Parents and local schools will give up more control of education to the federal government with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act by Congress, some activists contend. The House of Representatives approved a House-Senate compromise version of the bill yesterday by a 381-41 vote.
“It absolutely destroys local control,” insists Karen Effrem, a spokesperson for the Maple River Education Coalition, a political action committee in St. Paul, Minn. The group is one of about 50 national and state organizations opposed to the bill.
The act eliminates references to the controversial “Goals 2000” legislation of 1994 that effectively imposed national curriculum and testing standards on states that want federal education money. But the new bill requires states seeking federal funding to have standards and assessments in place, and those are unlikely to change, says Effrem.
The bill now moves to the Senate where it is expected to pass and then be signed by President Bush. It authorizes $26.5 billion in federal education spending, an increase of $4 billion from the previous fiscal year. The legislation re-authorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, originally passed in 1965.
Local control “is going to be in name only,” said Bev Eakman, director of the National Education Consortium in Washington, D.C., and author of three books on education, including “The Cloning of the American Mind.” “The only way you can get the federal funding is by playing the game the feds want played,” says Eakman.
Effrem believes the bill essentially ensures that every state will remain under “the past framework” of Goals 2000 and other “outcome-based education” programs that promote job skills rather than academic achievement. Critics believe this approach has “dumbed-down” education.
“We are being given the mirage of freedom with no freedom at all,” Effrem said.
In the current economic climate, no state will want to spend millions more to develop new standards and go back to their old laws, Effrem maintains. The state of Minnesota spent at least $500 million of its funds and changed more than 230 laws to comply with the federal rules and regulations of Goals 2000.
Kathleen Lyons, a spokesperson for the National Education Association, said 44 states have indicated they are in a fiscal crisis. The National Governors’ Association reported recently that states now face a $35 billion shortfall in the wake of a national recession.
Lyons calls the bill a “mixed bag” in terms of its impact on local and federal control.
“It gives local control in some places and takes it away in others,” she said. “For us, the real issue is that there are federal mandates, such as special education, and now testing, for which there are inadequate resources put forward. So they are telling local and state governments, ‘You must do this, but we are not going to be able to help you out.'”
The NEA, nevertheless, says the bill’s “broad policy goals are laudable” and praises testing and accountability measures that have been “improved dramatically” thanks to “the hard work” of Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and others.
But the testing mandated by the bill is the mechanism for a national curriculum, insists Julie Quist, vice president for the Maple River Education Coalition. While the bill, according to its summary, “explicitly prohibits federally sponsored national testing,” it requires a federally sponsored test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, to “verify” that the state curriculum conforms to its standards. Those state standards essentially conform to the national standards set out by Goals 2000 and other programs.
The test is to be given to a sampling of students at various grade levels in each state.
The bill claims there are no direct federal rewards and sanctions based on the NAEP. But it instructs states to enforce rewards and sanctions based on the NAEP and the NAEP-based state assessments, Quist points out. The net effect is the same, she maintains.
“The key enforcement mechanism for federal control of what is taught in the schools is the testing,” said Quist. “For the very first time, it’s required that every state must use the NAEP. When it was first established it was voluntary. So this is a completely different set of circumstances.”
The NAEP was created by the federal government in 1969 amid criticism that it would eventually lead to a national curriculum. The test consists mostly of questions about attitudes and values.
“Nobody is really against standards; it’s that the standards are not academic,” said Eakman. “What school and testing are about today is mental health; it’s not about academics, and that’s the problem.”
One of the bill’s central aims is to identify schools that are failing by requiring a testing regimen that is established at the local level in grades three through eight. Schools that regularly miss their set standards will be given extra funding to improve, but continued poor performance will allow students to transfer to other public institutions or use federal funds meant for the school to pay for tutors.
Eakman says there are only about seven or eight testing services that conduct these exams by contract to the states, and they all do psycho-behavioral testing.
“They do not test academics,” she said. “In fact, they aren’t called tests; they are assessments, so if the fire hits the fan legally they can say it wasn’t a test.”
Some parents have legally challenged exams that ask students to reveal private information, Eakman explained.
Related stories:
Activists decry Bush education bill
Education plan continues federal control?
