THE COMPLAINTS are reaching a crescendo as Congress moves closer to reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, the education reform law that President Bush passed with rare bipartisan support in 2001. Conservatives are wailing about federal intrusion. Teachers unions and some leading Democrats moan that the law relies too much on testing as the measure of student progress. And some parents echo each of those indictments.
There’s no doubt the law has minted enemies. But Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, a nonpartisan group that advocates for low-income children, has it right when she says the law wasn’t designed “to make people happy.” It was passed because too many students in too many places were not learning enough. It wouldn’t be doing its job if it left in place the practices that produced those unacceptable results. Grumbling, in education as in everything else, is the inevitable price of change.
And the evidence is that change is generating some progress. The Center for Education Policy, an independent research organization, recently found that the share of students demonstrating proficiency in reading and (especially) math is up in most states since the law’s passage. In most places, achievement gaps between white and minority students are narrowing. The problem, on both fronts, is that improvement is coming too slowly. The overall gains remain relatively modest. And the gaps between white and minority students, though narrowed, remain dauntingly wide in many places.
Those numbers — not the whining from teachers, the right or, yes, even parents — ought to be the beacon as Bush and Congress reconsider the law. Washington shouldn’t try to silence the complainers but to sharpen the law’s focus on helping the schools and students most in need. In some cases, such an emphasis may even mute the discontent.