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NCLB: Conspiracy, Compliance, or
Creativity?
Remarks of Hayes Mizell on April 25, 2003, to the spring
conference of the Maryland Council of Staff Developers. For more
information, see
www.middleweb.com.
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visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
"The reason the NCLB exists is
simple. For decades, local policymakers and school officials
turned a blind eye to a set of vexing problems in public
education."
Remarks of Hayes Mizell on April 25, 2003, to the spring
conference of the Maryland Council of Staff Developers.
Approximately 100 educators attended the conference at the
Howard County Schools Faulkner Ridge Staff Development Center in
Columbia, MD. Mizell is the Distinguished Senior Fellow of the
National Staff Development Council. He is currently closing out
his 16-year tenure as Director of the Program for Student
Achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.
NCLB: Conspiracy, Compliance, or Creativity?
All of us have flown on airplanes, so we all know that
terrain looks different at 30,000 feet than at ground level. It
is only from high in the air that we can discern the geometrical
symmetry of Midwestern corn and wheat fields. Though many of us
live in or near cities, only when we leave our earth-bound
perspective do we realize forests still dominate much of our
country's landscape. What we experience on the ground as complex
and confusing appears from the sky to be simple and orderly. It
is, however, difficult for us to maintain the fresh perspective
that flight makes possible. Though we gain new insights from
30,000 feet, too often we forget what we have learned when we
return to the grimy particularities of daily life on earth.
Judging from current reactions to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB),
it appears some people are badly in need of the perspective
distance can provide. Representative Richard Gephardt,
campaigning in Iowa for the Democratic Party's nomination for
President, characterized the NCLB as "a phony gimmick. We were
all suckered into it..It's a fraud." An Illinois journalist
described the NCLB as "just the..latest knee-jerk, quick-fix
scheme to repair a badly damaged education system." In his view,
the law should be called the "The No Child Left Untested Act."
In North Carolina, an editorial writer faulted the NCLB because
it does not provide states "a roadmap to more effective
strategies to raise academic proficiency." The leader of a
Michigan teachers union objected to the NCLB's teacher quality
requirements, saying that while he wants "the best possible"
teachers in classrooms, "In some cases, unfortunately, that
means an uncertified teacher who is trying very hard." And in
New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Hawaii, legislators are proposing
resolutions that could result in their states opting out of the
NCLB and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in Title I and
other federal funds.
What has prompted these strong reactions is a law that is more
than 600 pages long, containing about 150,000 words. Though the
law has received a lot of attention because of its requirements,
much of the NCLB lists what states and school systems can do
rather than what they must do to achieve a new national goal: By
at least 2014 all students completing the eighth grade "will
meet or exceed [each] State's proficient level of academic
achievement on the State assessments" for mathematics and
reading or language arts.
Plenty to complain about
Critics of The No Child Left Behind Act can find plenty to
complain about in the law's dense and circuitous language that
is a classic result of our country's democratic political
process. If the law is, as some critics charge, "one size fits
all," it is no more so than most state legislation, school board
policy, and classroom pedagogy.
Maybe the NCLB is naïve in assuming that all schools and all
students will make inexorable progress towards demonstrating
proficiency, just as many educators are naive in assuming that
all students should enter their classes performing at grade
level. Maybe the NCLB does overestimate the capacity of states,
school systems, and schools to implement the law, just as many
schools overestimate the capacity of some educators to teach
effectively with limited content knowledge. The NCLB is not
flawless, but it is not an aberration. Its mistakes, to the
extent they exist, are not unlike those of the legislative and
regulatory process at any level of government. Perhaps the law
could have been wiser, more practical, and less complex, and
perhaps over time it will become so, but it does represent a
legitimate means to achieve a necessary end.
The reason the NCLB exists is simple. For decades, local
policymakers and school officials turned a blind eye to a set of
vexing problems in public education. In practice, there was a
situational definition of teacher quality. No one thought
anything about, as one principal said, scheduling "a physical
education teacher to fill in for one class of history." It was a
common practice for middle school principals to employ
elementary certified teachers because it provided the principals
maximum flexibility in assigning teachers to classes, whether or
not the teachers were qualified to teach those classes.
Communities were complacent about persistently low-performing
schools so long as the children of the community's economic,
political, and social power structure did not have to attend
those schools. In effect, educators adopted the position that
"the poor you will always have with you" as the reason these
schools did not significantly improve student performance,
though some schools elsewhere demonstrated that students from
low-income families could make impressive gains in academic
achievement.
When school boards and superintendents failed to take aggressive
actions to reform the low-performing schools, parents had few
options other than to move out of their school attendance area
and most could not afford to do that. Many children brought home
report cards with inflated grades that did not accurately
communicate students' true performance levels. In most school
systems it was almost impossible for families to obtain
information about what their children should be learning, or
their actual levels of performance. In many communities there
was a perverse social contract between citizens and school
officials. The community would settle for the continuous
improvement of the performance of some, but not all, students so
long as school system leaders maintained tranquility, provided
basic education services and idiosyncratic indicators of
success, and avoided scandal.
The reason the NCLB exists is
simple. For decades, local policymakers and school officials
turned a blind eye to a set of vexing problems in public
education.
The NCLB, then, is what we refer to in the vernacular as,
"chickens coming home to roost." The circumstances that produced
the NCLB did not become manifest in just the past few years.
They existed for decades. Leaders of communities and school
systems and schools had every opportunity, just as they do now,
to demonstrate that they had the will and know-how to attack and
remedy the problems I have just described. Some did, but most
failed to do so. In spite of many warning signs that voters and
business and political leaders were impatient with education
officials' inattention to these issues or their failure to
address them effectively, there was not compelling evidence of
widespread change. School board members and educators had the
responsibility and authority to tackle these difficult issues
but they defaulted in both regards. The No Child Left Behind Act
is the result.
Some consider the law malevolent
People are now responding to the NCLB in one of three ways.
First, there is the group that considers the law to be
malevolent. A Pennsylvania superintendent represented this view
when he said: "This is the most anti-public school legislation
that's ever been passed. Its intention is to destroy public
education in this state." A staff member of a school reform
organization believes the law stems from "a conspiracy by the
Bush administration to start handing education over to private
corporations."
The conservative journal Human Events lists the NCLB as one of
the "ten most outrageous government programs" and says it "has
vastly accelerated the federalization of education." Many
educators believe the NCLB sets unreasonable expectations that
schools cannot meet and this will provide ammunition for those
who advocate vouchers and other alternatives to public
education. Another view is that the NCLB "could dismantle a
public school system," because it applies equally to small
school systems where many, but not all, students are performing
at high levels and to larger school systems where many more
students are not performing well.
Still another perspective is that the law seeks to undermine
public education because it does not provide adequate funding to
support all the changes the NCLB requires. A Connecticut mayor
has said that the law is "a great package, but it's useless
without money behind it..No Child Left Behind is not a high
priority when we need to make sure our classrooms have textbooks
and teachers." In response to the NCLB, one national
organization of principals is protesting against what it calls
"unfunded federal mandates," but last week in New Jersey it was
local citizens who rejected the budgets of 63 percent of school
systems that depend on voters to approve their funding. A
forthcoming report based on a study of ten states alleges that
seven of the states "would have to set aside 24 percent more
money for education to comply with all the requirements" of the
law.
Even The New York Times has been critical of the Bush
administration's failure to seek the authorized funding for NCLB.
Last month, a Times editorial said that the President's "failure
to finance the law properly has discouraged recession-strapped
states from embracing it fully." There should be significantly
more funding for the No Child Left Behind Act, but effective
education for all children cannot wait until local education
leaders declare that their school systems have adequate funding.
That day will never come.
There should be significantly more
funding for the No Child Left Behind Act, but effective
education for all children cannot wait until local education
leaders declare that their school systems have adequate funding.
That day will never come.
It is certainly true that the NCLB is a political initiative
that relies more on regulation than on financial incentives and
other supports for reform. It is also true the Bush
administration encourages suspicion about its motives when its
actions and rhetoric signal that it is not committed to making
public schools the best means to educate this nation's children.
This does not mean, however, that the NCLB is the product of a
conspiracy to undermine public schools. The NCLB may be a
heavy-handed attempt to improve public education, but attacks by
its critics have the hollow ring of people unburdened by either
the inclination or responsibility to change the status quo.
Yes, there is criticism of the NCLB. Some of it may be
appropriate. Some of it may be an expression of pain caused by
the stretching required to implement the law. I am reminded of
an advertisement for the United States Marines that says, "Pain
is weakness leaving the body." If school systems use the NCLB to
overcome weaknesses that have resulted in the achievement gap
and significant variations in educational opportunities, the
short-term pain will be a small price to pay.
Some worry about compliance
The second way in which people are responding to the law is
to worry about compliance. This seems to be the case with many
administrators responsible for implementing the law. They
include state department of education staff and those in the
central offices of local school systems. These days they are
spending a great deal of time trying to figure out exactly what
the law means and how to implement it within both the NCLB's
mandated timelines and the constraints of limited resources and
competing priorities.
It is understandable that state department of education and
central office staff are focusing on the nuts-and-bolts of how
to comply with the NCLB, but there is a danger in doing so.
Staff may become so focused on NCLB compliance issues that they
lower their expectations of their own roles. Almost without them
realizing it, they may become de facto compliance officers and
forfeit their roles as education leaders. Instead of viewing
themselves as leaders who use their positions to challenge and
support other educators to perform at higher levels, they may
see their roles primarily as making sure that educators comply
with the detailed provisions of the NCLB, and assisting them in
doing so. If this occurs, it will be a net loss for education
reform.
When educators slavishly chain themselves to every provision and
word of the NCLB, they are either afraid of the consequences of
not doing so or they lack the will and self-confidence to
demonstrate they can more effectively and rapidly meet the NCLB
goals by other means. Whichever is the case, it is a bad omen
for public education when educators resign themselves to being
victims rather than leaders. Educators, not federal or state
laws, should be the torchbearers for day-to-day practices that
cause all students to dramatically improve their academic
performance. Until educators take initiative, without direction
from policymakers, to set and enforce high standards for
themselves and their students, and until they demonstrate the
courage to do whatever it takes for them and their students to
perform at higher levels than policymakers can imagine,
educators will continue to be more concerned with rules than
with results.
Administrators may become so focused
on NCLB compliance issues that they lower their expectations of
their own roles. Almost without realizing it, they may become de
facto compliance officers and forfeit their roles as education
leaders.
At its best, the NCLB is a call for educators to do the right
thing, to do what they should have been doing all along. It is a
spur that can motivate and focus educators to take action on
issues they have neglected. This does not mean, however, that
the NCLB is the final word on the most effective means to
achieve the ends the law seeks. It is not a roadmap. It is not a
cookbook. If it were, there would be even louder howls about the
"federalization of education."
The law's potential is not in the details of its implementation,
but in causing educators to finally devote serious attention to
issues of teacher quality and student performance. They are a
little late: 141 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 49
years after Brown v. Board of Education, and 39 years after The
Civil Rights Act. But we can begin to see the NCLB's effect when
in Louisiana the abysmal performance of African-American
students prompted a member of the state board of education to
say:
"We will never reach our goals as a state if we don't improve
the performance of our poor and black students..If you don't
measure it, then you don't count it. If you don't count it, then
you don't pay attention. And if you don't pay attention to it,
then you don't fix it."
To this, the state superintendent of education added, "We're
calling on local school districts to begin introducing policies
that truly mean no child is left behind."
These statements reflect some of the spirit that must guide NCLB
implementation. But there is a real danger that staffs of state
and local education agencies may lapse into a compliance
orientation that reduces the NCLB's effects to a mechanistic
process of implementation. If this occurs, the NCLB will become
a lost opportunity to qualitatively improve the education of
students who are now struggling to become academically
proficient.
Some may seize upon NCLB as an opportunity to create
The third type of response to the NCLB is largely
hypothetical. We can hope that rather than wasting energy on
reacting to the law as a conspiracy, or getting off task by
obsessing about compliance, educators will seize the NCLB as an
opportunity for creativity. Exemplars of this response are not
yet surfacing, though state departments of education, education
organizations, and advocacy groups should start identifying and
recognizing them.
Here I am speaking of creativity not in implementing the law,
but rather using the law to improve teacher quality and enable
all students to become academically proficient. Implementing the
law and using the law are not the same. Efforts to implement the
law focus on minimums, the least effort required to demonstrate
compliance. Efforts to use the law focus on maximums, milking
the law for all it is worth to generate new vision and
commitment, and put in place more effective policies and
practices.
As some of you know, earlier this year the National Staff
Development Council called for volunteers to serve as members of
a NCLB Task Force. The Task Force now includes 28 practitioners
from 26 states representing state departments of education,
intermediate education service agencies, local school systems, a
few schools, and teacher unions. Task Force members have
identified a variety of NCLB provisions they believe will prompt
states and school systems to improve the quality of professional
development.
One member concluded that the NCLB's requirements will "force us
to develop a deeper shared understanding of 'high quality'
professional development, approach our work with greater
'rigor,' examine our outcomes more closely, and establish clear
and measurable indicators that connect as closely as possible to
improved student achievement." Another Task Force member
observed, "When dollars are tied to change, even the nay-sayers
take notice."
These observations indicate that some Task Force members regard
the NCLB as a lever staff developers can use to nudge educators
towards practices they should have been valuing for years. An
example is the section of the law that calls for needs
assessments to "take into account" the knowledge and skills
teachers and principals must have to help students meet academic
standards. According to one Task Force member this can "help to
focus our schools on quality staff development AND the processes
we support -- data-driven decision making, improving teacher
knowledge and skills, leadership development, monitoring and
reflection." Another Task Force member has cited the importance
of the NCLB section requiring collaboration among teachers,
paraprofessionals, principals, and parents in planning
professional development. She believes that "too often in the
past decisions which affect many have been made by a few people
working in isolation" and there is a need to "broaden the
thinking base."
Efforts to implement the law focus
on minimums, the least effort required to demonstrate
compliance. Efforts to use the law focus on maximums, milking
the law for all it is worth to generate new vision and
commitment, and put in place more effective policies and
practices.
While Task Force members are hopeful about the
impact of the NCLB, they are sober about how states and school
systems will respond to the law. On the whole, they are
skeptical about the outcomes of the requirement that all
teachers in core subjects must be "highly qualified" by the end
of 2005-2006. Some believe the school systems and schools they
know about will not meet the deadline. Others feel that while
the law will result in many more teachers meeting narrow
credential criteria for "highly qualified," the teachers will
not necessarily be more knowledgeable about the subjects they
teach nor will they be more effective instructors.
This presents a great opportunity for states and school systems
to demonstrate creative leadership. They can choose to go beyond
merely implementing the narrow requirements of the law rooted in
certification to develop a definition of teacher quality
emphasizing the practical knowledge and skills educators need to
help students perform proficiently. Elaborating a more
meaningful operational definition of teacher quality will be
challenging, but it will be only half the battle. States and
school systems will then need to put in place strategies that
will result in teachers whose practice, as well as credentials,
demonstrate they are highly qualified.
Schools can choose to embrace the challenge of NCLB
There are other opportunities to use the NCLB creatively.
Schools do not have to hope that tomorrow will never come and
ignore the goal of all students performing proficiently by the
end of the eighth grade in 2014. They can challenge the goal and
make a public commitment to reach the goal well before the 2014
target date. School systems do not have to merely go through the
motions of disaggregating student achievement data. They can
organize and facilitate conversations where small groups of
teachers, parents, and community leaders learn to understand the
implications of the data, and forge a compact of mutual
accountability for attacking the problems it reveals.
Schools do not have to just wring their hands over achieving
aggregate adequate yearly progress. They can choose to work with
each student and his or her family to reach consensus about
improvements in academic performance that would represent
adequate yearly progress for the individual child, and how to
work together to monitor and achieve it. School systems do not
have to just duck their heads and hope that neither the state
nor the federal government will expect them to take seriously
the NCLB's definition of professional development. Instead, a
school system can zero in on the linchpin of that definition,
the evaluation section, and act on it to make sure the school
system is getting the greatest return possible on its financial
investment in adult learning.
Once again, however, the choice is up to local school officials
and educators. Maybe they will grudgingly accept the law with
zombie-like compliance devoid of will and soul. In those cases,
there may be some serendipitous beneficial results but they will
be few. Maybe the leaders of school systems and schools will use
the law as "cover," to justify reforms they knew were necessary
but for which they previously lacked political support or
intestinal fortitude. If these reforms are thoughtful and draw
on the vast body of school reform experience and research, they
may produce important results.
But the greatest potential of the NCLB is when local school
officials and educators make the effort to leave their
earth-bound perspectives and view the NCLB from 30,000 feet.
Perhaps it is only from that distance that they can see the
outline of excellence and equity otherwise obscured by the law's
details. If educators can gain that perspective, and hold on to
it as they wrestle with the NCLB, they may choose to use it
creatively to hold their states, school systems, schools, and
themselves to standards of performance far exceeding what the
law requires.
It is now fashionable for some people to mock the words "No
Child Left Behind" as empty political rhetoric. The NCLB may
ultimately collapse under the weight of its ambition, but as far
as I can recall this is the first time the United States has
ever made even a rhetorical, much less a legislative commitment
to the ideal that public schools should educate every single
child to perform proficiently.
The words and concept of "No Child Left Behind" do not belong to
one ideology or one political party. "No Child Left Behind" does
not belong to George Bush or Rod Paige, and educators should
not, by default, let any one person or group expropriate that
language and concept for their own purposes. It is entirely
possible to take those words and corrupt them through duplicity
and hollow implementation. It is also possible to seize the
fundamental principles of NCLB and in the crucible of local
practice grind out more effective behaviors, knowledge, and
skills to realize the law's legitimate goals.
Every educator is now deciding how to respond to the NCLB. Some
see it as a conspiracy and use that as an excuse for resistance.
Others worry about compliance and act out of fear rather than
hope. I encourage you to choose the third, more difficult way.
Put your intellect to work. Unfetter your imagination. Muster
your courage to creatively shape the NCLB in whatever ways are
necessary to raise the authentic performance of students,
teachers, and administrators. Reject "No Child Left Behind" as a
slogan, but transform it into reality.
Thank you.
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has published a collection
of Mizell's speeches in the book, Shooting for the Sun. Copies
are available without cost while supplies last by sending an
e-mail request to info@emcf.org.
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