Obama offers educators more carrot, less stick

5:57 PM Saturday, February 6, 2010

President Barack Obama has made one thing clear about his approach to schools — he prefers offering carrots over whacking them with a stick in pursuit of change.

That approach could be in for a big test.

The president hinted at major changes to No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era federal education law, in the budget he released this week. His proposals, while still lacking details, mirror some of the good ideas that the administration has tried to entice schools to adopt during the past year.

But the president has a challenge — pushing new ideas while also keeping together the parts of No Child Left Behind that were revolutionary and truly improved schools.

Under President George W. Bush, No Child Left Behind got a bad rap in some quarters as primarily a tool for punishing schools. The law allowed 12 years for all students to achieve “proficiency” — by 2014 — and called out schools that failed to make enough progress toward that goal.

As the law demanded more each year, ever more schools have been counted as failing.

Penalties for failing schools are increasingly harsh. Some of their federal money has been redirected to private tutors. Students are allowed to transfer.

Failing schools can even be “reconstituted” with a new principal, new teachers and new curriculum.

Educators complain that test scores are not the only evidence of a good school, that too little credit is being given for improvement, and that taking away money, students and staff is often counterproductive.

But there are positives. No Child Left Behind requires schools to track and report test data.

Even better, it requires separate tracking of kids who have been ignored — minority, poor and special education students, for example. And it demands that schools raise these students’ scores, too.

It allows parents, teachers and policy makers to understand schools’ performance in ways they never could before.

President Obama wants to reduce some of the heat No Child Left Behind has put on schools. He’s proposing dropping the 2014 proficiency requirement and creating new labels that go beyond pass and fail to recognize more levels of progress. Schools would be measured instead against a yet-undefined goal that kids leave school “college- and career-ready.”

The details will be important. The new standards must be challenging.

So far, President Obama’s education policy has focused on improving standards, testing and data systems; ramping up teaching training and accountability; and transforming the lowest-rated schools into effective ones.

In place of new demands, he’s offered financial incentives, using stimulus dollars. In the past year, the nation’s schools received about $100 billion in stimulus aid, primarily to prevent deep cuts caused by the recession.

Under the federal program Race to the Top, states and school districts that bought into the administration’s reforms can compete for about $5 billion in grants.

Now the president is toying with the idea of distributing a growing chunk of federal poverty money the same way — making districts compete and supporting only those which show progress or innovation.

Tinkering with the formula will be hotly controversial; care must be taken not to penalize kids just because their schools aren’t good at writing grant proposals.

President Obama needs to make good on his campaign promise to “mend” not “end” No Child Left Behind.

— Cox News Service

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