No Child Left Behind

The media is starting to notice that both McCain and Obama are shying away from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on the campaign trail.  The law - once considered a shining achievement of the Bush Administration - seems to have become a sort of political kryptonite in the education world.

Although both candidates have recently released education-oriented campaign ads, an impressive feat given that education doesn't often rank as a top campaign priority, neither mentions the law specifically.  This practice is quickly becoming problematic - the candidates can't ignore the largest K-12 federal education funding source forever.

NCLB funding may pale in comparison to the defense or agriculture budget.  But it's not an insignificant portion of education funding.  NCLB funding reached $24 billion in 2008, a large portion of which went to the nation's most needy schools and districts.  It deserves a place in the candidates' stump speeches as much as any other issue.

Now that Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama have both released their education agendas, Ed Money Watch has decided to examine the federal education funding implications of both plans. While both candidates' plans leave some questions unanswered, the differences between them on education funding are stark.

Sen. Obama's platform would increase federal funding for K-12 and early education programs by $18 billion annually. The largest share of that new funding-$10 billion-would go to Obama's "zero to five" early education plan to improve the quality and availability of childcare, preschool, and Head Start programs. Obama's proposal would more than double the current federal investment in early childhood programs such as Head Start and the Child Development Block Grant.

Last week, the Senate and House of Representatives Appropriations Committees published their respective versions of the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which sets funding levels for most federal education programs for the upcoming year. The Senate bill is ready for consideration by the full chamber, while the House bill still awaits full committee approval.

In total, the House bill would provide $63.0 billion for all Department of Education programs funded through the appropriations process. That's an increase of $3.8 billion, or about 6 percent, from fiscal year 2008. The Senate bill would provide $61.8 billion, $2.6 billion (or 4 percent) more than in 2008. Both bills would increase funding more than the president's budget request, which proposed a $28.6 million (or 0.05 percent) increase for the Department of Education.

Of course, these aggregate numbers don't tell us much about funding levels for individual programs, or how the two houses differ in their education priorities. The table below should help shed some light on that matter.

Many low-income parents with children in low-performing schools are not taking advantage of free tutoring available to them under No Child Left Behind. Under NCLB's "Supplemental Educational Services" (SES) provision, school districts that fail to meet academic benchmarks for three years must set aside part of their federal Title I grant to provide outside tutoring—but only a fraction of eligible students are using the program.

The Department of Education is trying to figure out how to increase take-up rates for the SES program. As part of a package of new NCLB regulations, the Department proposed this week that districts should be able to use part of their SES funding set-aside to conduct outreach activites to educate parents about the program (this currently isn't allowed). This is a logical, beneficial addition to the SES provision that hopefully will encourage districts to implement more intensive, effective ways to inform parents about SES.

Low Levels of SES Participation...

On Tuesday, the Department of Education unveiled a new set of proposed regulations on No Child Left Behind. The major announcement was details about the new, uniform graduation rate formula that all states will have to use for NCLB accountability purposes going forward. In addition, the Department outlined new requirements for district implementation of the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) provision.

In general, the proposed regulations focus on greater transparency for what's already happening in each state. At a briefing in Washington D.C., U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon said that the Department wants to make sure states and districts can justify what they are doing on assessment and accountability. He also raised concerns that districts are not adequately implementing NCLB's restructuring and SES requirements, and said that the Department wants to detail and reinforce what is already required by the law.

Here's a quick summary of the new proposed regulations, which were published today in the Federal Register and will be open for comment for 90 days:

As the number of schools identified for school improvement, corrective action, and restructuring under the No Child Left Behind Act continues to increase, states are under increasing pressure to improve student performance in these schools. Yet a new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that a little-known funding provision in NCLB is undermining state efforts to turn around low-performing schools.

The 4% Set-Aside vs. the Hold Harmless Provision

Under NCLB, schools that fail to meet state achievement benchmarks—otherwise known as Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP—for two consecutive years enter "school improvement" status. NCLB requires states to set aside four percent of their Title I funds to support school improvement activities—such as professional development, new curriculum, extended learning time, or full-scale restructuring—in these schools.

Last week Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that the Department of Education will begin requiring all states to use the same method to calculate high school graduation rates. NCLB already requires states and high schools to report graduation rates, but it allows states to craft their own formulas to do so. The result: states inevitably found ways to inflate graduation statistics. And the state-by-state patchwork of methods used makes it impossible to compare graduation rates across states.

Spellings' announcement is an important, smart move following years of pressure from education and civil rights organizations to improve graduation rate data. Without comparable, meaningful data to expose low graduation rates, states can continue to ignore the drop-out crisis that is plaguing low-income communities—especially in urban areas—around the country.

But Spellings' announcement also raises some important questions: Do states have in place the data systems they need to calculate new, standardized graduation rates? And, if not, how will they pay for new state data systems? So far, neither Spellings nor news articles covering the new regulations have addressed these issues in any detail.

States and school districts are starting to feel the impact of major funding cuts to the federal Reading First program. Congress cut Reading First funding by 61 percent in fiscal year 2008—the unfortunate result of a serious federal-level management scandal. On the ground, however, the Reading First program is producing results in many schools, and school administrators and teachers have praised it.

President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget request would return Reading First funding back to $1 billion annually. As school districts scramble to look for other funding sources to keep Reading First programs alive this year, Members of Congress should reassure them by making a commitment to restore funding in the fiscal year 2009 budget. Congress has made its point on the scandal and should end the political games.

With No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reauthorization stalled for the foreseeable future, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced her own initiative Tuesday to introduce more flexibility into how schools are held accountable under the law. While we acknowledge that NCLB can be a blunt tool at times, we are wary that Spellings' vague plan will help states circumvent existing accountability measures.

Spellings' plan is designed to answer complaints that NCLB's required interventions don't differentiate between schools that fall just short of making adequate yearly progress (AYP) and those that aren't even close. Her proposal, therefore, would create a pilot program for up to 10 states that would allow them to shift resources to those schools that are badly missing AYP. According to Spellings, this differentiated accountability would help states provide "triage" for the "chronic underpeformers" by giving them aid that had previously gone to schools with scores closer to mandated targets.

We have serious concerns about this initiative. Since NCLB's passage - and the passage of the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act that preceded it - states have been strikingly recalcitrant about implementing the law's accountability requirements. They have lowered standards, gamed the system, and manipulated every possible loophole to reduce the number of schools identified as failing to make AYP. In the face of documented abuse of the significant flexibility that already exists under NCLB, giving them more leeway in how they implement accountability is potentially dangerous.

 Education policymakers are increasingly concerned about how to turn around chronically underperforming schools. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states and school districts must restructure schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for five years—and they’re looking for strategies to do so. At the same time, policymakers are focusing on early education—36 states increased pre-k funding in 2008. Yet these two policy strands rarely intersect.

They should. Research shows that quality pre-kindergarten can boost student achievement and narrow achievement gaps. While NCLB doesn’t require states to assesses students until grade three, the foundational skills that support students’ later learning are already in place by then. Therefore, efforts to improve chronically low-performing elementary schools must start early.