12/14/04 — President Bush’s chief education initiative for his second term will be a proposal to expand the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to include more testing at the high school level, says David Dunn, special assistant to the President for domestic policy.
NCLB currently requires annual testing in reading and math in grades 3-8, and the President will ask Congress to provide $250 million to extend these tests to grades 9-11, beginning in the 2009-10 school year, Dunn says.
Dunn spoke about President Bush’s education agenda for his second term at a briefing Dec. 6 sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
“The President feels very strongly that NCLB is a good piece of legislation, a strong piece of legislation, and that it is working,” Dunn says. “He is very encouraged by the results and feels these results will accelerate. President Bush wants to push NCLB more deeply into high school.”
Dunn calls Margaret Spellings, Bush’s nominee for Education Secretary, “a very serious and energetic education reformer” who will work hard to get these reforms enacted.
According to Dunn, the primary benefit of the annual assessments required by NCLB is to provide better information to teachers “so they can identify weaknesses and make appropriate adjustments.” It is necessary to provide these assessments in high school, he says, because “12th-grade scores on the [National Assessment of Educational Progress] have been trending downward.”
Dunn says the White House also will seek $200 million for early intervention for struggling high school students. The idea is to develop performance plans for students so they will have the skills they need when they graduate. Under this proposal, “teachers will be able to take advantage of online embedded assessments so they can make adjustments quickly,” Dunn says.
In addition, Bush will propose expanding the Reading First program to extend scientifically based reading strategies to adolescent literacy programs.
Another White House proposal calls for a $500 million teacher incentive program to enable states and school districts to provide bonuses to teachers who are successful in raising student achievement and closing the achievement gap.
In addition, the President wants to extend NCLB reforms into early childhood by strengthening the academic components of Head Start.
Another panelist, Erik Robelen, the lead Washington reporter for Education Week, predicts the high school proposal could be a hard sell in Congress, because “many members feel burned about supporting the original NCLB and seeing it underfunded, and some members, including Republicans, are leery about so much testing.”
Robelen notes the education budget just passed by Congress includes the smallest increase in a decade and doesn’t even match the inflation rate. “In tight fiscal times, Congress prefers to keep existing programs rather than create new ones,” he says.
Roberto Rodriguez, senior education adviser to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, says the committee will be busy this year with a lengthy roster of legislation carried over from the last term, including the reauthorization of Head Start and the Higher Education Act.
He also expects some discussion on implementing NCLB, at least in the Senate. “The focus is moving away from whether NCLB is here to stay to how to make it work.”
Rodriguez would like to continue the bipartisan cooperation that led to the passage of NCLB, but says, “it’s important to acknowledge there’s a lot of frustration out there.” He points to the inconsistencies in implementation and the Education Department’s delay in releasing rules and guidance.
“We need to provide tools to make NCLB work,” Rodriguez says. Among the problem areas he cites:
• Many states are still not in compliance with the teacher quality requirements.
• States need more help to be able to turn around low-performing schools.
• The continued underfunding of NCLB — $9 billion below the amount authorized for this year — “hamstrings schools’ ability to comply with the law.”
• He also says better assessments are needed to measure the achievement of individual students over time.
Rodriguez says the HELP committee prefers to work with the Education Department to improve NCLB through regulatory means before pursuing legislative changes.
“Like it or hate it, NCLB is here to stay. It’s absolutely clear,” says Robelen. But if Congress revises the law, he predicts the changes “will be modest in scope and Congress will not change the direction of the law.” NCLB will be up for reauthorization in 2007.
Nina S. Rees, head of the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Education Department, says the Administration will expand public school choice programs. The department also will provide technical assistance and training to help school districts encourage more parents to take advantage of the school choice option in NCLB.
According to Rees, only 45,000 students across the nation took part in the NCLB school choice option in 2002-03. The supplemental services option was more popular, reaching 112,000 students. She says states have approved 2,500 supplemental service providers but she’s not sure if the states are doing a good enough job monitoring them.
Rees’ office is carrying out several major evaluations, including five-year studies of the effectiveness of charter schools and the District of Columbia voucher program.
Sally L. Stroup, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, says her office is focusing on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and also is supporting initiatives to facilitate the transition from high school to college, such as dual enrollment programs.