The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) got a lot of things right – most especially equity and transparency. It demanded that all schools educate all of their students. And it demanded that the public, who pays for the schools and entrusts their children’s futures to them, get information on how well their schools – and their children – are doing. These are landmark improvements in the way our country approaches education.

But NCLB, like every law, has flaws. And some of them are big. We need to fix those things that were wrong and preserve those things that are right.

We also need to look carefully at the experiences of schools, districts, and states since 2002 to learn from them. In reshaping the law, we should consider the research during this period into what works – and what doesn’t – for our schools and students. Taken together, these lessons point to a few high-powered changes that can make it a more flexible and a more powerful tool for boosting overall achievement and closing gaps.

This time around, we need to use what we’ve learned about teachers to make the most of this critical element in student success. Since NCLB’s enactment, the body of research on the impact that teachers have on student achievement has grown ever more solid and convincing. So too have the number of studies showing the huge variation in teacher ability to grow student learning. We’ve also learned that the teacher evaluation systems used in the vast majority of districts fail to account for these distinctions. Finally, the flow of evidence attesting to the raw deal that low-income students and students of color get when it comes to teacher assignment continues unabated.

NCLB attempted to address issues of teacher quality and equity. And – because of problems with the statute itself, inattention from the U.S. Department of Education, and resistance at the state and local level – the law has failed to improve the quality of our teaching force and failed to ensure that low-income kids and kids of color get a fair shot at being assigned to strong teachers. This failure has undermined all other school, district, and state improvement investments and it’s wasted countless well-intentioned taxpayer dollars; because unless and until we get the teacher part right, no amount of time or treasure will create the sort of dramatic change our students and our nation need.

A new law needs to ensure that research-based teacher evaluation systems – that include a measure of how much teachers are helping their students learn – become the norm in our school districts. Ensuring that those systems are fair and accurate will take time – but the students who have been consistently shortchanged on teacher talent can’t wait. So, while we are building better evaluation systems, we need to start using, systematically, the most reliable indicators of teacher quality currently available, to make more rational and responsible decisions about who teaches whom.

Once the better evaluation systems are built, we’ll be able to provide critical feedback to teachers about what they’re doing right and where they need to improve. We’ll be able to use it to identify teachers from whom others can learn, to inform tenure decisions, and to prioritize effectiveness over seniority when layoffs must be made.

This time around, we need to get the balance between federal and state roles right. Under NCLB we learned that it has to be the federal government that sets the goals if we are going to be able to pick up the pace of improvement considerably – and, especially, if we are going to be able to do so for all of our students. We can’t succeed as a nation without high-achieving minority and low-income students.

We also learned that while setting the pace needs to be done at the federal level, states and localities do a better job of figuring how to make improvements that stick, and providing incentives, supports, and consequences for those schools that soar and those that fall behind. So we need to give states the responsibility – and the flexibility and freedom – to make the serious and dramatic changes that can turn around achievement in their communities and their schools. Under NCLB, it became clear that not all districts have the capacity to support, guide, and enforce turnaround. For those that do – and can teach others – great. For those that don’t, we have to demand that their states provide the supports we know matter the most for turning around a school.

And just as important as what we must do is what we cannot do. We can’t throttle back the demands that our schools deliver higher achievement for all and gap closing for low-income and minority students. Many will use the excuse of tight budgets: “How can you ask them to do more with less?” Many will suggest that it’s just unfair to expect students who face so many challenges outside of school to do well at school. And, many will say that until the parents or the communities or poverty itself changes, our schools are powerless to do much more than they are doing now.

There is solid evidence – starting with high-achieving schools in low-income and minority communities all over the nation – that disproves all of these mistaken concerns, concerns that are really just excuses. We need to believe in our districts, our schools, our teachers – and our children. We must give them the challenge, the tools, and the support they all need for the success they deserve.

I was encouraged by President Obama’s focus on education in last week’s State of the Union address, and I am especially encouraged that action will be taken on ESEA reauthorization sooner rather than later.

In the past two weeks, KnowledgeWorks has been involved with two education events worth a mention within the context of this discussion.

In Columbus, Ohio, a digital learning summit explored ways schools could operate more efficiently without losing academic integrity. In Washington this week, a cradle-to-career network convening brought together more than 30 cities – leaders in pre-K-12 schools, government, higher education, business and industry – all there because they are committed help children succeed from birth through careers.

These are new education reform options and concepts that, as Tom Vander Ark notes below, were not part of the discussion when NCLB was implemented in 2001. Today, these ideas must be part of a more innovative national education agenda -- particularly as part of the “new normal” that Secretary Duncan talks about.

One of the most important aspects of reauthorization is fixing accountability issues prior to the 2014 deadline. To do that, first we need to set high goals to ensure all students are college and career ready. Then we need to establish a flexible framework that gives states, districts, and schools the ability to design their own innovative strategies for ensuring all students are college and career ready.

Given limited resources, and lessons learned from NCLB, the federal government should narrow its focus and give more responsibility to states and districts for comprehensive reform. The federal government should dedicate the majority of its resources and technical assistance to chronically failing schools. We need to ensure that schools have the resources to tackle this challenge – and that means a more balanced funding stream for high schools (Right now, only a small portion of Title I funds flows to high schools.) and a better alignment of funding throughout the bill to ensure that our lowest-performing schools are prioritized for other sources of federal funding.

The answer to the question of whether or not Congress should consider piecemeal ESEA reauthorization or entertain a slimmed down K-12 bill is a simple “no.” Comprehensive reauthorization is necessary to address the challenges facing our school system. Anything short of that would jeopardize our collective success.

Finally, can the Race to the Top model translate to ESEA?

Because we don’t yet know whether RTTT has worked as designed, it’s difficult to answer that question. However, we do know the notion of competition can undermine equity and the funds going to the populations that need the funds the most. The Race to the top competition was great for innovation, but it presents serious challenges around equity. We have to ensure that our underperforming states have access to resources as well. A balanced approach could achieve this. We should also look for ways to allow high-performing districts and states to share best practices with and low-performing district and states to promote stronger outcomes.

ESEA reauthorization is an opportunity that Congress should not squander this year. The five-year law is now nine years old and educators and policymakers have had more than an ample opportunity to evaluate both the positive and negative aspects of it. For those students in kindergarten through ninth grade, NCLB is the only law they have ever known. For teachers younger than 30, NCLB is the only law they have taught under. And for the current generation of parents, NCLB is all they know. The time is now for Congress to work together and do what is best for American students to be prepared for a 21st century global world.

Just about everyone agrees that NCLB has some flaws. Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions are unnecessarily punitive, and the focus on third through eighth grade does not reflect our national priority on college and career readiness. Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) provisions, while well-intentioned, have not fulfilled the needs our districts have for effective teachers and principals. Year ago, Congress jettisoned Reading First, the cornerstone of the NCLB law. Clearly, the current version of ESEA needs revising and enhancement

Historically, we know that reauthorization is a serious challenge for Congress. Over the last few reauthorizations it has become increasingly clear that political views are as important as educational needs. We also know, based on the ESEA Blueprint released by the U.S. Department of Education last March and by reauthorization drafts “floated” by both parties over the past four years, that baby steps and small bites cannot and will not get to the heart of what needs to be fixed in ESEA. If Congress is serious about fixing ESEA, it must move forward with comprehensive reauthorization that truly changes the way the federal government is involved in education for the next generation of students.

Incremental change simply does not get at the heart of what our classrooms and students need most. By addressing individual issues, we attend to those topics that squeak the loudest or are the easiest to resolve. It does not provide an integrated approach to school improvement, nor does it embrace the complexity of what is the federal government's role in an issue that is primarily the domain of states and localities. Instead of a real solution and an improved ESEA, we would be left with a patchwork of random policies that bear little in common other than the year in which they were signed into law.

A comprehensive ESEA reauthorization is the right answer. This would mean revamping Title II, creating an acceptable definition of teacher and principal effectiveness and the resources to cultivate, recognize, and support it. The bill would include a better path to determine student success and academic achievement, moving beyond the current AYP model and toward a 21st Century assessment model. And, it would restore both greater responsibility and accountability to the localities, giving them a greater say in classroom decision making while making clear we all expect greater results. Critical to the successful implementation of ESEA is more and better education research to support state and local school decision making about teaching and learning. A strong evidence base must remain at the heart of our nation's education law, while offering a more accommodating definition of the "research" that drives the learning process.

We hear so much about America and the need for innovation to compete in a global economy. This means focusing on both turning around low achieving schools while at the same time advancing learning for students in the STEM arenas. This can be done by blending the foundations of the current NCLB with the priorities moved forward by Race to the Top. Race's four pillars provide a strong construct for the new ESEA. By focusing on standards (the new Common Core Standards), data systems and accountability, teacher quality, and the turnaround of low-performing schools, we continue to move the goals of NCLB we all shared forward, while focusing on the most pressing issues currently facing the American classroom. It now leaves Capitol Hill leaders to determine how best to invest in true teacher and principal quality and how to exponentially increase funding for the proven models of school turnaround. And, it still leaves Congress with the opportunity and flexibility to address pressing ESEA needs such as special education, STEM education programs, rural education, gifted education and local control.

ESEA reauthorization in 2011 will not be easy. But the most important actions are usually the ones that take the most work. For years now, the education community has talked about what needs to be fixed in NCLB. Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate realize that ESEA is a priority. President Obama put his shoulder behind reauthorization in last week's State of the Union address. This year could very well be the perfect opportunity for reauthorization. Now is the time to get to work and not shy away from making the tough decisions. We cannot afford to lose another generation of students, particularly when we know what we should be doing to improve K-12 education in the United States and to ensure a prosperous future for that generation.

In this time of divided government and a highly partisan environment, the temptation is certainly there to try to pass small fixes to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) instead of taking up a comprehensive bill. And while a piecemeal approach might be easier in the short run, it will almost certainly complicate matters in the long run.

First, there are so many intertwined issues within education policy and within NCLB that it’s really hard to take on one issue without opening a can of worms around another.

Second, each time you peel off a popular issue from a comprehensive bill you lessen the incentive to take up an overall reauthorization. Think of it as a long railroad train. Each time you take a car off, the train gets shorter and people are less inclined to jump on. But if you can keep the whole train running everyone can jump on their particular car and you can get the whole bill finished. By keeping the whole bill intact, you can include the issues that are distasteful to some while also giving them something sweet to make voting for the bill a little easier.

I’m convinced that the comprehensive approach is the best way forward and I’m more and more convinced that the Congress can get it done in 2011.

I was a member of the House of Representatives in 1994 when Democrats lost control for the first time in forty years. At that time, as the new Republican leadership came in, there was a lot of same dynamic taking place. Republicans had an aggressive agenda and the question was whether they would be able to work with President Clinton.

Out of that divided government came some significant bipartisan legislation, most notably welfare reform—one of the thorniest, most controversial issues that had bedeviled the Congress for a number of years. It took several tries, but significant welfare reform was enacted with support from both parties. So the precedent is there.

And unlike welfare reform, education reform has traditionally been a bipartisan issue. That bipartisan tradition seems to be playing out—something that Mike Petrilli pointed out in his post below when he referenced the joint conference call with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who served as U.S. Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush. Also very significant is that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio), was the chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee when NCLB was enacted. Not in recent memory has there been a speaker with the education policy background that Speaker Boehner brings. If the political decision is made to go ahead, Speaker Boehner, working with current House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, can move a major bill.

It is important to remember that NCLB is not going away. Until the Congress makes a change, NCLB’s provisions remain in effect and more and more schools will fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress and be labeled in need of improvement. In the last two years alone, the number of schools entering corrective action has increased fivefold. Without action, we’ll have far more of our schools under this label by 2014, when all students must be proficient in reading in math.

Finally, and most importantly, a comprehensive reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as NCLB, is the best way to address the needs of our nation’s low-performing high schools. Currently, about one-third of our nation’s high school students drop out every year; that percentage is even higher for low-income students and students of color. Forty years ago, the U.S. economy could afford to have large percentages of its students drop out of high school. But today, nearly 60 percent of jobs require some education after high school.

Under current law, the needs of the nation’s older students are not being met because high schools are not sufficiently included in federal education policy, including Title I. For example, high schools only receive 10 percent of Title I dollars even though they educate approximately 25 percent of our nation’s low-income students. Because many high schools do not receive federal dollars, they are not included in NCLB’s accountability system.

There are a number of ways that ESEA reauthorization can better address the needs of high schools. First, it can establish the goal that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers and hold states, districts, and schools accountable to this goal. Second, it can shift away from the one-size fits all school improvement system prescribed by the federal government to one that allows state and districts to determine the best reform strategies based on data and tailored to the unique needs of their low-performing secondary schools. Finally, it can support investments geared toward improving low-performing middle and high schools.

President Obama and Secretary Duncan are pitching the fix to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The fix is overdue. With the growth in online learning, the fix must consider all the students enrolled in virtual schools on a full and part time basis.

Before we get to that, let me join EdTrust’s Katie Haycock in lamenting the apparent abandonment of the ‘good school promise,’ the NCLB consensus that every American student deserved access to at least one good public school and a basic framework to make sure that we delivered on that promise.

Some have interpreted Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s focus on the nation’s lowest performing schools as a sign that the Obama administration will back off on setting strong improvement goals for the other 95 percent of our schools, returning us to an era when we left this matter to state and local leaders. Don’t be fooled about the wisdom of that approach. While states have done wonderful recent work in coming to agreement on common “college and work-ready” standards, their own track record of actually getting students to reach standards, by setting stretch goals, is extremely weak. Strong state leaders know they need federal leverage to set strong goals.

One thing that has changed since 2001 when NCLB was enacted is that there are enough scaled quality online learning providers that we can fulfill not only the good school promise, but the ‘good course promise.’ The only thing standing in the way of every student in America having a successful experience in math are the policies that prevent learning options.

Online learning is leading the way to a competency-based education system where individual students move at their own pace as they demonstrate mastery (see this iNACOL report for more on competency-based learning).

One specific problem with NCLB is that the focus on Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) is on measuring schools and cohorts of students as opposed to individual performance and growth.

The graduation rate measurement is also a problem for large statewide online schools. It would also be problematic in models that enabled students to choose online courses from multiple providers. For example, if a 12th grade student enrolled in an online public school with serious credit shortage (after failing at his/her traditional high school) and did not graduate that year, that student would count against the school’s graduation rate, even though the failure to graduate on time was no fault of the school. It gives a false appearance that the online school is failing students. This is an especially difficult challenge for large online schools that can enroll thousands of new students every year.

Here’s an example. After continual failure in his local brick and mortar public school, Emily enrolled in an online charter school in September with sophomore credit status, but is in the 2011 graduation cohort. Upon enrollment, the online charter school developed a graduation plan for Emily. However, she cannot, given the time element and the necessity of remediating skill deficiencies, graduate in 2011. Nevertheless he will count as a dropout for the online charter school. Even though Emily intends to stay enrolled until he receives his diploma, she will still negatively impact the online school’s grad rate.

For many credit deficient students, online public charter schools are a school of last resort. They continuously failed in their traditional school but do not want to drop out. Online charter schools are often the only public school option left. And as public schools, online charters accept all students who apply and are eligible to enroll.

The Digital Learning Now platform calls for strong assessment and accountability for schools and providers. But the current structure, largely a driven by the NCLB framework developed when online learning was in its infancy, is inadequate for digital learning models. It is built for the traditional school. If we move toward individualize learning, we need to also individualize assessment and accountability systems.

Funding and accountability should encourage individual course providers to boost achievement and completion.

Full time programs–online, onsite or mix of both–should be held accountable for ensuring that every student makes at least one year of progress.

With students moving in and out and some starting way behind, graduation rates are complicated. However, we need to make sure that policy incentives exist for schools to take and serve the most challenging students.

I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Kress when he says, “…if ‘bipartisanship’ means simply marrying the worst instincts of both parties, of what value is bipartisanship?”

We are hungry for harmony. So hungry, I think, that we forget that playing well together is not as important as winning the game.

People have had a decade to take shots at NCLB. Many started shooting before it even passed. (I’ll admit to being one of them.) Now we get the chance to fix all the things we said we never liked about it. But, having discovered how challenged our education system is, will we fix them or merely substitute a set of lesser obligations?

People don’t like AYP. Fine. Come up with a better way to tell schools and the people who go to them how they’re doing. People don’t like testing. Fine. Come up with a better way—a viable, actionable, scaleable way—that we can get a read on how kids are doing in school. Same goes for teacher quality. Don’t like VAMs and being held accountable for student progress under measures you don’t trust? Propose other approaches that help teachers improve, reward people for results, and increase the respect of the profession.

Much as I despise legislative gridlock, I’m not sure our newfound hail-fellow-well-met spirit of bipartisanship will address these crucial issues. Those who have long bemoaned NCLB’s “utopian” goals and “draconian” punishments will now have a shot at making education more quotidian and less authoritarian. But will they make it better?

Something tells me it’s a lot easier to criticize the guys who wield the legislative pen than it is to rewrite them. Even with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, it's still hard to bring about a better world. We may never come like NCLB, but after this attempt at "fixing" it, we may come away with more respect for it.

Fifteen years ago, when I started working in education, I could almost always count on finding a few primary teachers in virtually every elementary school who simply had their kids color and do worksheets every day. In high schools, there was always a percentage of teachers who showed movies most of the time. And nobody—not one administrator I ever spoke with—engaged me in a serious discussion of serious ways to help seriously disadvantaged kids.

That these are the big changes I’ve seen in ed reform over the last ten years is not a rousing endorsement of NCLB, but I find it hard to believe that without NCLB, they would have occurred at all. I note, in particular, how my discussions with administrators have changed over the years. Prior to 2000, our meetings were essentially strategy-free and opinion-neutral—little more than mutual admiration sessions. Administrators would tell me how great I was and I would try—politely—to point out a few things they might consider doing to make themselves even greater.

But these conversations have changed, and much for the better.

While far too much of our communication is dominated by test scores, it is easy now to move the dialog over to discussions of what might be done to improve them. Personally, I do not like the reductive nature of testing. But, unlike a decade ago, I now have a legitimate springboard to begin discussions of real issues that promote real learning and real change in schools. It’s hard to imagine how this would have happened without NCLB.

Bipartisanship is all well and good. But only if it’s all well and good. It seems, as Mr. Kress fears, that our current brand of educational bipartisanship is characterized less by a need to improve education and more by a need to take some of the heat off.

I can understand how folks with disparate worldviews could rally around this idea. Who likes to feel pressured to improve especially when budgets are bad and we are entering the “eat your broccoli” era of doing more with less? But I find it hard to see how weakening accountability, giving back more control to the states, or removing sanctions and labels—as odious as they are—will make things better.

Mr.Petrilli casts a vote this week for “reform realism”, a variation on the theme of tightness vs. looseness that gives the federal government more of an opportunity to specify the end results (through CCSSI and new tests) while giving states more flexibility in how to achieve those end results. The approach is similar to our nuclear arms policy with its “trust and verify” approach.

The states, however, have already proven themselves untrustworthy, and the federal government has no way as yet to perform any significant verification (though new tests may help in this regard).

But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what to do when verification fails (which it certainly will in at least some states). Won’t we be right back to needing strong federal accountability again? Will the next ten years simply be a way for us to rationalize getting back to the last ten years?

Also, what’s the difference between reform realism’s approach to the “loose vs. tight” issue and what we have in NCLB? NCLB wasn’t even tight on the results states had to achieve because it let states set the results for themselves and manipulate their own testing systems.

The problem here is not one of looseness or tightness, but of whether or not states are going to educate their kids. If they’re not—and the last ten years tell us that most of them aren’t—then the federal government has to step in. Unless we really do want to flirt with the privatization of public schools, I don’t think we have a choice.

Education may be a states’ rights issue historically. But improving education has historically been a matter of federal intervention. It may be that education reform, like national defense, printing money, and interstate commerce is actually something states can’t do very well on their own. If, as so many people like to say these days, education is the new civil right, then I think we have to acknowledge that states weren’t too good at handling civil rights on their own either.

It’s easy to look at the decade before NCLB and the decade after and see that NCLB has made a positive difference—at least to the degree that increasing student achievement, especially for poor kids and those of color, is now a topic we discuss regularly, profess to care about, and occasionally take action toward.

Have there been costs? Of course. But what change comes without cost? And—as NCLB detractors rarely consider—what would the value have been in sticking with the status quo?

With NCLB, we may not have changed all the right things but at least we changed one thing: the idea that learning matters for all kids. Even if you think that everything about NCLB is wrong, don’t discount the rightness of its mere existence as a catalyst for a national discussion about educational equity. Prior to 2001, this was not something our nation had ever committed to or even considered in a serious way.

We can tinker at the margins all we want with NCLB, and we can do it together in the glad-handing back-slapping self-congratulatory spirit of bipartisanship. But the mere fact of people getting along on the playground is unlikely to produce better policy, especially if the players change the game from pushing schools to higher levels of student achievement to something “looser” (or just easier) that makes states look better and the federal government less imposing.

Perhaps the truest thing that can be said of NCLB these days is that we’ve enjoyed criticizing it so much we’ve been loathe to change it. We can say we’ve put off reauthorization because of other issues on the legislative agenda. But perhaps we’ve put it off because—despite our renewed hopes for bipartisanship—we still don’t know how to change it to make it any better than it is already. We know how to make it simpler. We know how to make it less onerous. But if we really knew how to make it better, I suspect we would have done so already.

It seems that if this reauth ever does get passed that our education nation will breathe a collective sigh of relief. There will be no more “failing” schools. There will be no more 2014 deadline. There will be no more structures—even poor ones—for exercising federal power over states who (let’s be honest) haven’t exactly shown much enthusiasm for improving education voluntarily, pre- or post-NCLB.

NCLB isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But as we prepare to clip its wings in a spirit of high-minded bipartisanship, and the ironic misbelief that such clipping will help us soar to new heights, let’s put ourselves to a simple test: for each change we propose, let’s offer a strong research-based justification for how it will help us reach at least one of the following goals:

1. Improving teacher quality.
2. Guaranteeing a good school for every child.
3. Improving the validity, reliability, and transparency of educational measurement.
4. Promoting stronger educational leadership at the district and building levels.
5. Delivering rigorous, relevant, and coherent curriculum to all students.
6. Improving student achievement.

It’s a simple test—certainly a lot simpler than running every bill in the House through The Constitution.

Until we step up to the plate and draft something new, we can crab all day about the ways in which NCLB itself may have failed this test. But that’s not the issue anymore. This issue now is how many of our new proposals will pass it.

We have a guest post from Mike PetrilliExecutive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute:

A decade ago, when federal lawmakers on the left and right came together to design and then enact No Child Left Behind, it solidified what was already a “Washington Consensus” in education policy. Its focus was on narrowing racial achievement gaps, its key strategy was federally enforced accountability, and its mantra was “no excuses.”

Today, that consensus is in tatters, what with the testing backlash, the rediscovery of poverty as a major obstacle to achievement, and the Tea Party’s desire to limit Uncle Sam’s authority over the nation’s schools. For these reasons and more, most pundits have assumed that, for the foreseeable future, ESEA reauthorization is impossible. No path to renewal has been made clear.

Perhaps until now. This week has witnessed the emergence of a new Washington Consensus, apparent in President Obama’s education-obsessed State of the Union address, a bipartisan conference call with key Senate leaders, and a supportive column by the country’s most widely read conservative.

The seeds of this consensus could be spotted in the Administration’s ESEA blueprint, release last spring, and in the outline of “reform realism” that we at the Fordham Institute released more than two years ago. This reform realism embraces a “tight-loose” approach to federal policymaking: Let’s be clearer about what we expect students to know and be able to do (via the Common Core State Standards Initiative) while showing more flexibility in how states and districts get there (especially via scaled-back federal oversight of accountability measures). It trades a “tough love” approach to the nation’s worst schools for a “trust but verify” attitude toward all the others.

There are downsides to this formulation. It opens the door to states “leaving children behind,” as they might look the other way when, say, suburban schools fail to effectively educate their minority kids. (That’s why Kati Haycock at Education Trust is pressing against it.) And it doesn’t go far enough to appease some conservatives, who demand nothing short of a block grant to the states. (That’s the line the Heritage Foundation continues to sell.)

Yet between those two extremes is an emerging center that is both broad and very real, at least along Pennsylvania Avenue, if not totally within the think tanks and advocacy groups. For the “new members” of Congress (not to mention the old), here’s some advice from George Will (the aforementioned influential columnist): You might “decide that the changes Duncan proposes—on balance, greater state flexibility in meeting national goals—make him the Obama administration’s redeeming feature.”

There are a few key changes Congress should make and other options they should flatly reject.

Congress should remove the requirement to test every child in grades 3-8 every year in reading and math. At most, Congress should revert to the 1994 ESEA which mandated testing once each in elementary, middle and high schools. This will bring the U.S. in line with other nations whose academic outcomes (graduation, college enrollment, international test scores) are stronger than the U.S. The flattening of NAEP results since NCLB was implemented shows the incessant testing does not improve schools.

Since the Obama administration indicated it was willing to drop the ‘adequate yearly progress’ scheme (one of its few good moves), the “third rail” of ESEA discussion has become its testing requirements. But there is no good reason for the federal government to mandate the amount of state testing, especially since it is a harmful, not helpful policy. There are grounds here for Republicans and Democrats to find agreement.

Linked to a reduction in mandated testing should be increased support for strengthening teachers ability to assess their students, particularly on the higher order thinking skills that state exams don’t measure (and there is very little reason to believe the ‘new’ multistate exams will either). The abilities to apply knowledge, engage in divergent thinking, solve problems, evaluate and synthesize complex evidence, and create are best evaluated in the context of rich learning, which means by teachers. Classroom and school-based evidence should be the key component of assessing both students and schools. That is largely what other nation’s do, and there is no good reason the U.S. cannot do the same, using a trust but verify approach. Again, there is ground here for bipartisan agreement.

Improving teacher capacity does not mean mandating that states use their narrow, flawed exams in an inaccurate, unfair and reductionist process of evaluating teachers and principals, as Duncan has been pushing and too many states are implementing. Doing so will only intensify the failures of test-based “deform,” anger teachers, and create more obstacles to genuine improvement. Again, there is no reason for the feds to mandate what states do. What the feds can do is support research and development on educationally beneficial ways to evaluate teachers, ones that focus on strengthening teachers’ knowledge and skills while providing all-around evidence of how well teachers are doing that can be used in an evaluation process. Again, there is already a good deal of valuable knowledge and positive models to start from.

The federal government also should support a pilot project for states to implement school quality reviews as a richer, more comprehensive basis for evaluating schools. Here there would be a great deal to learn in the U.S. context, so allowing significant flexibility while ensuring the reviews focus on key contributors to learning and in-school student well-being, as well as whether schools have adequate resources, would help a great deal.

I’ve outlined these three components of a positive system in other venues, and this Education Week Commentary provides some detail. The three components – less statewide testing, improved local and school/classroom-based assessing, and a school quality review process – should satisfy Republicans and Democrats who want to improve schools.

More briefly, Congress needs to drop its basically punitive and harmful approach to accountability. Ending AYP will help, but Congress should not replace it with another arbitrary and impossible goal with which to incessantly beat teachers. Evidence of how well different groups are doing, based on assessments and other data, should continue to be required.

Focusing on schools that need the most help makes sense, but the requirements Duncan imposed via Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants are not rooted in evidence and are likely to fail, as many did in Chicago under his control. The Forum on Educational Accountability (which I chair) has proposed alternative ways to focus federal resources on real improvement efforts. Again, the flexible but strong approach should garner support across the aisles. This is part of FEA’s overall recommendations to Congress.

Finally, the reality is that the primary reason, by far, for lack of educational attainment in the U.S. is poverty. While the U.S. has nearly one quarter of its children in poverty (under a definition that underestimates poverty), much of is chronic, countries like Finland have only a fifth the level of our nation. It is low-income, disproportionately minority-group youth who score low and don’t complete high school.

Yes, it is essential to improve schools with what resources are available (including assessment reform), but NCLB fed a national delusion that the U.S. can improve equity and outcomes while ignoring poverty. The research overwhelming shows it cannot. Unfortunately, Obama ignored this elephant in the room in his State of the Union address, and Congress, facing big deficits, probably won’t want to hear it. But until our nation grapples with real problems, it cannot expect real solutions.

We need a robust reauthorization of the ESEA.

As the Administration says, we need to put a greater focus on getting our students ready for college and a good job.

With the exception of 8th grade reading, we've made huge strides for all subgroups of students on NAEP reading and math in elementary and middle schools, areas where state and federal policies have driven reform. We've only recently begun to focus on greater rigor and accountability in high schools. This focus on secondary schools must be a major new emphasis in policy.

The Administration is also right in pushing policies that promote greater teacher effectiveness and insist upon better practice in return for federal dollars.

The Republicans are right in demanding greater parental choice, particularly when it comes to children who are forced to attend schools that can't or don't improve.

The Republicans are also right to insist on getting better bang for the federal buck.

A bipartisan bill that brings the parties together on these issues and truly pushes our country to be more competitive globally in education would be a commendable step forward.

But it does not appear that this is where we're headed. Instead of bold and forward-thinking action, it looks like we may get "lowest common denominator."

Arne Duncan remains lost in the fog over standards. He keeps forgetting, though his Chicago experience should help him remember, that allowing for lower performance standards is a disaster, whatever happens to content standards. Further, weakening accountability for educating poor kids and kids of color is a loser. I don't care how much applause his boss gets for debunking NCLB.

As for certain Republicans, with whom I share a fondness for federalism, their enslavement to certain notions of "local control" is beyond reason. Whom do they think is generally in "control" locally? Who stops parental choice locally? Who busts budgets and lends a deaf ear to taxpayers? Who implements pension plans that are about to bankrupt local systems? Who puts personnel policies in place that reward bureaucrats and folks around the longest and punish the new and effective?

So, if "bipartisanship" means simply marrying the worst instincts of both parties, of what value is bipartisanship? A bill that merely "fixes" NCLB by gutting accountability and strutting pretty words about high standards and "flexibility" for the states would be a pitiful and unworthy next step.

We've had so-so reauthorizations of ESEA, and we've had bolder ones. But we've never taken backward steps. This would be the first. And it couldn't come at a worse time, given the increasing competition we face around the world.

We can have bipartisanship as we did in 2001. And we can be bold. We can transition to new policy with fixes to current policy that do not gut accountability. This is the path we should take.

I have written about past policies we must preserve in state and federal policy and solid ways forward in an article that will appear soon in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. I hope National Journal readers will take a look at it.

As significant as the civil rights advances in the sixties and the accountability movement in the nineties have been to education improvement, the next chapter could and should be the story's most important one yet.