Arizona has joined a growing number of states considering opting out of the No Child Left Behind Act. Mesa Rep. Karen Johnson's bill, introduced in the House last week, would prohibit any school from participating in the program and effectively tell the feds where they can stick their accountability standards and testing.
Good riddance.
The obvious downside to ignoring federal requirements is a loss of federal funding worth more than $300 million. However, the bill's supporters and many Arizona educators have claimed the costs of complying with No Child Left Behind would be even more unreasonable.
Passed in 2002, the act mandates that every child in grades three through eight be tested annually to assess their proficiency in reading and math. Once states have developed their tests and put them to use, each state must show "adequate yearly progress" towards a goal of, brace yourself, 100 percent proficiency in 12 years. Comparisons are made not to the same class of students as they progress through each grade but, rather, to the third-graders of 2004, to the third-graders of 2005 and so on. In this way, there is no control for an exceptionally bright class or one with a shallow gene pool that might throw off the data.
Proficiency, by the way, means proficiency for all groups of students. Groups are broken up according to race, ethnicity, family income and even by limited English skills. Schools that fail to make their "adequate yearly progress" goals for two years must offer students the option of transferring to a better school or offer after-school tutoring. In extreme cases where the school is deemed to be "failing," it may even be subject to expensive "corrective action" by the state.
Take a wild guess at how this might affect a state like Arizona. With a significant population of students for whom Spanish is their first language, our schools are at a greater risk of being designated "failures." This was also the conclusion reached in regard to California schools in a study by Policy Analysis for California Education in December. No Child Left Behind punishes schools for their diversity.
And Arizona public schools are strapped for cash as it is. According to the Arizona School Boards Association, in 2002 our schools ranked 49th in per-student spending and first in class size - not exactly a winning combination.
It isn't just schools in Arizona or California that are at risk for "failure" in the eyes of No Child Left Behind. Last month's Center on Education Policy study found that 26,000 out of 91,400 public schools in America failed to make sufficient progress as mandated by the act.
It's no wonder that in recent weeks districts and legislatures in states across the country - Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont and Utah to name a few - have been contemplating ditching the federal standards. The consensus being reached among educators and politicians who are not in President Bush's back pocket is that No Child Left Behind is too stringent and intrusive on the part of the federal government. Its goals are too lofty.
Though every student in America exhibiting proficiency in reading and math would be wonderful, it is unrealistic and the means outlined in No Child Left Behind place the burden on teachers and taxpayers, leaving no accountability for those who deserve it most: students and their parents.
Scott Phillips is a product of public schooling that used to leave everyone behind, usually on field trips. Reach him at scott.phillips@asu.edu.
