‘Every Child Achieves’ Won’t Fix The Fed-Ed Farce
Bills to rewrite No Child Left Behind put Republicans in a bad political position and expand the federal role in education.
Tuesday, the House and Senate are scheduled to take up separate bills to replace No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While out here in the hinterlands normal people are calling for an end to know-nothing bureaucrats telling local schools how to train teachers despite zero scientifically valid evidence about what improves teaching, up in The Capitol our rulers still believe themselves uniquely qualified to forge boldly where research and common sense has never gone before.
To wit: Sen. Lamar Alexander attempting to slather the “bipartisan” (i.e. crappy as a county fair port-a-potty) Senate bill he’s coauthored with a whole lotta pig lipstick. At 792 pages, Alexander’s “Every Child Achieves Act” (ECAA) is 122 longer than NCLB. Apparently, coauthoring a bill that is a fifth longer than the law it’s intended to replace means “more state and local control” to Alexander.
Democrats are happy enough with the bill to give Alexander enough votes to pass it, so it’s conservative Republicans he’s got to woo to get this monstrosity to President Obama. So he’s hitting all the notes they want to hear—except they’re false notes. Here’s a big one: “The bill expressly prohibits the federal government from mandating or incentivizing any particular set of academic standards, such as Common Core.” While some portions of Alexander’s bill do technically prohibit the administrative state from pushing Common Core, in others it appears to give educrats precisely this authority, as a bill analysis from the American Principles Project details. That’s part of the problem with an 800-page bill: It’s easy for the thing to contradict itself.
Every Child Achieves What the National School Board Says
Alexander also claims his proposal will mean “fewer tests for our students.” That’s just plain false. (Also, please never tag my kids with the collective “our.” They’re not yours or anyone else’s, ever, no matter what Melissa Harris-Perry says.) He’s sidestepping here the truth that his bill erases not one currently mandated federal test, despite theunprecedented populist pressure for a massive reduction in federal test-twisting.
What it does do is reduce federal sanctions for state noncompliance, which Alexander extrapolates will mean less pressure at the local level, thus potentially translating into fewer pre-tests. In other words, while he apparently doesn’t believe in the negative unintended consequences of central planning, a well-established reality, he’s willing to tout potential, accidental positive consequences as a sure thing. Further, the thing he’s relying on to achieve this supposed reduction in testing insanity, Alexander’s promise that “the bill will remove the high stakes attached by Washington to those test results,” is a flat-out deception. As Jane Robbins and Heidi Huber write for Townhall.com:
ECAA also continues to mandate that results of high-stakes assessments be used in state accountability systems. For example, the bill requires states to use assessment scores, progress toward readiness for ‘college and the workforce,’ and high-school graduation rates as a ‘substantial’ portion of a school’s grade. So not only must states ensure 95% participation in the assessments, they must use the results to rate their schools.
Wow, sounds like those tests won’t matter much to schools at all, and that this bill “will 'Every Child Achieves' Won't Fix The Fed-Ed Farce: