Cribsheets
No Child Left Behind (For Real This Time)
Washington public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Education and Labor Committee.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Bill Ayers, the “terrorist” Sarah Palin accused President-elect Barack Obama of “palin’ around with” on the campaign trail, has a day job as an education reform advocate. He recently asked a crowded church in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., “Yes we can…what?”
Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago-College of Education, was talking about the dire situation of America’s public schools. Ayers condemned the "savage inequalities" that still exist in schools today: “The fundamental injury is that [students have] been denied the right to think for themselves about the circumstances in their lives and how it might be otherwise.” While he begrudgingly ended the night answering questions about the negative attention he received leading up to Nov. 4, Ayers devoted most of time to public education reform. Ayers believes that true democracy is only possible with school reform that teaches all students their responsibility and potential as citizens.
The conversation was, in large part, jumpstarted by the Bush administration’s controversial No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that was passed in 2001. The legislation revealed more than a decade of declining test scores and a growing achievement gap, and thrust education reform back onto the national agenda. While the achievement gaps between African American, Latino and white students were cut dramatically between 1970 and 1988, the gaps have widened ever since.
The goal of NCLB was to take a multi-faceted approach to closing the achievement gap that grew in the ‘90s. Alongside its highly contested goal to enforce accountability in school systems with the threat of funding cuts, NCLB also: sought to improve the quality of teachers through incentives, training, and professional development; advocated increased funding for special education and English language learner programs; supported increased school choice; established focus curriculums for cultural minorities; and created incentives for innovative educational programs, research, and data collection initiatives. Most critics attribute the failure of the bill to the lack of government funding, but NCLB has seen a lot of reworking in its reauthorization during the final months of this last session of Congress.
Ayers, who has now shed his role as a member of the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground, is now part of a growing movement of social justice leaders, public school faculty, journalists, politicians, and parents that aim to bring education reform to the forefront of Barack Obama’s agenda. Bigwigs like Reverend Al Sharpton, New York Governor Michael Bloomberg, and New York City and D.C. School Chancellors, Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee (who was the subject of a recent Time magazine cover story), met in New York for a conference that produced headlines declaring education inequality the “civil rights issue of our day.” Washington Post journalist Richard Cohen hopes that Joel Klein will make it as Obama’s Secretary of Education—a position that, Cohen hopes, will be given the same level of attention given to foreign and economic policy. And in the spirit of modern day advocacy, activists are working online to recruit supporters in Web-based campaigns for education reform (campaigns such as EdVoters.org, Democrats for Education Reform, and others gained attention this fall).
Indeed, policy makers and reformists are calling now one of the most exciting times in education. Nearly every major city across the country is either fixing or laying out the blueprints for teacher preparation and recruitment programs (promoted by the New Teacher’s Project, a nationwide education consulting group) and innumerable districts are experimenting with ideas that range from teacher merit pay, public school redistricting, charter schools, and even student incentive—giving students money for getting good grades. Many of these ideas are, of course, controversial. Teachers’ Unions reject merit pay; parents worry about public school redistricting; and public schools lose funding to charter schools. But, like it or not, these initiatives are on the table because of funding threats from NCLB. Many hope that Obama will improve plans to encourage this innovation while reworking controversial standards in his highly anticipated agenda.
Obama has also pledged to recreate successful comprehensive programs in target cities across the country. Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone has received a lot of attention for influencing the new administration’s “all hands on deck” approach to public education and urban reform. Canada’s program invests money into an all-inclusive program in 97 blocks of Harlem, starting with pre-natal healthcare and parenting lessons and ending with college prep and in-college tutoring. Canada’s plan is simple: Get kids in Harlem through college. And at the preliminary stages of the program, more than 95 percent of 3rd graders at two charter schools HCZ runs are scoring 3 or 4 out of 4 on a state math test in 2008* and most are passing statewide tests with scores above average. Baltimore is one of the many cities that has begun plans to replicate Canada’s model. (See Geoffrey Canada speak at the Center for American Progress.)
School choice is advocated for on both sides of the aisle. Many policy makers are adapting a sort of “whatever works” attitude towards public education and many states are opting for vouchers and charter schools. Rather than competing with public schools for funding, many charter school administrators have begun to view themselves as microcosms for successful public education policy. Steve Barr’s Green Dot Charter Schools stretch across the country in a movement that replicates and recreates successful models in at-risk neighborhoods across the country. Barr encourages a sort of grassroots participation among parents in the school district and has centralized departments for education research and advocacy work. Other similar successful charter school systems include the KIPP Schools and the MATCH schools. Vouchers are a bit more controversial because they take students and their resources out of the public school system altogether. Still, the challenge for the government now is creating assessment tools to measure school success.
Education reformers are now, more than ever, fired up and ready to go and they hope that Obama will give them the resources they need to ensure that all kids receive the education they deserve. While all politicians talk about prioritizing education in their agendas, for the most part, education is usually left on deck as it regularly faces funding cuts and program failures in the name of national security or tax reduction. As Bill Ayers said, “We find money for the things we need to find money for. Why are we not finding money for education?”
The American K-12 education system is in dire need of rethinking, and policy makers need to find a way to maximize its best practices into law. At this point, education inadequacy has become a civil rights issue. Thanks to NCLB, the conversation has already started. Now it’s time to write the successful ideas that were products of the reform debate into policy so that they can be replicated around the country. But it’ll take money from the government, leadership, and a sense of immediacy from the public to push public schools to where they can and should be.
Celia Segel is a Policy and Advocacy Intern at Campus Progress.
*This text was edited from the original.
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