It’s time to repeal NCLB legislation

Published 6:38 pm Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Could it be? Could public sentiment, political backbone and common sense combine to bring about real reform in Washington? According to a recent story by Politico, it might just happen, as newly empowered Republicans in Congress plot to reform the No Child Left Behind law.

“Republicans are hatching an ambitious plan to rewrite No Child Left Behind this year — one that could end up dramatically rolling back the federal role in education and trigger national blowouts over standardized tests and teacher training,” Politico reported last week. “NCLB cleared Congress in 2002 with massive bipartisan support but has since become a political catastrophe: The law’s strategy for prodding and shaming schools into improvement proved deeply flawed over time, and its unintended failures have eclipsed its bright spots.”

Conservatives don’t like NCLB because it expanded the role of the federal government in local education. Liberals don’t like NCLB because it represents the kind of reform — numbers-based and test-driven — they say doesn’t work.

So pretty much everyone agrees.

“Now Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, who will lead the Senate and House education committees, are planning to push an overhaul of NCLB at a moment when backlash in the states has reached an all-time high, opening up new political windows to strip the federal role out of education,” Politico explained. “The push to rewrite the country’s main K-12 education law will be ‘all about Congress taking a red pen and deleting’ language, said Mike Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former Education Department staffer.”

And that’s a good thing, because increasing federal control of education is the exact opposite of real reform.

First there’s the issue of federalism. Public education is quintessentially a local and state issue — not federal.

But as the federal role in funding public schools has grown, so has the federal role in running those schools.

Next, there’s the issue of accountability. NCLB’s intent on this issue is fine. Everyone wants better schools and more accountability. But accountability to whom?

What’s more effective, a school system that answers to locally elected board members and to parents, or a school system that answers to bureaucrats in Washington, hundreds and even thousands of miles away?

The answer is obvious. Even Education Secretary Arne Duncan gets it.

“There is no magic bullet for fixing education, and the best ideas will always come from the local level, where hardworking men and women in our schools are doing the hard work every day to educate our children,” he said in 2011.

So could it happen? Could NCLB be left behind?

“Education advocates see two reasons to think Congress will play for keeps this time: new leadership and discontented constituents,” Politico reports. “They see both Alexander and Murray as skilled, experienced leaders who care deeply about education. Alexander has been in ‘deep conversations’ with Senate education committee Democrats, a GOP aide said.”

Reforming or even repealing NCLB would be a great start for the new Congress.