NCLB: Calm Before the Storm

Key staffers in the House Committee on Education and Labor are on vacation this week. They are, we hope, taking time to step away from Congress’s frenetic pace to freshen their perspectives. When they return, the pace will quicken because September will be absolutely critical for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in both the House and Senate. We expect Chairman George Miller (D-CA) to soon introduce his bill and possibly bring it to the House floor and for the Senate to begin drafting its version in earnest.

Most in Washington expected Chairman Miller to introduce his reauthorization bill before the August recess. That, as we have covered in previous Updates, did not occur. Instead, Chairman Miller delivered a speech on the emerging framework of his Committee’s bill at the National Press Club (NPC) on July 30.
There are many reasons why the Committee did not meet its August deadline; lack of effort is not one of them. The technical and political challenge of drafting language that would grant states more flexibility while preserving the academic accountability of the law is the primary culprit, with many components. The matter of multiple measures of accountability is an illustrative example. In his NPC speech, Chairman Miller noted that his bill would base school progress on more than single test results and would use multiple measures to gauge student progress (academics, critical thinking, teamwork). This statement created a firestorm of debate on the wisdom of using multiple measures for the purposes of measuring adequate yearly progress (AYP) because, like many parts of the reauthorization debate, the devil is in the details.
The idea of multiple measures of accountability to inform AYP is broadly accepted, but its design can either enhance or eviscerate academic accountability. This is the point that Bill Sanders, Director of the Value-Added Research and Assessment Center at the University of Tennessee, made in his letter to Chairman Miller soon after the NPC speech. In it, he expressed concern that the addition of non-academic criteria and academic portfolio materials could, potentially, reduce the validity of AYP as a rigorous measure of academic accomplishment. Yet, the inclusion of academic measures, such as those endorsed by Harold Doran, in his March testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor, would enhance academic accountability. Those measures include end-of-course examinations, the inclusion of National Assessment of Education Progress exams to facilitate the examination of proficiency levels across states and the inclusion of growth model analysis for the purposes of determining AYP.
The components of AYP are, of course, the crux of the law’s accountability and so the House Committee staffers quickly realized that the balance of flexibility and accountability is a task that does not lend itself to speedy drafting. Not to be left out of the debate, the Committee’s Ranking Member, Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), made it clear that the political balance will be just as difficult. “Changes to the law that weaken any of these three pillars of NCLB – accountability, flexibility and parental choice – will be met with strong opposition from House Republicans and are likely to be a fatal blow to the reauthorization process.”
The August recess, then, provides a much welcomed resting point for the emerging debate on multiple measures. When staffers return later this month, they will reengage the issue and, no doubt, be greeted by lobbyists and interest groups who have spent these days sharpening their arguments. The stakes are quite high because this is just the foundation for upcoming debates on merit pay and measures of teacher effectiveness, all of which may be tied to the measures of AYP now under fire.
Resources:
“NCLB Speech: Chairman George Miller (Edited Version),” EdLaborDemocrats, YouTube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctbxKrYodY
Author: DAD