theMusingPosthttps://www.musingpost.com/2024-03-29T07:30:48.346864+00:00Measuring Student Growth? Really?2019-11-01T10:06:50+00:002024-03-29T07:30:48.346864+00:00Ken Meyerhttps://www.musingpost.com/author/kmeyersr/https://www.musingpost.com/measuring-student-growth-really/<h4><strong>Measuring "academic growth" has been all the rage in recent years in education policy circles. Sounds like a good thing, right? I wonder. Are the right tools being used? I also wonder? </strong></h4>
<p>Now, I don't claim to have particularly deep expertise in this arena, I am more of a policy generalist and observer who counts among his friends a number of deep thinking experts in various specialties and whose brains I occasionally pick, but that would be the extent of my "expertise" in education assessment policy from a statistical perspective. I do not come from an education background. I have a BS in Economics, which means I did have my share of upper level courses in math and statistics in college. I also have been privileged to be in some pretty interesting and unique positions professionally to watch the evolution of the data accountability model in education since the early nineties on a state/local level and then on the national stage, for the past almost thirty years.</p>
<h4><strong>The Emperor Has No Clothes</strong></h4>
<p>Through this evolution of nearly three decades I have recently put the pieces together and have come to describe the current "growth model" in education circles as the "Emperor Has No Clothes", to use an analogy. Experts quietly will say this is a terribly flawed way to measure academic growth and/or prepare students for life. It is not an assessment tool to help inform the teacher in the classroom with actionable information and it is certainly not a good way to judge teachers or schools. But no one is willing to step out and say it. Instead these models are held up as the paragon of education accountability. I wonder.</p>
<p>There has been too much investment, if that is what you want to call it, and currently too much money at stake to deviate from the current course, no matter how flawed. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are at stake, nationwide. So, I am saying it, the growth modeling of today is terribly flawed and the unexpected negative consequences are large, having an impact that is not favorable especially for teachers and schools, much less students.</p>
<p>To all my friends in the education policy, data and assessment world, please correct me where I might be off the mark. I don't think that I am.</p>
<p>The idea behind "measuring" academic growth as opposed to measuring grade level “academic proficiency” against a set of standards is not new and is fairly simple. It even makes some sense on paper. For example, if a teacher inherits a classroom of fifth grade students who are several grade levels behind, relative to their age, how or why should that teacher be measured and judged in terms of effectiveness if a standardized test only measures against grade level proficiency for the fifth grade? In this hypothetical example, the entire class, being so far behind already would not be able to pass a fifth grade proficiency test at the beginning of the fifth grade year and likely not even at the end of the year, no matter how good the teacher. But, if it can be demonstrated that the class overall advanced from three grade levels behind to just one or two grade levels behind during one academic year, while still not at grade level proficiency, that teacher should be rewarded and celebrated for providing "academic growth" even if that class is not at grade level. Makes sense, right? Quality teachers do this frequently without much recognition. I am all for rewarding that type of success in the classroom.</p>
<p>Well, as the saying goes, "the devil's in the details". </p>
<p>I often ask this question of my statistician and psychometrician friends in the education assessment world regarding "academic growth"; "If you were to design an assessment system from the ground up, measuring academic growth at the individual student level, would it in any way resemble what is now being sold and practiced across the country as 'growth models'"? After the inevitable eye roll, chuckle or a hearty laugh, the answer is a resounding "NO". </p>
<p>So, why do we currently have today’s so-called academic growth models that are being utilized all across the country to judge teachers, schools and districts? </p>
<p>I might have an answer by peeling back the onion on at least one highly touted and utilized "growth model" by going back in time. I will argue it all goes back to money, and lots of it. An entire multibillion dollar industry has grown up around "academic accountability" and assessments in recent years and there are strong forces that work hard to keep it that way. To use an old term with a twist, let's call it the "Education Industrial Complex". By the way, it is a little known but true fact that overall spending on K-12 education in this country is higher than the United States National Defense budget. Think about that the next time someone argues it is a matter of spending more money on education. This country is deeply committed to education at every level, but I digress.</p>
<p>My first deep exposure to public policy in general and when I first cut my teeth on education policy and reform, including academic assessments, was in the early nineties as a young freshman legislator in Tennessee. In hindsight it was a very interesting place to be as Tennessee was gaining a national reputation for annual state testing of students and retaining the results in a database that then covered several years. Surely this test data could be put to good use in some manner for study and improvement of our education system, right? That was the thinking at the time. It's data after all and the entire world is moving into the world of data analysis and utilization, right? Surely it has some value. But what value would a database of static test scores really have? What information could it provide to improve education and/or the quality of teaching? In reality, not much without some tinkering, manipulation and data modeling.</p>
<p>In 1992, as a legislative response to a very significant law suit filed and won against the state of Tennessee by small rural school districts for equitable funding, Governor Ned Ray Mcwherter pushed forward legislation to address the court decision by restructuring the state funding model to level the financial playing field.</p>
<p>States have primary constitutional responsibility to provide education for all children. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the matter but literally every state constitution includes language protecting education as a right and not just a privilege. As a result of this and similar lawsuits across the country, states began to play a much larger role in education than in the past when local school districts had more autonomy for curriculum, instruction and results.</p>
<p>The 1992 bill, titled the Tennessee Basic Education Plan (BEP), also included a variety of education reforms intended to improve instruction and increase teacher pay, etc. It was a comprehensive and much debated effort to improve public education in the state. Some of the discussion revolved around the question of how to make good use of all the accumulated test data sitting on a server at the Tennessee Department of Education. Over the years the state had invested heavily into this testing program and gathering of test data. It was already a big investment but how could it pay off? </p>
<p>During and before the 1992 legislative session along came a gentleman from the University of Tennessee by the name of William L. Sanders, PhD. Dr. Sanders was a statistician at the UT School of Agriculture whose job, as anecdotally told, was to count the number of flies on cattle by using mathematical algorithms. I am not sure of how accurate that was but it made a good story.</p>
<p>Dr. Sanders, courted Tennessee policymakers and argued he knew how to bring new value to the multiple years of K-12 test data at the TN Dept of Ed. It got attention by creating and applying an algorithm to the data.</p>
<p>Dr. Sanders testified numerous times before education committees that year and ultimately proposed to utilize statistical predictive modeling to make use of all the accumulated test data for the purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom. In layman's terms he basically believed and argued that he could take test data of a cohort (e.g. classroom) of students, especially if there were multiple years of that same grouping of students, create a matrix plugging in a number of weighted variables such as socioeconomic background, age, gender race, etc., and create an algorithm that could "predict" how that same set of students should or would perform on future state assessments, given good quality instruction. By measuring this predictive number against the actual next test he argued that the results of this analysis would demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching, or lack thereof, for that year, for that teacher in that classroom with a static sampling of students. Those results could then be used as a basis for teacher merit pay, etc. The algorithm he created to accomplish this prediction was and is a highly guarded and protected secret, known only by Dr. Sanders and his team. </p>
<p><span>Interestingly, this is the same type of algorithmic model that is used to predict the path of hurricanes or other weather patterns. Think about that the next time you hear or see a weather forecast and compare it to actual results.</span></p>
<p>From a statistical perspective, the key to this model is utilizing the same basic grouping of students from one year to the next in order to have a reliable model. By today's standards, it was pretty rudimentary. But, it allowed the state of Tennessee to make use of the previous “investment” in test scores. Policymakers liked that idea as it could be used as a political argument to say "we are holding schools and teachers accountable for the millions of dollars being spent in Tennessee to educate your children. We now have a tool to assess teachers and schools and we are making a new additional investment on top of the old investment". At the very least, it would buy them some time. </p>
<p>The legislature and Governor agreed with Dr. Sanders and thus was born what is now known as the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System (TVAAS). It was created as part of BEP and was regarded nationally as a significant step forward in the world of education accountability to be able to evaluate classroom teaching, not that anyone really understood how it worked or how the algorithm was structured or applied. It became a matter of faith that it was valid and reliable. That should have been a red flag but it was not. </p>
<p>The TVAAS predictive model was put in place in Tennessee and became a tool for districts to measure teacher effectiveness and quality of teaching for the remainder of the decade. I am sure there were some kinks and tweaks over those years but the basic model remained intact and it began to be used by districts to measure teacher effectiveness.</p>
<h4><strong>The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)</strong></h4>
<p>Ten years after the creation of TVAAS, in January of 2002, President George W. Bush signed in to federal law one of the most comprehensive education reform efforts at the federal level in history, the No Child Left Behind Act. Technically, NCLB was not new federal law. It was a revision of a law that had been on the books since 1965 known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Arguably, while not officially, ESEA of 1965 was the legislative response to the 1954 Supreme Court Case known as Brown vs. Board of Education. It was passed as part of President Johnson's "Great Society" program. The original purpose of ESEA and its newest iteration was to address the inequities in education opportunities between the majority white population in the country and the minority population in the country. NCLB was focused on closing the achievement gap that existed along racial lines, primarily. It required, among other things, that every student in the country in grades three through eight and one time in high school, would be tested against a set of grade level academic proficiency standards that were customized and adopted by each state subject to approval by the U.S. Secretary of Education. The overall rationale behind NCLB was that Congress wanted to get a snap shot picture of how well the nation's schools were performing in order to justify the billions of federal dollars that were flowing to the states to fund ESEA/NCLB. Its intent was to shine a light on the dark corners of education across the country and expose the groups of students that were not being well served by the current public education systems. These students were simply being passed along from grade to grade without any success or skills being developed. NCLB passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support. It was very controversial, especially among the education community and it became the law of the land. Interestingly there was no mention of measuring academic growth under NCLB. Growth measurement was not allowed under the new law.</p>
<p>In the early 2000s, the use of data as a tool for improvement was relatively young, especially in the K-12 education space. While much data was beginning to be collected and analyzed for a variety of purposes it was pretty much the Wild West in terms of how to properly collect, analyze and use data for improvement of public schools. NCLB began to put some structure and standards in place so the test data could begin to make some sense. Comparisons could begin to be made between states, districts and schools to provide some level of transparency into our systems. </p>
<p>My second deep professional exposure to education policy began when I joined the administration of President George W. Bush in 2002. NCLB was just signed in to law and was being implemented across the country. I had a fancy title of Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education where I spent the better part of three years traveling the country to explain and defend NCLB to state policymakers and education leaders. I met a lot of education leaders across the country and it was a great learning experience. It was during that time that I became aware of the concept of measuring academic growth instead of or in addition to simply measuring proficiency against a set of standards and it took me a little time to wrap my head around it.</p>
<p>Even though states were not allowed to use academic growth as one of their tools for accountability, the concept was interesting. It also made some sense to credit successful teachers for academic growth if it could be constructed properly. There were a handful of states early on that expressed interest in developing an academic growth model to incorporate into their state's accountability framework but federal law did not allow for the growth model and no waivers were being granted by the Secretary of Education, so the idea ended up on a shelf.</p>
<p>I discovered that educators, by and large, were concerned about the accountability model for teachers under NCLB and rightly so, as in the example I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. I also heard over and over from educators a similar comment to the effect of "I don't mind testing and data, but I want/need test data that will help me tomorrow in the classroom to inform my instruction, not next year for lesson planning when it may be too late. I need it as a tool to help Johnny read tomorrow, not next year". Those comments stuck with me and it is part of the story. </p>
<h4><strong>Types of Assessments</strong></h4>
<p>As assessment technologies have improved over the years since NCLB, so have the policy conversations, especially regarding "growth models". This is where it gets more complicated and interesting, but it is necessary to understand as there are different types of assessments and they are used differently. All tests are not alike.</p>
<p>For example, to measure academic growth at the individual level, the same type of assessment must be administered to a student at three, for statistical reliability, points in time. It is also important to understand the different types of assessments because since not all assessments are the same they accomplish the different goals.</p>
<p>Here is my breakdown of the different types of assessments from my non expert perspective.</p>
<p>1) Norm Referenced Tests (NRT). This is the type of test many of us grew up with, administered to everyone in the same grade in several states or across the country and all the results are placed on a bell curve, preferably on a national level, as the larger the overall sample size the better the accuracy. Results were generally delivered to the test takers in terms of a percentile or quartile ranking. This is probably the oldest model of education testing on a broad scale. The old Iowa Standardized Test comes to mind.</p>
<p>2) Criterion Referenced Test (CRT). This is the type of test that is required by NCLB and all statewide education assessments. These tests are specifically designed to measure against a set of standards at grade level to determine proficiency. CRTs came in to favor leading up to the passage and implementation of NCLB which then made CRTs a national requirement. These are typically multiple choice in structure. Every state developed their own set of academic standards by grade level and then a CRT was to be administered to measure against those standards and reported to the state by school and district levels. </p>
<p>3) Computer Adaptive Test (CAT). In the simplest of explanations, CATs are administered on computer and they are iterative in nature. When a correct answer is selected, the next question will be a little harder. Conversely, when the answer selected is wrong, the next question will be a little bit easier. These types of assessments are more sophisticated than the NRT or CRT assessments but they can also provide faster and superior results for the teacher to inform instruction. If administered properly, the teacher in the classroom can quickly identify deficiencies and/or strengths for individual students and adjust instruction accordingly, in near real time. These assessments are best used to measure academic growth from one point in time to another point in time.</p>
<p>In the late 2000s, as NCLB began to approach 2014 and the date at which the goal of 100% academic grade level proficiency was to be met, along with the advancement of assessment technologies in general, more talk and focus began to be placed on the concept of measuring academic growth as a secondary means of assessing teachers, schools and districts. </p>
<p>If you talk with experts who have deep understanding of these assessments and the different requirements of how they should be applied and ask how to measure academic growth, you will likely hear an answer that involves a CAT and three points in time spread out over at least a year and measure progress at an individual level. In other words, as an example, administer a CAT at the beginning of a school term (a) in math, reading, etc. to determine exactly where that student's level of understanding is on the curriculum. Mid-year, administer the same assessment (b) to determine if things are on track or not and to make adjustments, and then again at the end of the year (c). The difference (delta) between a and c is the measurement of academic growth for that student.</p>
<h4><strong>Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)</strong></h4>
<p>In 2015, ESEA/NCLB was once again reauthorized and restructured under a new name, the Every Student Succeeds Act. This most recent revision allows states much more flexibility in their state accountability plans, including the possible use of “academic growth models”.</p>
<p>Once again, policymakers looked at the past “investment” in state test data and asked “how can we make use of all this past test data to create a growth model? </p>
<p>Of course the better question that should have been asked was “how do we best create an academic growth model and what type of assessment would that be”? If that question was asked, it died very quickly.</p>
<p>Again, the rationale became “we have made such a huge investment already, how can be use what we have and adapt it to measure academic growth down to the student level”. In other words, how can we spend good money after bad rather than going back to the drawing board and rethink/reengineer academic assessments to create a student level growth model?</p>
<p>By this point in time, entire careers and a multibillion dollar industry had been built around the CRT model of assessments and building algorithms to force the square peg of static test scores into the round whole of “academic growth”.</p>
<p>In 2000, the algorithmic formula for TVAAS was acquired/bought by a private corporate third party and Dr. Bill Sanders went to work for the company to expand their footprint across the country. The company took the TVAAS formula/model, repackaged it as the Education Value Added Assessment System (EVAAS) and sold the model and their services to states and districts all across the country.</p>
<p>Recognizing the move toward and growing demand for an academic growth model, TVAAS/EVAAS again began to morph into another predictive algorithmic structure. The corporate designers of the new and improved TVAAS/EVAAS model successfully argued that their new algorithms could not only measure academic growth for a cohort of students utilizing a static test score but they also convinced policymakers they could break the data down to a student level to measure academic growth. Really?</p>
<p>Policymakers again bought the argument that the past investment could be leveraged to create an entirely different assessment model and began pouring good money after bad.</p>
<h4><strong>Perhaps It Is Time To Rethink How We Measure Academic Growth. </strong></h4>
<p>In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the makers of horse drawn carriages or buggy whips could not envision improving personal transportation by gas powered motorcars. They tinkered around with the idea and some invested and added room for an extra horse or even a motor to their existing carriages but they could not envision a different and better model because they were so invested in their model. Then, along came Henry Ford. He didn’t build the Model T from a horse carriage. He created a new model that changed the world of transportation.</p>
<p>In more recent times, Steve Jobs didn’t see value in simply upgrading and improving flip phones for more functionality. He asked his engineers to create a touchscreen tablet which became the iPhone and also changed the world.</p>
<p>I think it is time to reengineer the academic growth model from the ground up and stop the madness of adding motors to the horse drawn carriage because as far as I can tell, the Emperor Has No Clothes and it is time to start telling him.</p>Education in the US Since 1965, Perhaps It Is Time to Rethink the Federal Role2019-01-20T08:37:00+00:002024-03-29T05:17:08.792857+00:00Ken Meyerhttps://www.musingpost.com/author/kmeyersr/https://www.musingpost.com/education-in-the-us-since-1964/<p>There was a time, way back in the day, when racial segregation in public education was commonplace across the country. "Separate but Equal" was the legal doctine upon which many, if not most, states addressed the issue. As a society, thankfully we have come a long way since those days.</p>
<p>Policymakers and others started paying attention to education policy in the United States in the early 80s when the U.S. Department of Education issued it's report in 1983 "A Nation at Risk". This report was a wake up call for America. Our public education systerm was seemingly faltering, according to the report. Our students were not as competitive on an international scale as was the case in previous decades. Students from many other industrialized countries were beginnig to outperform U.S. students on key international assessements in math and science. It was bit alarming and it was worth paying attention.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Historically, in the United States as we know, the issue of education has predominantly been a state and local concern. State constitutions address the issue of public education. The U.S. Constitution does not directly.</p>
<p>The federal encroachment into education policy began to change in the 1950s, leading into the 1960s when legislation, known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_and_Secondary_Education_Act">Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965(ESEA) </a>was passed as part of President Johnson's "Great Society" initiative. ESEA's purpose was to address the achievement gap that existed between the majority white population and the black minority population across the country, especially the south. Arguably, not officially, this legislation was the legislative remedy to address the 1954 Supreme Court Decision of Brown v. Board of Education which determined that intentional racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of our U.S. Constitution and states were required to provide a remedy. Some states took it seriously, others did not.</p>
<p>After the 1954 case, some states argued that the costs of integrating public schools would be cost prohibitive and little action was taken to address the Supreme Court decision. The 1965 ESEA addressed that by providing federal dollars to assist with the effort and eliminate or reduce the political and financial arguments against racial integration, the primary reason of the legislation was to close or at least substatially narrow the racial achievement gap. </p>
<p>For the next twenty years, ESEA was the law of the land with billions of federal dollars fllowing to the state and local levels to close the achievement gap, and it received little modification every time the law was renewed by Congress every three or four years.</p>
<p>That began to change in the 1980s with a renewed focus on the plight of public education in America. "A Nation at Risk" was a wake up call.</p>
<p>In 1994 after much national attention having been placed on public education in the previous decade, the Clinton Administration proposed significant modifications to ESEA to place "accountabily" into the lexicon of public education in form of testing requirements. ESEA became known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improving_America%27s_Schools_Act_of_1994">Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (IASA)</a>. The point of the legislation was not to demonize or penalize public schools for poor performance. On the contrary, the intent was to drive data from the education systems through an annual assessment into the public arena so resources could be targeted to the problems. Sounds logical, right? Well, it didn't necessarily work out so well. </p>
<p>States put up strong resistance to the idea of federal intervention and testing all children in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as prescribed by the federal law. Many states argued that the cost of administering such tests were prohibitive. Most states, if not eventually all of them, applied to the U.S. Secretary of Education for relief, and received it in the form of a waiver, meaning they didn't have to comply with the accountability portion of the federal law. But the funding for the law still flowed as it had for decades and it was in the billions of dollars. States received the federal funds which then flowed to school district and schools and still for the purpose of closing the achievement gap but there was no real way to measure success. </p>
<p>In 2001, ESEA (IASA) was again up for reauthorization before Congress and there was a new President in the White House, George W. Bush. Among other issues, Bush ran on a platform of education reform and accountability. Once elected to the Presidency he also found an unlikely ally on the other side of the aisle in the U.S. Senate, Massachussetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who became the sponsor and champion of the newest education reform bill known as the No Child Left Behind Act. It was a very big deal. After much legislative negotiation, the Bill was crafted.</p>
<p>For anyone unfamiliar with the legislative process some laws are put in place on a permanent basis, others are put in place for a specific period of time to achieve certain goals after which the law "sunsets", or terminates, unless it is renewed/reauthorized by new legislation. When a reauthorization bill comes along it is the responsiblity of the legislature to review the existing law and ask the question, has the law been effective and/or has it met its intended goal(s)? If not, what should be done?</p>
<p>In the case of ESEA and its several iterations over the years, while billions of dollars were flowing to the states under the federal law, the racial achievement gap stubbornly remained unchanged as measured by the bi-annual national assessment known as the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Policymakers were then met with the options of 1) not renewing the law and reduce the role of the federal government in public eduction and eliminating that funding stream to states to reduce the federal budget and the federal footprint in education entirely, 2) renewing the law as is without any modifications or measurement tools in place or 3) attempt to improve the law to require states to implement an accountability system to measure success. Lawmakers chose option 3 and created the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act">No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)</a>. Its purpose was not dramatically different than previous iterations but there were some significant differences in implementation, not the least of which being a requirement that all states and territorities must create an assessment and accountability system and if they did not, the federal dollars would cease to flow to that state. Some referred to this as a federal mandate. Technically it was not a mandate, it was a "condition of grant", meaning it was a condition of receiving the federal dollars flowing to the state under the law.</p>
<p>There was also another significant difference from previous versions in the Bush Administration, there were to be no waivers granted to any state and every state eventually complied. NCLB was signed and became the law of the land on January 8, 2002. Within a couple of years every state had an assessment and accountability plan put in place and critical information on the status on our schools and school systems began to flow. It was an eye opener.</p>
<p>NCLB has been a double edged sword. It certainly had its flaws like any major piece of legislation. While the Act was focused on the original intent of closing the achievement gap, it also ushered in a new culture in the legislatures and state departments of education based on standardized testing to measure success or failure and to shine light on the areas that were once covered in darkness. Overall has NCLB moved the dial in meeting the original intent of ESEA, to close the racial achievement gap across the country? Not really, but it has embedded a culture of accountability in public education that was sorely lacking and provided states with accountability tools to drive resources in a targeted manner to improve public education. Has the culture of accountability focused on testing gone too far? Fair question.</p>
<p>NCLB was scheduled for reauthorization/restructuing in 2007, five years after it became law. This was important because one of the major goals, and a major challenge, of NCLB was for every school in the country to reach one hundred percent proficiency in math, science and language arts by the year 2014, twelve years after its passage. It was a very lofty and ambitious goal which made a lot of adminstrators and teachers across the country very nervous. While this was put into the federal law as a goal, there was clamor from day one that it was unrealistic and could not be met. But, it was only a goal and there were no negative ramificaitons built in to the law for schools that could not achieve it. The concerns were certainly legitimate from a statistical perspective but he counter argument became, if you reduce the percentage goal, what subgroup of students do you plan to leave behind? This was a real political and unsolvable conundrum. It became a major point of contention across the country. Every year the percentage of proficiency requirement increased until it reached one hundred percent in 2014. The prevailing belief and argument in the early years was that this issue would be dealt with and adjusted when NCLB came back up for reauthoriztion in 2007 so the one hundred percent proficiency was reluctantly accepted in anticipation of restructuring.</p>
<p>For a variety of reasons, all political, NCLB was not reauthorized in 2007. Had it been reauthorized on schedule, the one hundred percent proficiency goal would surely have been dealt with and restructured. Unfortunately ESEA/NCLB was not again reauthorized until eight years later in December of 2015. By that time, many states had been granted waivers by the new Obama administration and the proficiency requirement had basically and understandably collapsed.</p>
<p>The new reauthorization of ESEA, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Student_Succeeds_Act">The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA</a>) did not make significant changes to the existing law but it did eliminate the proficiency goals of NCLB. It also set a renewal/reauthorization of 2019. It provides states much more flexibility in how to apply the federal funding flowing behind the law and it slightly shifted state responsibilty back the the Governor's office in each state as opposed to whoever holds the title of State School Chief. This is important because Governors and legislatures now have more tools to work with the federal law in crafting legislation and policies at the state level to address the broader challenges of workforce development, etc.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is time to rethink the federal role in education? </p>
<p>Although only providing about eight percent of overall education funding, the federal government has been deeply involved in K-12 public education policy for the better part of six decades and arguably has become the tail wagging the dog. The achievement gap has not closed as was the original intent and goal of federal intervention but our society has been mostly, if not fully racially integrated on a macro level. We have come a long way as a society. State budgets for education have also grown significantly over the decades, reducing the need for federal dollars. </p>
<p>There also has been an unnoticed but positive outcome of NCLB that should be recognized and folded into the discussion of education policy moving forward.</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, before NCLB, if you asked the average Governor or state legislator about supporting public education, nine times out of ten you would get a standard political answer of "we need to increase funding for education", and that was the end of the conversation. Education policy at the state level was set by state House or Senate Education Committees mostly comprised and controlled by educators and administrators, highly influence by unions and establishment forces. Today, if you ask a state policymaker about education policy, nine out of ten will respond with a much deeper base of understanding, knowledge and opinion about education policy, mandatory testing, workforce development, etc. The issues have evolved and reverted back to the states to lead the conversation. The policy discussions on education have elevated significantly. Governors and legislators in every state are at the forefront of education issues and moving forward with positive and creative solutions to meet the challenges of the now technology driven industry. </p>
<p>The culture of education accountability is now fully embedded in our state governments from the Governors' offices to legislature to state departments of education and many states are leading the way with innovative ideas and solutions. </p>
<p>Once again, states can become the laboratoraties of democracy and innovation as articulated by Justice Brandeis a hundred years ago.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is now time for the federal government to get out of the way and let the states solve the problems without the heavy hand of the federal government dictating from afar what "accountabilty" in education really means.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is time to finally allow ESEA to expire as having not met its original intended goal. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is time to let states do what they do best, innovate and lead the way.</p>