Fixing No Child Left Behind

In the six years since the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented, a loud consensus of educators across the nation — and our state — has found major elements of the landmark federal education legislation cumbersome, counterproductive and downright aggravating. Yet the law's major aim of giving children trapped in failing schools better educational opportunities remains a worthy goal. So does South Carolina's attempt to participate in a pending federal pilot program designed to fix what's wrong with NCLB.

State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said last week that South Carolina will apply to become one of 10 states chosen for that initiative, which, he explained, "would give us more flexibility to focus in on the schools that really need it the most."

At this point, such flexibility is lacking under NCLB, which brands any school that doesn't produce "proficient" scores across a wide range of benchmarks a "failing" school. Yet for many generally effective schools that fall short in a few areas (or even just one) of "Adequate Yearly Progress" criteria, that can be a misnomer. This is especially true in our state, which has some of the nation's toughest AYP standards.

The federal pilot program would use "a differentiated accountability" model — the critical element of that pilot program — that allows states more latitude in directing extra assistance to the schools facing the biggest challenges. In our state, that would make it easier to help the one-third of our "failing" schools that missed more than five AYP goals — the schools that need it most.

U.S. Education Superintendent Margaret Spellings aptly expressed what should be a shared goal last week: "One thing we know for sure is that we must take dramatic action to improve our lowest-performing schools."

Correctly identifying the lowest-performing schools is a necessary step toward that goal. So is crafting and implementing common-sense reforms of the No Child Left Behind law.