May 2003 — Special Feature

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NCLB: A New Role for the Federal Government

By David C. Bloomfield and Bruce S. Cooper

While schools and districts have always purchased these materials from the private sector, current NCLB-driven efforts are mandated on a scale and to a degree of specificity that has never existed. NCLB intends to shake up the system and banish what the administration perceives as complacency. It also aims to spend money on what the administration believes matters most, which is holding districts accountable for their students' achievement.

Other newly funded services - such as tutoring, summer programs, distance learning, scientifically based research and new student information systems that report federally mandated data - are also stimulating interest among private providers, as it will be nearly impossible for schools to meet these kinds of demands on their own. In addition, observers and business groups have noted that departments across ED have put out "the welcome mat for commercial research firms and other educational profit makers" in response to the requirements of NCLB (Viadero 2003).

Parents are also given a huge new stake in guiding their children's public education. Title I provides new funds for family literacy and Title V supports a series of parent-empowerment programs, including charter schools and parental assistance centers. Even more powerful are parents' newfound rights to private tutoring or school choice for their children attending failing schools.

The Future of Public Education

Some see NCLB as the death knell of locally controlled public education and the emergence of a federalized "educational-industrial complex" that will standardize what children learn and how they learn it, what happens if they succeed and what happens if students fail, including the extensive privatization of schools. Others believe that this law is the driver for national school improvements, and thus, the salvation of a public education system that has failed recent generations of students, particularly those who are poor and/or of color. So, is this the end of the beginning for U.S. public education, or the beginning of the end, to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

Equally important, will states be able to muster the energy, time, talent and funding to carry out all the complex stipulations of this law, given other pressures and the current fiscal crises? Most states are already lagging behind in implementing NCLB. One year after Bush signed the sweeping education bill into law, states are trying to roll out ambitious standards and testing programs, improve teacher quality, and develop highly detailed report cards, while making it all work together coherently. However, only 12 states so far are on track to comply with even half of the major federal requirements, according to a new report from the Education Commission of the States (ECS).

Although states have a few more years to meet all of the requirements, many were already due. In the first detailed review of progress of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, ECS found that most states have a long way to go to comply with NCLB. (An interactive report, featuring detailed breakdowns of state progress on 40 measures is accessible online at http://nclb.ecs.org/nclb.) As states face shrinking budgets or near bankruptcy, "many local lawmakers and education officials are complaining that the federal government is saddling schools with dozens of new requirements without providing enough extra money to get the job done" (Toppo 2003).