Toward Education Justice


By John M. Beam

September 25, 2002

Can parent and community groups keep the 'No Child Left Behind' Act on track?

The bipartisan "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001, which updates the 1994 version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has begun lurching into implementation. Will the children encompassed by its sentimental title-a phrase purloined from the Children's Defense Fund-not be left behind because this new and improved national educational vehicle brings every public school student along, or because it never leaves the station? Will parents and their community organizations have to get out and push to make sure the program keeps rolling down the right track?
According to the U.S. Department of Education, the No Child Left Behind Act is built on a foundation of four concepts that may or may not add up to a real strategy:

"These include increased accountability for states, school districts, and schools; greater choice for parents and students, particularly those attending low-performing schools; more flexibility for states and local educational agencies in the use of federal education dollars; and a stronger emphasis on reading, especially for our youngest children."

Let's look at the elements of this "strategy" for a moment, starting with choice. (We will return to accountability and how it is really enforced.)


Increased choice for parents and students, particularly those attending low-performing schools. The legislation confuses information with choice. Information does not necessarily equate with increased options. True, attentive parents will have more information available to them about how well their children's schools are or are not doing. After a school is in school improvement or corrective-action status for a year, its Title I parents also supposedly have a choice of sending their children to a better-performing school in their district. On a practical level, however, where is the choice for Chicago parents when, according to the estimate of one community organization, students in 265 of 491 elementary schools this fall will have the right to go to the remaining 226 schools?
Of course, given a shortage of alternatives within a district, school administrators are authorized to make deals with neighboring districts. But after watching suburban schools refuse the vouchers distributed to Cleveland public school students, is anyone taking bets that Evanston or Oak Park schools will throw open their doors to thousands of Chicago's Title I-eligible children?

More flexibility for states and local districts in how they spend federal education funding. Is flexibility of funding the issue so much as quantity of funding and creativity in its deployment? Haven't many districts been "flexible" in their use of Title I funding for years, nonsupplantation requirements notwithstanding, even without official blessing from Washington? New flexibility in this case refers to permission to lump previously separate funding streams together, permission that state and local governments may appreciate but that can easily complicate both equity and accountability.

An emphasis on preschool and early-grades reading. What's not to like? Hasn't the emphasis always been on reading? The academic wars have been over how to teach reading. This legislation pushes a new national reading program that is actually just a funding mechanism and provides categorical support for "scientifically based" strategies meeting criteria that emphasize phonics and other traditional basics.
Given the relatively short list of available research-based reading programs, some of which are still quite controversial, is this a limited-option, quick-fix tactic? Can a cookie-cutter approach actually meet the extensive prescribed criteria that reading programs successfully serve special-needs students, including those in special education and English-language-learner classes?

Increased accountability for states, school districts, and schools. While the bill includes a bunch of carrots, the only stick is the ability to withhold portions of Title I funding, unless we accept the premise that there are enough desks in good schools to accommodate a mass exodus from unsuccessful schools. If politicians and voters at the state and often district levels continue to be willing to underfund central-city public schools, how will the threat of losing a little more money, which, after all, is only for poor kids, motivate them?



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The bill confuses information with accountability. Accountability-let alone comprehensive school reform-does not equate to greater access to information. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity spent eight years in state court carefully documenting in great detail how state funding mechanisms do not support a constitutionally adequate public school education for New York's public school students, particularly those in larger cities. For well over a year, the governor, who is up for re-election and leading in the polls, has defied the court order to correct the situation and, moreover, has engaged in brinkmanship with the legislature that has actually further slashed available funds for public schools.

The bill confuses information with accountability.

The No Child Left Behind Act is laced with requirements that information be provided in formats that are accessible and language-appropriate for parents, and offers up the optimistically labeled Title V-Promoting Informed Parental Choice and Innovative Programs, complete with its own budget line. But "initiatives to generate, maintain, and strengthen parental and community involvement" compete for funding with 26 other "innovative local-assistance programs," including charter and magnet schools, finance education, and cardiopulmonary-resuscitation training. More substantive-sounding elements of the parent-involvement section of Title I actually give parents a role in planning or evaluating parent involvement ... not their children's education. Moreover, when the words "parent" and "decision" share a sentence, qualifiers like "appropriate" usually accompany them.