Cash Left Behind; Bush's No Child Left Behind Is Big Government Without Big Enough Funding

Summary

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"Typically, the administration in Washington claims they've given a huge amount of money to education, and they have," says Ethan Cancell, special assistant to Pennsylvania's education secretary. "But the question is, have they given a sufficient amount?" Not all of the federal money can go to struggling students: A large chunk must be spent on testing, data management and No Child's other requirements.

No Child requires, for the first time, that schools separately report the test scores of historically disadvantaged groups of students -- low-income, minorities, new English speakers, and, controversially, special-education students. Achievement gaps, previously obscured by "average" scores, would now be in plain view. It requires nearly every public-school student in the country to test "proficient" on a standardized test by 2014. In many of America's most disadvantaged schools, less than 30 percent of the students are currently testing "proficient."

At this point in No Child's implementation, only fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders have been tested, and a school's No Child "success" is based on comparing one year's fifth graders to the next year's, not in measuring the progress of the same individuals from year to year.

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Cash Left Behind; Bush's No Child Left Behind Is Big Government Without Big Enough Funding

Under a different presidential administration, the No Child Left Behind Act -- and its reams of accompanying rules and federal mandates -- would be the sort of expansive big-government program Republicans love to hate.

After all, by another name, No Child Left Behind -- the centerpiece of federal K-12 policy -- was simply the 2001 rene...

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