Arne Duncan’s planned speech shows Obama administration slowly wading into NCLB
Eight months into the Obama administration, the White House has been mute on its intentions regarding the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, George W. Bush’s signature education accomplishment–and a statute that nearly everyone in America believes needs a makeover. Of course there’s no consensus as to what that makeover should look like–one reason that Messrs. Obama, Duncan, et al have been avoiding it, even though the 2001 statute is already two years overdue for reauthorization. The bipartisan team that Bush 43 assembled behind this measure on Capitol Hill is long gone and the Obama team has been plenty busy with other matters. In a speech today , Secretary Duncan makes clear that he’s in no hurry to dive deep into NCLB. He’s inviting more input and advice as to how to set it right. (Never mind that there’s already a five-foot shelf of books and studies regarding NCLB’s shortcomings and needed repairs.) But he is sticking a toe into these turbid waters, aligning himself with the goals of this contentious statute and declaring that we must use its current tools–including standardized testing–until we develop better ones. He tipped his hand a bit more when he declared–correctly, in my view–that "we should be tighter on the goals… but…looser on the means for meeting those goals." Translation: America needs national standards and measures but should leave it to states and districts to operate their own schools. The former is apt to draw catcalls from the GOP side of the aisle while the latter will alarm his fellow Democrats. Mr. Duncan and the President face plenty of heavy lifting on this front–whenever they get serious about it.
This commentary is also posted at the National Review Online’s "The Corner " blog
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September 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
NCLB needs to be overhauled; while a fan of George W. Bush, I personally think that the idea of taking something from the state level as he did when Governor of Texas, which had a state version of NCLB and then applying it to the national level was a mistake; every state should be empowered to implement their own standards of what they desire their students to accomplish; admittedly while this can make for inconsistencies from state to state, at least the states will have more ownership of what they are doing; when you “micromanage” things such as education, then you really can’t take ownership of something and when you don’t have ownership of something, then you tend not to care as much; this general principal of leadership is universally true in that when you have more of a hands off approach (such as Ronald Reagan did in his presidency) you empower the people under you to take more responsibility for what they doing; when you have a micromanage approach (such as Bill Clinton did in his presidency) people under you are not as prone to take responsibility to get accomplished what needs to be done. Let’s cease having a micromanage “control freak” approach to education and trust the states enough to take the lead in what is best for their students.