Kansas Asks: What's the Matter with NCLB?

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This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. <a href="https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/subscribe.asp">Sign up now!</a>

Jennifer Pinkowski -- School Library Journal, 09/27/2006

In recent years, the Kansas State Board of Education has made national headlines when it repeatedly revised state science standards to allow for the possibility of the nonscientific theory of intelligent design into the science classroom.

Now the board is making news for another reason. After its own recent report that a few dozen schools and districts failed to meet the yearly adequate progress requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Board is considering abandoning NCLB—and the federal dollars associated with it—entirely.

If Kansas chooses to leave NCLB, its schools stand to lose $174 million and potentially as much as $300 million.

The debate over whether to abide by federal standards comes two months after Kansas was identified by the U.S. Department of Education as one of just nine states with solid plans for having all students at reading and math proficiency levels by 2014 (an NCLB requirement).

At issue is a discrepancy between how its students are actually doing and how the federal government assesses that. Kansas students have shown steady improvement, yet not at the target percentages required by NCLB. In all, 26 schools and 11 districts failed to meet NCLB requirements of yearly progress. In response, the Board, which had planned to raise the target percentages this year, will instead leave them at last year's levels. Otherwise the rate of school failure is virtually guaranteed to increase.

Kansas officials have doubts schools will ever meet standards. In a prepared statement, the State Board said, "If NCLB continues in its present form, virtually all schools are expected to fail."

Though Kansas officials aren't entirely displeased with NCLB, they cite rigid, unrealistic performance guidelines, particularly those that apply to ESL and special-education test scores, as a major problem.

With this criticism, the State Board joins dozens of education associations, administrators, lawmakers, and teachers around the country who are urging Congress to make fundamental changes to the law before it is reauthorized next year.

Increasingly, displeasure with the law transcends traditional political camps. In this reddest of red states—which hasn't voted for a Democratic president since 1964—it's notable that the largely conservative State Board of Education would consider abandoning an education policy the Bush administration routinely touts as one of its crowning achievements.

Other prominent Republicans who are urging Congress to make adjustments to the legislation are Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, the largest single school district in the country, and Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and brother of George W. Bush. Bloomberg and the Florida governor recently cowrote an article in the Washington Post outlining ways in which the law could be improved.