By Sandra Feldman, President, American Federation of Teachers
May, 2003

This is a really bad time for America’s school children and the people who are most intimately connected with our schools. The budget crises in the states, the worst since World War II, are causing cutbacks that will have a negative effect on students and schools for years to come. Class sizes will rise if threatened teacher layoffs occur. Summer school and after school programs, so important to children who need to catch up, are disappearing, along with music and art.  Nurses, hearing specialists, paraprofessionals, and even custodial staff are being slashed.

And as the states and districts struggle with these budget shortfalls, they are being hit with yet another financial burden--the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The law’s goals are unassailable: high standards for all children, with tests to measure whether the standards are being met and help for students and schools that are lagging behind. But all of this will cost extra money--lots of it--and federal funding is woefully inadequate.

That’s the big picture--and it’s painful enough--but to fully understand the anger and frustration that is growing among teachers, parents and school administrators, you have to go to the school level where people have to live with the law.

A few examples: NCLB specifies that schools that fail to get a predetermined percentage of their students to the "proficient" level for two years in a row will be put on a "needs improvement" list and subject to certain sanctions. It turns out, as we and others had warned, that large numbers of good schools will soon be on that list because the law doesn’t allow credit for improvement. Schools that may have started way behind but have made great progress--most of them, probably, in poor neighborhoods--will get slapped instead of praised because they didn’t precisely hit the predetermined target.

Because this unworkable "adequate yearly progress" formula will put many more schools than necessary on a "needs improvement" list, there will be less money available to help schools in greatest need. So a law that is designed to erase achievement gaps could, instead, contribute to maintaining them.

Problems are also created by the way NCLB is being interpreted. For example, children in "needs improvement" schools have the right to transfer into higher performing schools. This is reasonable, but the U. S. Department of Education’s decision that children can transfer into a higher performing school even if that school is filled is not reasonable. Teachers and parents angrily point out that this is a way of compromising good schools and harming the kids already there. This decision is so counterproductive, educationally speaking, that some people believe its real goal is to create an appetite for private school vouchers among parents whose children are either in "needs improvement" schools or higher achieving, overcrowded schools.

There’s also an unexpected snag in implementing what should be the most readily accepted feature of the law: Every classroom must have a highly qualified teacher by the end of the 2006 school year. This would correct a shameful situation--that is, 17 percent of all secondary students, and 26 percent of low-income secondary students, are taught by teachers who are not certified in the subject they are teaching.

NCLB requires that states start solving this problem by deciding on a definition of "highly qualified." But since the states are consumed with juggling budget cuts while figuring out how to change their testing and accountability systems to meet the law’s new requirements--without the necessary resources--the issue of teacher qualification is on a back burner. If the states don’t get around to this soon, by 2006 many teachers, including those who might have met qualifications, may be out of work. And because there isn’t an adequate supply of qualified teachers to replace them, there could be many teacher-less classrooms.  Something similar is likely to happen with thousands of paraprofessionals.

There’s more, but you get the picture. NCLB has had many negative consequences where good ones were intended. Or could it be, as some people claim, a conspiracy against public education playing out, as intended?

I don’t buy the conspiracy theory, but I do believe that people in high places who are hostile to public education and want vouchers see this complex law as an opportunity. Their interpretation and administration of NCLB can, and does, make an already challenging situation even more profoundly so. Add in the  economic meltdown of the states and school districts that can no longer afford the reforms that have been raising achievement; and the result is that a law whose goals were widely hailed is now being experienced as overbearing and punitive.

A more temperate view is that NCLB is still a work in progress. That should be no surprise. Any complex and far-reaching piece of legislation is likely to create or meet new problems as it seeks to solve old ones, and sometimes they are serious enough to compromise the law’s basic goals.

If Congress leaves states and school districts holding the bag by not adequately funding its own mandates, if the Department of Education fails to implement the law in sensible ways that take account of reality, and if both close their ears to the cries of states for help, they could find themselves the authors of a spectacular failure. On the other hand, they could do the right thing and actually make No Child Left Behind live up to its name.

Visit the No Child Left Behind area of the AFT Web site.