Weiss 1

Isaac Weiss

Dr. Beth Fowler

PS 1010

29 March 2017

From NCLB to ESSA: Studies in Deficient Education Policy

There are deep, fundamental problems with the way education is handled in the United

States, starting with the rigid, standardized, impersonal way that the system treats young people.

The origins of this situation are hard to place, but it has certainly been exacerbated by successive

layers of standardized requirements and benchmarks that all people of a certain age are expected

to meet, most famously No Child Left Behind and most recently the Common Core. Teaching to

the test has inexorably swallowed up more and more of educations focus, while the simple idea

of providing a positive experience for each student has receded ever further into the background.

A failure to rectify this means that schools will be a bad place for most kids. But while

everybody is distracted by issues of school funding, there is no initiative to put the student back

at the center of education policy, likely dooming the next generation to waste most of their

childhood years.

Very few policies have aimed to address this since the 1960s free school or open

school movement. The only thing that comes close is the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act

which does not go into effect until the 20172018 school year! This means that, with no data yet,

its very difficult to determine whether the ESSA is a success or a failure to work. But the laws

background is also an interesting topic, because it was designed to fix some of the problems

created by 2001s No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB, though it definitely was not intended to

reduce standardization in education, can be fairly called a failure to work. The question, then, is
 Weiss 2

whether the policy changes embodied in the ESSA are adequate, or whether ESSA makes the

same mistakes as NCLB. There is good reason to anticipate the latter will prove true.

The No Child Left Behind Act was itself a reauthorization of the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act, dating back to 1965, which expires every five years. ESEA from the

beginning involved setting standards for schools and students to meet, and making offers of

funding contingent on meeting those standards. But the NCLB took standard-setting, testing, and

enforcement against schools not meeting benchmarks to a whole new levelor, as NPRs Cory

Turner put it, [George W.] Bush took [Lyndon] Johnson's original vision, to help states level the

playing field for students living and learning in poverty, and added teeth (Turner). This was

meant to be a good thingas a 2016 study attempting to quantify NCLBs effects on education

in Illinois put it:

The logic model of the standards movement is: if students display mastery of high quality

standards, then they have received a quality education. If teachers are held accountable

for transmitting the high quality standards, then students will gain mastery of those

standards. If high-stakes tests [tests of students that school funding or interventions

depend on the results of] are aligned to the standards, then teachers and schools will be

held accountable to having transmitted the standards. (Harman et al. 3)

But hindsight is 20/20, and in subsequent years it became clear that NCLB was definitely

not alleviating the problems it was aimed at, and was arguably creating new ones by distracting

the efforts of teachers (anxious to avoid harsh consequences) towards preparing students to

answer test questions at the expense of everything else. The Illinois study gathered and crunched

data and found that assessments remained essentially flat throughout a decadea far cry from

the laws required 100% proficiency by 2014and cited another study that noted sharp drops in
 Weiss 3

scores following changes to high-stakes tests, before scores then improve again as teachers and

curricula realign themselves towards the specifics of the new tests (Koretz qtd. in Harman et al.

5).

NCLBs original passage is remarkable for the obvious barriers it overcame. The dawn of

the 21st century, coming out of the Clinton era of triumphant capitalism, was not a time when

notions relating to social justice, solving inequities, and leveling the playing field were at a

height of popularity in the U.S.nor were Americans collectively less wary of far-reaching

government regulations than we usually are relative to the rest of the world. Despite this, a

president who took office with less popular support than his opponent had (and a low approval

rating recently eclipsed by his same-party successor, the next president elected under similar

circumstances) was able to summon a coalition from both parties in both chambers to pass a truly

massive bill that explicitly ramped up federal oversight of schools for the stated purpose of

closing the achievement gap. How did this happen?

It seems this can be chalked up to the prior existence of the ESEA. The federal

government was already spending money to try to close the achievement gap; what was missing

was accountability. This is what the American Enterprise Institute attributes NCLB to, stating

that The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) resulted from decades of frustration that the federal

government was spending billions of dollars on K12 education without establishing an effective

way to measure the impact. . . . NCLB attempted to remedy that shortcoming by mandating

testing, transparency, and accountability (A Policymakers Guide 1-2).

So, naturally, this appealed to those lawmakers with a fiscal conservative (aka market

liberal) perspective, who wanted to make sure that the funds were not being ill-spent.

Meanwhile, those with a social progressive (aka welfare liberal) outlook were still aligned with
 Weiss 4

the original goals of the ESEA, and were not averse to the idea of improving it. This also makes

sense in light of Kraft and Furlongs generalized public policy analysis: they postulate that even

defining a problem tends to be a political battle between different factions, so a dual definition

such as make sure were not wasting money along with help make schools better is a neat

way to get two parties with different agendas on board with the same bill (Kraft and Furlong

126).

But, as much support as the policy initially had in theory, in practice NCLB quickly lost

that goodwill. As mentioned earlier, the expected/required results failed to materialize, despite

financial incentives and enforcement procedures such as firing teachers and closing schools that

failed to make their students meet the benchmarks (Harman et al. 5). Public opinion turned

decidedly against NCLBby 2012, Gallup found that only 19% of people familiar with it

thought it had improved education, while 33% thought the law had made it worse and 44%

thought it had not made much difference (Saad).

So, when the ESEA was up for its 5-year renewal in 2015, the Obama administration

decided it was time to fix NCLB. The key problem was identified as the laws one-size-fits-all

approach, with unified national standards applying to every state, district, school, teacher, and

studentwhat Obama called cookie-cutter reforms (Korte). Here was a perfect opportunity to

refocus education policy on personalization, going fully the opposite direction from

standardization to offer students the greatest variety of options possible. Unfortunately, this

didnt happen.

Even though the original overwhelming bipartisan support for NCLB had turned into

overwhelming bipartisan opposition to it, the Every Student Succeeds Act compromises with

NCLBs draconian expectations, instead of completely rolling them back, by keeping the same
 Weiss 5

framework of requirements but giving statesnot studentsmore autonomy. In other words, the

standardization only moved down one level. Hence, ESSA still requires all students (minimum

95%) to be tested in the same grades as NCLB didbut now, state governments have discretion

over when and how that testing takes place, and what tests to use. Similarly, NCLBs unrealistic

national benchmarks (100% proficiency!) are abolished by ESSA, which now only requires

states to set their own goals to meet. And while NCLBs consequences for poor performance

(such as firings and school closings) are gone, states still must identify underperforming schools

and take action of the states own choosing (Klein; Sharp 1).

Though it is now widely accepted that NCLB was poorly designed, there seems to be a

reluctance to admit that it was based on fundamentally misguided ideas, and this is manifest in

the Every Student Succeeds Act. This could be a simple reluctance to throw the baby out with the

bathwater, but since its questionable from an objective standpoint whether there ever was any

baby in that washtub, more likely, it again comes down to structural barriers. Just as NCLB was

only able to pass because it modified the existing ESEA, ESSA didnt stray too far from NCLB

because it was simply impossible to muster enough support for any change more drastic.

Earlier I cited an analysis of the logic model of the standards movement that NCLB

rested on, which is still predominant (Harman et al. 5). Though that logic is consistent, its initial

premise, that if students display mastery of high quality standards, then they have received a

quality education, is unproven. The Illinois study did raise the possibility in its conclusion

(Harman et al. 16), but that was an exception that proves the rule; in general, education policy is

still quite firmly oriented towards standards (look no further than the recent creation of the

Common Core). This is a value structure; for whatever reason, we cant seem to think outside of

the box of high standards when trying to improve something, even when were dealing with
 Weiss 6

something as non-standardized as human children. This limited worldview that gave birth to No

Child Left Behind also contributed to its revision in the Every Student Succeeds Act. This is why

my forecast of ESSAs impacts after it goes into effect suggests it wont make things any better

nor will any major education policy until we can break free of the mindset that all children must

have the same education experience.

 Weiss 7

Works Cited

A Policymakers Guide to No Child Left Behind Reauthorization. American Enterprise Institute,

2015, www.aei.org/publication/policymakers-guide-no-child-left-behind-reauthorization/.

Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

Harman, Wm. Gregory, et al. No Child Left Behind: A Postmortem for Illinois. Education

Policy Analysis Archives, vol. 24, no. 48, 18 Apr. 2016, pp. 124. ERIC, eric.ed.gov/?

id=EJ1100169. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

Klein, Alyson. The Every Student Succeeds Act: An ESSA Overview. Education Week, 31

Mar. 2016, www.edweek.org/ew/issues/every-student-succeeds-act/index.html. Accessed

28 Mar. 2017.

Koretz, Daniel. Alignment, High Stakes, and the Inflation of Test Scores. Yearbook of the

National Society for the Study of Education, vol. 104, no. 2, 2005, pp. 99118.,

doi:10.1111/j.1744-7984.2005.00027.x.

Korte, Gregory. The Every Student Succeeds Act vs. No Child Left Behind: What's changed?

USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 11 Dec. 2015,

www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/12/10/every-student-succeeds-act-vs-no-

child-left-behind-whats-changed/77088780/. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

Kraft, Michael E, and Scott R Furlong. Public Problems and Policy Alternatives. Public

Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, 3rd ed., CQ Press, Washington, DC, 2010,

pp. 121143.

Saad, Lydia. No Child Left Behind Rated More Negatively Than Positively. Gallup.com,

Gallup, 20 Aug. 2012, www.gallup.com/poll/156800/no-child-left-behind-rated-

negatively-positively.aspx. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

 Weiss 8

Sharp, Laurie A. ESEA Reauthorization: An Overview of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Texas Journal of Literacy Education, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016, pp. 913. ERIC, eric.ed.gov/?

id=EJ1110854. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.

Turner, Cory. No Child Left Behind: What Worked, What Didn't. NPR.org, NPR, 27 Oct. 2015,

www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/27/443110755/no-child-left-behind-what-worked-

what-didnt. Accessed 28 Mar. 2017.