Raising the Bar

When Rod Paige resigned as Education secretary in November, he wrote a letter to President Bush outlining the department's accomplishments during his tenure. "The national education culture is changing," he noted. "All across the nation, the educational dialogue is now about results and less about inputs."

With the possible exception of "unfunded mandate," the buzzword heard most in discussions of the No Child Left Behind Act is "accountability." Signed in 2002, the law brings the president's performance-based management philosophy to the classroom.

Americans agree that schools should be held accountable for how well children learn. In October, a K-12 education advocacy group called Americans for Better Education in Washington released a survey showing that 61 percent of participants said "raising standards and accountability" is more important for public education than increasing funding.

What people don't discuss as often, though, is to whom local schools should be accountable. What's new and different about No Child Left Behind is that it greatly enhances the oversight of the Education Department, which in the past has taken a back seat to state and local governments.

School accountability predates No Child Left Behind. The law is the latest reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Under the previous version, President Clinton's 1994 Improving America's Schools Act, states designed systems by which they would hold schools accountable for student performance on standardized tests. There were no provisions for federal enforcement, and by 2000, only 11 states had accountability systems.

The most striking finding in the Americans for Better Education survey was that 72 percent of respondents said the federal government should "hold state and local schools accountable." A key challenge for Margaret Spellings, Bush's nominee to replace Paige, will be to ensure that the public continues to feel this way.

Since 2002, many state legislatures have considered measures to retain local control of schools and opt out of No Child Left Behind. They had to weigh whether complying was worth the millions of dollars in federal funds that came with it. No state passed an opt-out measure.

But the list of schools facing penalties under the law is growing fast. In the 47 states that have reported their results, the number of schools that missed their targets for two or more years nearly doubled this year, from 5,912 to 10,230, according to the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. The standards that schools must meet grow increasingly stringent until 2014, when 100 percent of students must pass proficiency tests.

The penalties escalate, too. After missing standards for two years, schools that receive federal funds must give students the option to transfer to better-performing schools, and use those federal funds to provide transportation. After three years, they must pay for after-school tutoring. After five, the state must restructure the schools. Districts that fail to meet standards also are subject to penalties. There are no rewards for high-performing schools or districts.

"There really are too many sticks and not enough carrots," says Daniel Kaufman, a spokesman for the NEA. In addition to increased standardized testing and complex number crunching, the cost of the sanctions eats into the federal funds that enticed states to implement No Child Left Behind in the first place.

As a result, there are renewed rumblings at the state and local levels. A Utah legislator is working on a bill that would allow the state to use its own accountability system rather than report to the Education Department. A Virginia legislator recently proposed seeking a waiver, though the bill did not make it out of committee. And in Oregon, officials plan to ask the Education Department for the flexibility to blend the federal system with the state accountability plan. At least one school district has sued over provisions to the law. Some say many more will follow unless Education finds a way to sweeten the deal.