This week's Education Gadfly: Tests, elections, and achievement

Here's today's Gadfly.  Checker is right to be concerned about this:

In my experience, heavy-duty reform of any major public enterprise doesn't gain traction--or last long enough to prove itself--without bipartisan support. The premier case-in-point is of course welfare reform. It couldn't really happen, at least nationally, until leaders of both parties acknowledged the need for it, then enacted it, then stuck with it.

I thought NCLB heralded a similar era for standards-based education reform. Both parties compromised; many members of Congress took deep breaths, even held their noses, as favorite education nostrums were sacrificed on the altar of consensus.

If this now comes unglued at the state level, three problems will swiftly arise.

• More states will push back against NCLB, maybe even opt out of it, seek to ease its provisions and soften its enforcement.
  
• Educators, parents and students will conclude that standards-based reform, like (say) school uniforms, is a passing fad, something they can wait out rather than altering their behavior to comply with.
  
• Both parties will revert to type, with Democrats tending to lavish goodies on the teacher unions and Republicans pressing for vouchers--and each doing its best to stymie the other.

Above all, the achievement gains already associated in many places with standards-based reform will stop being realized and progress toward more universal proficiency will slow. We know that schools, teachers, and kids change slowly and any education reform takes time (and credibility and sustainability) to gather momentum. Reforming education means changing the behavior of reluctant people and resistant institutions. That's a slow and painful process, one far easier to halt than to accelerate...

The states in which poor and minority youngsters have racked up the greatest (albeit ''moderate'') achievement gains in recent years include Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts. (Ohio can claim ''limited'' gains.) What a shame it will be if that progress slows or ceases (or reverses) because the reform regimes that fostered it have the brakes put on. How ironic it will be if those brakes are applied by leaders of the party that purports to look out for the interests of the poor and minorities. What a disaster for America if states that have painfully climbed aboard the reform bus now jump back down into the roadside dirt.

As a Democrat who's passionate about genuine school reform, I HATE having mixed feelings about my party's likely political recovery next week.

 

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A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Volume 6, Number 42. November 2, 2006

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New From Fordham: The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?
This study shows that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years in boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are proficient in reading, math, or science. And most of the states making such achievement gains are also leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results. See the study here and the press release here.