By Philip Vassallo, Ed.D.
No Child Left Behind?: The Politics and Practice of School Accountability by Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, editors. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. ix, 340 pp. $22.95. Paper.
Few federal government initiatives since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been subjected to as much scrutiny as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. And with good reason. The very survival of our nation depends on a well educated population, yet the school choice movement continues to force Americans to decide on what exactly it means today to be educated.
The President’s political opponents claim the NCLB is too intrusive into the management of local public schools—especially since on average only 7 percent of their budget comes from federal aid. Even many of the President’s supporters have found fault in NCLB because they believe that it does not sufficiently hold students accountable for their performance.
NCLB requires each state to evaluate the performance of all students in grades three through eight in math and reading each year and again once between grades ten to twelve, assesses schools in need of improvement, and offers parents the choice of placing their child in another public school within their district.
No Child Left Behind?: The Politics and Practice of School Accountability, a collection of 13 essays written by the book’s editors Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West and other notable education analysts such as Terry M. Moe of Stanford, Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, and Ludger Wößmann of Germany’s Institute for Economic Research, provides an instructive first look at the law as many American school districts still wrestle with its implications. The book addresses the universe of NCLB from the national perspective of the law’s rationale to the political struggles in launching it, and from recent applications on the state (California) and local (Chicago) levels to an international viewpoint with a focus on student achievement.
Four introductory essays offer a primer of the law itself, the politics of passing it through Congress, and the problems of its implementation. One emerges from these chapters with a clear lesson in educational politics and an excellent idea of why federal bills become watered down once they reach the grassroots level. Race and class concerns, teacher union opposition, party politics, high-performance community resistance, and general concerns about marginalizing the purposes of education all contribute to compromising the impact of the law, resulting in lowered passing requirements and reduced consequences of failing.
In any field, accountability is always much easier planned than effected. No Child Left Behind? does not necessarily prescribe an ultimate best practice for NCLB; in fact, the essays in the second half of the book make plain the uneven and, in places, conflicting early evidence on putting NCLB’s theory into practice. Contentious issues such as performance test validity, teacher credentialing, and decertifying schools cannot be resolved without a radical shift in political priorities and educational philosophies. In presenting the quagmires and chasms laden in the uncharted terrain of NCLB, this book succeeds.
Philip Vassallo, Ed.D., writes on education issues and specializes in writing instruction, family participation, and school choice. His books include The Art of On-the-Job Writing and The Inwardness of the Outward Gaze: Learning and Teaching through Philosophy. He accepts messages at Vassallo@aol.com.
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