CHICAGO TRIBUNE September 22, 2007

HEADLINE: The Next "No Child" Law

Congress has started its debate on the renewal of the education reform law known as No Child Left Behind, and there’s great risk that the law will be emasculated in the effort to “improve” it.

The central triumph of the law has been that schools must report how well all their students are doing. If a school is failing to educate a cohort of children, such as Hispanic students, it can’t hide that fact.

One reason the schools can’t hide is that the law requires them to report their students’ performance on standardized tests, which create a national benchmark. A lot of educators dislike such tests. They argue that one-size-fits-all measurements don’t show the breadth of what students have learned and compel teachers to focus more on testing than teaching.

Such testing is imperfect. But the solutions proposed in the next version of No Child would allow states and schools to evade accountability. They could use a number of measurements — essentially pick the measurement that’s most favorable to them. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) aim to eliminate high-stakes testing altogether.

Allowing states and districts to choose their measurements would allow them to dodge and weave around the intent of the law. That can’t be allowed to happen.

Congress should focus on one change in how the next law deals with success measurements. It should allow schools to measure success by how students grow from year to year. Now, the standard is how many students reach a certain level of proficiency.

That fails to recognize success in raising the performance of the most struggling students. In Chicago schools, for instance, the most heartening story in the last decade has been the exodus of kids from the very lowest quartile of student performance in the nation. Many Chicago kids have moved up from the bottom, but they haven’t necessarily reached a level that would mark them as proficient in math or reading. So Chicago schools, under the federal law, don’t get full credit for their gains.

Such a change in measurements would recognize real success, without letting schools off the hook for their failures.

There are things to like in the proposed revision of the federal law, particularly the emphasis it would put on performance pay for teachers. But Congress has to keep the focus on a national measurement in core subjects. It can’t let schools backslide on accountability.