NCLB Plan Risks ‘Slippery Slope’

By Howard P. “Buck” McKeon

This year’s reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act has extraordinarily high stakes, and with high stakes comes heated rhetoric. After more than a year of public hearings and private consultation with parents, educators, and experts, Congress is drawing nearer to introduction of a bill to reauthorize the landmark law. Unfortunately, it seems the closer we come to introducing a bill, the more our dialogue deteriorates into finger-pointing and a game of “he said, she said.”

U.S. Rep. George Miller of California, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has offered a thoughtful Commentary entitled “Ending Accountability Loopholes.” His premise is one with which surely no one could argue. A fundamental principle of NCLB was, and is, its unprecedented commitment to accountability for results. Put another way, the law for the first time ever demands that in exchange for billions of dollars in federal education spending, schools must show academic progress for their students.

I strongly agree with Chairman Miller’s assessment that loopholes in the law must be closed, and the issues he identified are prime candidates for bipartisan reform. However, rather than blaming the U.S. secretary of education, I believe our time would be better spent focusing on the future of the law, not its past implementation. But even more than that, I strongly disagree that the solution to our accountability challenges is to close some...