Overhauling No Child Left Behind

The Congress is about to begin the process of revisiting and revising the landmark Bush administration education legislation that is called "No Child Left Behind." It was a lofty attempt to address a critical need. It attached money to the equation so that states and school districts took it seriously. It forced systems of public education everywhere to face the disparity between the performance of students from various racial, economic, and linguistic classes. It denied the educators on the front line the crutch of blaming someone else for the end result of their teaching.

And it relied way too heavily upon the results of a hodge podge of one-shot annual statewide assessments for it's determination of progress.

The results are a mixed bag. On the one hand it has been claimed that various states dummied down their assessments and switched contractors in an effort to gain more favorable results. With millions of dollars at stake and a critter as large and diverse and an education system, the time frame to achieve results was simply too short and compelled the powers that be to seek out short cuts. That gaps still exist. That schools are still broken. That reading and writing and arithmetic have brought an end to science and social studies and the arts and physical education.

Yet, that's not true everywhere. In spite of the faults, positive changes have occurred; both an improvement in the quality of education and a conscience effort to address and erase the disparities between groups of students. And other subjects have not been ravaged uniformly. Schools are improving.

So what would I do?

1) Be patient. We didn't get to be both so amazing and so pathetic at teaching children (ALL children) overnight, and we won't all become amazing over-night either.

2) Be up front with every educator and system that this is a serious business, and everyone must be willing to do business differently.

3) Focus on A) school systems, B) schools, and C) teachers/administrators that are successful. Develop a list of universally transferable Best Practices that can be uniformly taught, implemented, and monitored. Teachers want to be successful. The war cry from the classrooms is "Just tell me what to do!" This is what we need to do. It also needs to be done in conjunction with a research model that discriminates between what works best and what doesn't. It needs to be open to new ideas and strategies. It needs to be simple and flexible so that teachers retain a sense of the "art" of educating and the freedom to improvise and extend. There needs to be a balance between the craft and the magic of teaching.

4) Tie education funding to the implementation of these strategies.

5) Appoint a Staff Development Teacher for every building to be the person responsible for instructing and supporting implementation of these strategies with the staff. They would have 3 years to demonstrate improvement, and 5 years to attain a rate of improvement within a confidence ban of the national average as judged by schools of their size and FARM % (Free And Reduced Lunch), with categories determined by enrollment in the 500 student increment (and a plus or minus 90 student range).

6) Proceed with an advisory committee from every state. This would be a group of 16 individuals comprised of 2 local school board members, 1 superintendent, 3 administrators (1 H, 1M, 1E), 3 high school teachers, 3 middle school teachers, 3 elementary school teachers, and 1 kindergarten/pre-kindergarten teacher. These individuals would by design mimic the gender and ethnic percentages of the state. Each member would have to represent a different school system, unless there were fewer the 16 school systems in the state, and then they would have to represent a different school. The largest, median, and smallest school system (or largest, median, smallest school) would be required to be represented on the advisory committee.

7) Prior to implementation of the reform, I would host a council which would include all of the members of the state advisory committees, as well as, each state's Chief of Education, and 4 members of each state's school board chosen by their mimicry of the state's gender and ethnic percentages, but to include the president of the state board. This event would not only include a key note address, but other presentations designed to layout the process and define the expectations of the reforms across the board. It would also include break-out sessions presented by school systems, schools, teachers and administrators who were identified as practicing the best strategies. Everything would be available online in real time, and archived for future reference and to be used in Staff Development activities.

8) Beginning within a week of the start of the reforms, I would visit with each advisory committee in there home state at a rate of 1 per week. The event would be scheduled in the morning. It would be held at a central location with a passive audience invited to observe. It would be recorded and archived with a snippet of presentation and a summary by me provided online. The summary would present both the Plus & Delta of the event, but exclude anything that any member of the advisory committee indicated was off the record. Everything would be archived, somethings would potentially not be presented in the interest of and need for candor (and like court, the gallery of observers could be excused like a jury in the event that a committee required anonymity in the process.) BUT THE GOAL here would be frequent, open, honest communication and relevant feedback on the process. It would be the PUBLIC in public education presentation.

9) Accountability would include a quarterly report on the activities, expenses, and statistics around both the implementation and improvement in student progress. Categories in the report would cover all aspects of the reform and remain consistent to allow for tracking of results.

10) What would this cost?

Well, there is an inherent price to adding days for say training to a school's calendar. So I would not do that. I would mandate that school systems uniformly provide 6 days of staff release time to in school training, and these would be done on Mondays or Fridays throughout the year, giving students long weekends.

The Staff Development Teachers would be the biggest single expense. Based on 100,650 public schools, and a median teacher income of $45,000 (+ 12% for inflation in choosing more experienced teachers) the cost of this aspect of the plan would be about: $5.04 Billion. And assuming that I would have the same Federal Department of Education budget at the present incumbent, I would easily assume the remaining cost.

I know, it's a lot of money. But it's money focused on a strategy with public accountability and review built in. As to comparing it to how money is made and spent in the United States, here is another benchmark:

Exxon/Mobil Oil made 19.3 Billion in profits in the first 3 months of 2010. I could do my reform for a year with a fourth of that! Exxon/Mobil could use, say 6 months of their profits to fund my education reform in the United States for the next 6 years. 6 months of one multinational's PROFITS, could transform the lives of 48,755,772 students. Could employ over 100,000 individuals, could turn our economic morass around. ... Where are our values?

In conclusion, what will it take for this nation to deal simply, honestly and effectively with the need to upgrade our public education system? Anyone else have any ideas?