlier this year. Sen. Judd Gregg is no longer even the ranking Republican on the Senate education committee. In the House of Representatives, former education committee chairman John Boehner is now the Republican minority leader with a lot more on his plate than schools.

That leaves current education committee Chairman George Miller, a California Democrat, as the last man standing from the "big four" that forged the final bipartisan deal with President Bush in 2001. Miller, whose long career in Congress is an everyday testament to the folly of term limits, has maintained consistent support for the No Child policy. But the three-decade veteran of Congress was unable to move a reauthorization bill out of his committee in late 2007 in the face of intense opposition from teachers' unions and other special interest groups and mixed signals from the Bush Administration

. It will not be any easier this time.

Democrats are skittish about the overall political climate, and losses in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia hardly build their confidence to take on key interest groups. For their part, despite a great deal of bipartisan consensus on the substance education policy, leading Hill Republicans are sending signals that political bipartisanship may not be possible this time around. Republican leadership on the issue comes from state leaders like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and out of work politicians, for instance former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, rather than elected Republicans in Washington.

Substantively, the law does need some changes. The accumulating evidence indicates that standards-based reform by itself will be insufficient to truly transform today's public education system, so bolder ideas are essential. Meanwhile, after seven years there is an accumulation of housekeeping issues demanding action, especially around some of the law's accountability rules. Secretary Duncan also needs to figure out how to use the federal law to sustain the Race to the Top efforts after that money is spent. In particular, he must be able to use both other federal dollars and his regulatory authority to continue to incent and reward leading states.

There are some hopeful signs. Duncan's emphasis on expanding successful charter schools and turning around low-performing schools are as important as they are overdue. On the Hill, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado is planning to introduce an ambitious bill to improve teacher training, and Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu plans to propose dramatic changes to federal charter school policy. All those ideas should be part of a revised No Child Left Behind law. But sensing a chance to make gains in the 2010 elections, Republicans are not inclined to enable victories for Democrats, especially ones like Bennet who they see as politically vulnerable.

That's why despite everything else on his plate, if he's serious about seeing education reform in 2010 President Obama must expend political capital on it himself. So far education policy is providing a surprising success for the president. Few thought the issue would be the green shoot it has become on Obama's agenda. Improving the No Child law and firmly embedding the Obama-Duncan stamp on federal education policy is the president's chance to see education reform through and claim a genuine policy accomplishment for 2012. Or, conversely, it's an opportunity to watch reform unravel as status-quo-challenging changes in American education too often do.

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At the risk of over-simplification, here is how I see the landscape now:

Who likes NCLB:

• Business and education entrepreneurs like it because it puts the focus on results.
• Civil rights groups like it because it focuses attention on disparities in educational results (the achievement gap).
• Some parents like it because they associate it with greater performance transparency – they can see how their children’s schools are doing.

Who dislikes NCLB:

• Many parents are concerned because they are told by their teachers and principals that it reduces schools to test prep.
• Many affluent parents especially dislike it because they believe there is nothing in it for their children.
• Some conservatives dislike it because it represents an inappropriate Federal intrusion into matters that the Constitution reserved for the states.
• Some liberals (and liberal-minded) people dislike it because it seems to reduce public education to a focus on a relatively narrow set of basic skills.

(There are of course many more reasons that people like or dislike NCLB, I’m focusing on the big ones that might provide a clue as to how to build a new coalition.)

Based on these observations, here is my formula for renewing NCLB

1. Focus on making major leaps in the quality of standards and assessments. These new standards and assessments must be very carefully crafted to measure the skills that are the most important to the success of young people. This is primarily a technical challenge.

1. Simultaneously focus on the potential of innovation in education and re-position NCLB as partly an ongoing “Innovation Fund” for LEAs and others who are prepared to demonstrate results. (And, as Sandy Kress suggested, focus more on secondary schools than the original NCLB did.)

1. Then explain to parents and the public why these standards (and assessments) are valid measure of their children’s progress and their school’s quality. Explain why we need innovation to accelerate progress. It needs to be very clear how these news standards and assessments are strong measures of the skills that their children will need to succeed. This is primarily a communications challenge.

Then, build the winning coalition from the bottom up by getting parents and the public to demand that their children get an education that provides them with these skills. Parents and others on the fence will also be attracted to the focus on innovation.

Finally, I agree with Tom Vander Ark that it may be wise to wait a little while to give time for Race to the Top and the Innovation Fund to begin to have impact and make the ground more fertile for this approach.

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In terms of policy, Bruce and Pedro largely have it right. (I will get to Congressional prospects below.) Their comments largely reflect the positions of the Forum on Educational Accountability, as expressed in the Joint Statement on NCLB and Empowering Schools and Improving Learning. The latter says federal policy should rest on three legs: opportunity to learn, strategies to support improvement, and outcomes that incorporate a rich array of evidence of student learning. The punishment approach built into NLCB must be replaced with assistance. Interventions should be tailored to specific problems and rely on reasonable evidence they will produce improvement – rather than the sort of unsupported ideological prescriptions that underpin much of NCLB and "Race to the Top." Expectations for improvement should be anchored in real-world evidence of feasibility.

I would point out that most national civil rights groups seek significant changes in federal law. More than 20 signed the Joint Statement which included points such as:

-- "Provide a comprehensive picture of students' and schools' performance by moving from an overwhelming reliance on standardized tests to using multiple indicators of student achievement in addition to these tests."

-- " Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in order to provide better, more timely information about student learning."

-- "Decrease the testing burden on states, schools and districts by allowing states to assess students annually in selected grades in elementary, middle schools, and high schools."

The reasons why NCLB must be overhauled are clear, as documented by FairTest and many other organizations and researchers: NCLB is an educational disaster, despite a few positive points such as the requirement to produce disaggregated data.

But what are the Congressional prospects? Both houses of Congress remain deeply divided on many ESEA/NCLB issues. Republicans are split between those who seek less federal interference and those who still hold to George W. Bush's NCLB. Some Democrats want the law unchanged or even intensified, while others look to end the disaster caused by the law's over-test and punish approach.

If Duncan recognizes the need to overhaul testing, AYP and sanctions while maintaining disaggregated data and establishing clear guidelines to prevent schools, districts and states from ignoring underserved populations, he might put together a bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress. The FEA proposals could be a basis for that bipartisanship since they shift away from the punitive federal hand while providing strong federal support for improving schools and maintaining reasonable expectations for improvement.

Pedro is correct, a move to push through a law with only minimal changes or an intensified version of NCLB would generate great opposition. It may be, as Bruce fears, that quick-fix politics combined with enough pressure from the White House could lead to a reauthorization that merely shuffles the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Meanwhile, NCLB supporters could block movement on a new law, thus retaining it into 2011. Sandy, for example, wants a one year delay, bringing us closer to declaring most of the schools in the US failing. If something cannot emerge from committees by Memorial Day, the looming fall 2010 election campaigns are likely to preclude passage.

Finally, the outcome will also rest on activism, on the willingness of parents, teachers, students, community people concerned about their schools to weigh in loudly with members of Congress. That also means organizations must help prepare and mobilize people.

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It would not be a stretch to think that it is unlikely for the Obama administration and Congress to put together a winning majority for reauthorization of ESEA. But, one wonders whether that is the "easy" way out. Maybe – or rather -- the reauthorization should incorporate the same type of collaborative leadership strategy that was used when the unlikely combination of Senators Gregg and Kennedy, Representatives Boehner and Miller and President Bush reached agreement on NCLB, a law that was intended to benefit America's students. Reauthorization is an opportunity for our nation's leaders to work together and demonstrate that education and America's students are more important than partisan special interests.

It could be quite important that what should change is the mindset that the reauthorization has to look like all the others that preceded it. Now is the time to think innovatively and write a law that encourages bold, new policy thinking that allows states and school districts to try new ideas that break traditional education molds. Today's student is different and capable of harnessing the real potential of technology to use as a learning tool. Congress needs to encourage a menu of policy requirements that afford flexibility for states to meet the unique needs of their citizens.

Finally, what should not change is the absolute need to transparently be accountable for achieving results with all students. Accountability is one provision of the next ESEA that should not be negotiable. Every student deserves a high-quality, highly-qualified teacher who is rewarded for successful teaching. And their schools should be led by dynamic school leaders who empower their staffs, articulate bold, challenging visions, and insist on meeting designated benchmarks for continuous improvement.

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I think it will be a very difficult challenge in this environment to get any consensus on reauthorization, much less one anywhere near as strong as the one that birthed NCLB. Having said that, I do believe there are important areas that need legislative attention, and I hope for action that will move solid reform forward.

First, there are good policies enshrined in ARRA, particularly in the four assurances, as well as promised Administration policies around RTTT that would make for worthy enhancements to ESEA.

Second, the focus on elementary in ESEA and the strategy of continuous improvement should be refined and updated to a broader focus on secondary as well as the establishment of a clear goal of college/career readiness for all.

Third, the repairs begun by Secretary Spellings in the use of growth, differentiated consequences, and the use of multiple measures that are, and must be, valid, reliable, and objective should be featured and made manifest in reauthorization.

But any attempt, however disguised, to weaken the accountability that made NCLB the effective engine for change that it has become should be ferociously resisted. Look at this discussion from the civil rights community that was aroused in 2008 when the accountability provisions were threatened.

http://swiftandchangeable.org/index.php/2008/06/18/the-urban-league-and-the-alliance-weigh-?blog=2

There can be no consensus if the real action is to retreat to the days prior to standards based reform, or indeed the days prior to NCLB, when disadvantaged students were either not regularly assessed or their assessed performance didn't matter, especially in the ratings of schools or the evaluation of the performance of the adults.

It's great to talk about new sorts of assessments. It's great to talk about higher standards. It's great to talk about more flexibility. All of these things are fine except when, and if, it turns out that what we're really talking about is going back to a policy of not holding the system and its players accountable for the achievement of disadvantaged students.

Look at recent behavior in certain states and districts. In Illinois, for example, they've lowered their performance standards and blamed NCLB. So, let's assume NCLB is gutted. What will those fine folks do? Go back to their "higher" standards once the policy no longer pinches when disadvantaged kids do poorly? Of what use are standards if achievement to them does not matter? Will they reverse the policy of gaming accountability by conveniently postponing the assessment of disadvantaged high schoolers, when the scores of those kids no longer matter?

We can get to common ground in improving federal law, but if the real agenda of change is to weaken, not repair and enhance, I hope and believe that that effort will be utterly and totally defeated.

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Dear NJ Colleagues,

I regret that I do not have time this Monday for a full post; I'll be back later in the week. But I would like to encourage us all -- and even remind myself here -- that our task is not defend or decry NCLB but to make policy recommendations for its reauthorization, ideally recommendations that are both specific and actionable.

I hope, as the week progresses, that a kind of "virtual" policy paper emerges from our discussions. Let's all try to be specific. Let's try to imagine what the author's of the ESEA will be thinking about. Rather than conceptual categories, let's put concrete ideas on the table that might catch a Senator's ear or at least get Mr. Duncan to throw his two cents into the discussion. I think it would be great if he commente dont this -- I'd sure love to know what he's really thinking.

Rarely, it seems to me, do we have the opportunity to weigh in on a policy that has yet to be created. But Ms. Krigman has offered just such an opportunity here. Let's take the lead on this one and really give it a good shot.

NCLB signaled the commitment of leadership to measurement, school accountability, public school choice, teacher effectiveness, and most importantly, equitable outcomes. These aims are more important than ever and should undergird reauthorization of ESEA.

The Department is rolling out the largest and most aggressive reform package in history. Congress should delay reauthorization for at least a year and let Race to the Top and Invest in Innovation change the landscape and the nature of the public debate.

The system we have will not achieve the goals the President has laid out. We face an innovation challenge. We need new instructional models, adaptive assessments, targeted tutoring, and school formats that blend the best of online learning and onsite support. Like Energy, Health, Transportation, and Defense, the Department of Education should create partnerships with the private sector to meet the enormous challenge of creating the system of education that American students deserve.

The Supplemental Educational Services component incorporated into NCLB demonstrated the responsiveness of education entrepreneurs. Thousands of organizations have been providing targeted tutoring to low income students in failing schools—providing the same services that middle and upper income families can afford and at least partially offsetting the lack of quality academic options in their neighborhood. There’s a chance to do more and to reduce the sometimes adversarial role that districts have taken by framing SES2.0—comprehensive student supports that could take the form of in-school tutoring and extended day/year opportunities.

This ESEA should be forward leaning. It should incorporate online assessment and anticipate the continued growth of online learning. School networks that blend online and onsite learning and targeted tutoring should be harnessed in the effort to turn around thousands of struggling schools.

ESEA must reflect the ‘good school’ promise intended by NCLB—every family in America deserves access to at least one good public school. Fulfilling this promise requires strong support and strong accountability, new tools and new schools, and it will require public and private investment. The private sector is ready, willing, and able to help America meet the educational challenges of the next decade.

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There are limits to what the federal government can and cannot acoomplish in education and Congress and the administration must recognize and use them when reauthorizing ESEA. Teaching and learning occurs within schools and it is impossible for the federal government to manage inputs (resources, programs, staffing, regulations) from Washington, DC. in a manner that maximizes education within schools. Instead, the federal government must focus on defining and holding schools accountable for meaningful student outcomes. That means that ESEA should strengthen uniform standards, support better assessments and demand real accountability for results, while greatly consolidating the number of separately-funded federal programs.

If reauthorization makes the obvious steps, and listens to the voices of teachers and administrators, as well as scholars and advocates them then the reauthorization can be done well not quickly. On the other hand if the worst instincts of the Washington based political foundations and think tanks are the basis for the reauthorization again, all bets are off. Eight years of NCLB’s false assumptions, inaccurate measures, unfair accountability system, bad science and punishment of teachers and administrators are enough.

The formula for reinstating high regard for ESEA is pretty straight forward.

First, redirect the bill toward its original mission promoting equal educational opportunity for low income and minority students.

Student success must be the basis for evaluating the effect of Title I and other programs in ESEA. But student success must be defined accurately as the state of the art allows in clear, high measurable terms. The woeful crop of single shot tests, states are using must be replaced by a series of state of the art assessment systems that will measure the effect of ESEA programs. Assessments for students with disabilities and students who are learning English must be rethought and made much more accurate because the huge standard error for such students is a scandal. Better assessment systems will be expensive, but information to improve instruction and curriculum is critical to improved student learning.

The new assessments must be aimed at fewer clearer, higher, internationally benchmarked standards, and must be designed to clearly assess the effect of ESEA programs. However, ESEA cannot require that states adopt the new common core because that would give the US Department of Education control of the standards and that would be a disaster politically.

Teaching must be set on a path of continual improvement by addressing all phases of improved instruction. Improving instruction through collaboration, improved professional development and better instructional materials is step one because it will affect the huge majority of teachers who are in place and will be there for the coming years. Second, a greater percentage of the best students in high school and in undergraduate schools must become career teachers and administrators. Attracting the best requires paying for their education, completely just like they were division I athletes and then paying them and treating them like professionals. Colleges of education should be assisted to provide the foundation good teachers and administrators need when they begin their careers. Alternative paths to certification ought to be explored but the data are clear 90 day wonders do not measure up to fully prepared professionals. Finally the evaluation of teachers and administrators must become part of the continual improvement process, so they whole system is focused on continual improvement. Evaluation may lead to paying teachers and administrators for student success, if success is measured by multiple valid and reliable measures.

Another important step to a successful reauthorization is an accountability system that is transparent and functional not utopian. The accountability system must promote continual improvement where ESEA funds are used rather than play gotcha. The goal must be steady growth in outcomes for students served by ESEA programs, not 100% scoring at a utopian level. Accountability must be a gate that swings two ways recognizing and rewarding success and eliminating bad practice and impeding student learning.

Success must be rewarded via a new formula program that pays off for success at graduation for outcomes that will aide student on the Monday after they graduate from high school in terms of careers or college readiness. Student success must be defined in outcomes that have meaning for students and their parents so motivation can be both intrinsic and extrinsic.

Then Title I must promote partnering with the community to enhance the possibility of student success by knocking down barriers to learning. Partnering is a process, not a document or a prescription. Community attention to barriers to learning will add value to improved instruction. An immediate problem in partnering is a lack of meaningful common metrics to evaluate progress and identify where adjustments are needed. All of the grant programs in ESEA must be conducive to partnering so that schools can have a continuum of services available based on a continuum of need.

Finally, ESEA must refocus on success for low income and minority students means by improving the targeting in current law. Current law treats low income students concentrated in urban schools much better than low income students in rural schools. The first step towards rural parity is using free and reduced cost counts from the child nutrition program as the basis for counting students for allocating funds. Urban students are in a few, less than 200 cities around the country so relying on enrollment over the percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced cost meals favors cities over the over 5,000 rural districts many of which have poverty rates higher than their urban counterparts.

It’s a pretty straightforward agenda to get school people to support the next reauthorization. Ignoring the voices of educators will cause the reauthorization to drag on unnecessarily.

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Before the administration moves forward to re-authorize ESEA, more commonly referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it would be wise if it took time to reflect upon why the law is now so widely scorned. Opposition to NCLB is widespread among large numbers of liberals and conservatives, as well many educators throughout the country. Without the benefit of a careful assessment, the administration runs the risk of turning education into an issue that generates opposition and disaffection, not just from its conservative critics, but also from important members of its base.

When NCLB was adopted by congress eight years ago, few would have guessed that it would eventually generate such broad-based opposition and contempt. Championed by respected legislative leaders George Miller and Ted Kennedy, and promoted enthusiastically by President George W. Bush, the law was adopted with bipartisan support. This was a remarkable achievement, not only because very few policy issues have been embraced by politicians from both parties in recent years, but because the law significantly expanded the role of the federal government in public education. Prior to NCLB, the federal role had been largely limited to enforcement of the civil rights provisions of ESEA. While the protections it contained for the educational rights of students with special needs, language minorities and poor children generally were important, lack of funding for these mandates had relegated the federal government to the sidelines in education and most policies were controlled by the states. NCLB ushered in a new era of federal intervention, and the once marginal US Department of Education was empowered with the task of monitoring academic standards and systems of accountability adopted by the states.

With its increased authority, the Department of Education used its mandate to compel states to adopt standards and comply with NCLB’s testing requirements. As might have been expected, opposition to the intrusion of these largely unfunded federal mandates gradually grew, both in red states like Utah and Virginia, and in blue states like Connecticut. Opposition to NCLB was even more strenuous in middle class suburban districts that resented having their schools labeled failing if they did not achieve average yearly progress (AYP) for each designated sub group. Many educators also resented the fact that “teaching to the test” became the natural outcome of a policy that judged the performance of schools largely by test scores.

With this very brief, albeit biased, summary of NCLB’s history, we return to the question of what the administration will do now as it seeks to adopt a new set of guidelines for federal education policy. The choice, in its simplest terms, seems to boil down to two basic options: 1) tinker with the law by removing some of the more objectionable features in the hopes that bipartisan support might once again emerge, or 2) undertake a more radical and comprehensive revision. For obvious reasons, the first option will likely be more appealing to the administration, which may well conclude that it would be easier to build consensus around a law with which legislators are familiar than to venture into unchartered territory.

However, while this approach may seem practical, my reading of the current political climate related to public education leads me to believe that this course of action is likely to produce more opposition and rancor than the administration has bargained for. Particularly, given the deep divisions over controversies like the state of the economy, our military’s involvement in two wars, and reforms in energy policy, it would be unwise to allow education to degenerate into a bitterly partisan issue. More importantly, the administration must realize that staying the course in public education is unlikely to produce “the change we need.”

To be fair, NCLB has done two important things: it has drawn attention to wide disparities in student achievement that correspond to the racial and socio-economic backgrounds of children (the so-called achievement gap), and it has held districts responsible for raising achievement for all children. These are important accomplishments, however, drawing attention to a problem is not the same as solving it. The clearest indication that something still is very wrong is that we continue to have dropout rates of close to 50% in most major urban districts across the country. Moreover, though it may have been an unintended consequence, NCLB has distorted the relationship between teaching and assessment in many schools. Schools need greater guidance on how to adopt teaching strategies that have proven effective in meeting the learning needs of academically and socially disadvantaged students. They also need help in figuring out how to develop and sustain Opportunity to Learn Standards (OTL) that are essential for creating environments in which quality teaching and higher levels of learning may flourish.

Given the high stakes involved in the education debates, it would be wise for the administration to pull back a bit. Instead of moving forward with more mandates (i.e., requiring states to adopt some form of performance pay and and lift the cap on charter schools) and offering a slightly modified version of NCLB, it would be wise for the administration to take the lead by clarifying what high standards should consist of. There are a small but significant number of high performing, high poverty schools. Some, but not all of these are charter schools. Rather than setting up a competition among schools, the administration should adopt policies that encourage schools to collaborate with and learn from each other. There are also a number of districts that have made tremendous progress in closing the achievement gap. The accomplishments of these schools and districts should be used to encourage states to adopt policies and educational strategies that have proven effective elsewhere.

Instead of positioning itself as the issuer of mandates and the judge of who is winning the “race to the top,” the federal government should assume the role of cheerleader and promoter of higher standards and genuine innovation in education. It can specify that federal funds must be used to support the adoption of strategies that have proven effective elsewhere. It can also encourage states and school systems to adopt educational strategies that have contributed to success in other nations like Norway and Singapore, such as increased access to high quality early childhood education, site-based professional development for teachers in pedagogy and content, and school-business partnerships that promote the acquisition of technical skills in sectors where employment opportunities are most likely to grow.

Education is both a source of and a potential solution to many of the problems confronting our nation. It also continues to be the most viable resource at our disposal for protecting our democracy, rebuilding our economy and securing a better future for our citizens. Most Americans understand the importance of education, and that is why even during troubling times like these, it continues to be recognized as an important policy issue.

The administration would be wise to seize this opportunity to promote change, to address the failures of chronically under-performing schools and to foster innovative practices in public education. Instead of scolding teachers and deriding failing schools the administration must provide clear guidance regarding the types of reforms that are most likely to lead to improved academic outcomes. The re-authorization of ESEA provides an opportunity for this type of leadership. Let’s hope the administration can rise to the challenge.

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