As bad as things are with the huge budget deficit in California, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, also known as the No Child Left Behind Act) is going to make things much worse for our public schools.
"This law sets teachers up for certain failure," says Dr. James Popham, UCLA professor emeritus and an expert on testing and student evaluation. "Improvement is set so high that it will be impossible to attain."
George Mason University Professor Gerald Bracey holds the same opinion. After the massive defeat in California and Michigan, vouchers were stripped out of the legislation, "but not the Bush agenda," says Bracey. He agrees with Popham that the ESEA has "a number of impossible-to-meet provisions." The law imposes "new straitjacket requirements on schools, requirements that would bankrupt any business."
All schools must test all children in grades 3 through 8 each year in reading and math and two years later in science. Schools must also show adequate yearly progress (AYP). After 12 years, all schools and all students will again be required to meet "proficient" levels.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has come up with a set of educational terms, such as basic, below basic, advanced, as well as "proficient." NAEP achievement levels and their definitions have been rejected by nearly everyone who has studied them, including such prestigious groups as UCLA, the Center for Research and Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing, the Government Accounting Office, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Lyle Jones of the University of North Carolina points out that American fourth-graders ranked third in the world on TIMSS science tests, but only 12 percent ranked "proficient" on the NAEP Science Assessment.
The ESEA requires NAEP standards for all states. All states must participate in the NAEP reading and math test to confirm their own state results.
"Most states will never reach 'proficiency' levels on NAEP tests," says Bracey. "When they don't, districts will then be subjected to increasingly severe and unworkable sanctions. Teachers can be fired, kids sent to other districts, districts abolished."
North Carolina and Texas schools have been singled out as having made great improvement on test scores. But if the ESEA's new provisions had been in place for a few years, 90 percent of schools in these two states would be labeled "failing."
As Professor Bracey reports, conservative public school critic Denis Doyle has written, "No Child Left Behind [legislation] means that the U.S.A. is about to be inundated in a sea of bad newsand that [public] schools are going to get poleaxed."
"The school system has proven it is an ossified government monopoly that can't reform itself," chimed in public-school basher Chester Finn (former under-secretary of education) in the Wall Street Journal.
"When these preordained high failure rates occur," says Bracey, "vouchers and privatization will be touted as the only cure."
Finn insists, "It is time to apply American business expertise to education."
Bracey replies, "[As it did] with Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, ImClone, and WorldCom?"
California teachers are getting the double whammy: a huge budget deficit and cuts to an already underfunded system combined with a federal law designed to make schools look like failures.
We can thank California Congressman George Miller for the No Child Left Behind Act. He and Ted Kennedy were big backers of this legislation. Miller (D-Alcosta) advocated requiring tests of veteran teachers in California. CTA fought to get that provision out of the bill. For public education to survive and improve, it will be a long, tough fight.
Make no mistake about it. CTA and California teachers are up to the challenge.
Together we beat two voucher initiatives and passed a measure that guarantees education 40 percent of the state budget. We will beat the ESEA and we will survive these budget cuts. It won't be easy, but when we teachers get mad, we get organized and fight - and win.
