Hire Ed: the secret to making Bush's school reform law work? More bureaucrats

Washington Monthly, March, 2004 by Marc S. Tucker, Thomas Toch

It is almost impossible to exaggerate just how unprepared these departments are for the task, or how vital the federal government's role in preparing them will be. To take just one example, each state will need teams of specially trained statisticians to oversee the development and administration of state tests. This is crucial not just to improve the very low quality of many tests currently in use, but also to avoid the kind of errors that have befallen California and other states in the last six months. Right now, however, the nation's education schools produce just 36 graduates with these skills each year. These testing experts are the equivalent of Arabic-speaking U.S. soldiers and spies in Iraq: We simply don't have enough of them, and the lack of such talent is costing us dearly. Washington needs to mount a crash effort to create that talent.

Over the last few months, there has been a loud political back-and-forth in Washington and on the campaign trail about whether NCLB has been sufficiently funded. Democrats have charged that the administration hasn't provided as much money as it promised. Bush administration officials argue that the federal government has increased education spending enough over the past several years to permit states to hire all file additional staff they need to respond to NCLB.

Neither side quite gets it. In the long run, making NCLB work will almost certainly require far more money than the Bush administration, or even many Democrats, have imagined. But currently, notes Rich Cannon, a consultant who tracks NCLB funding, millions of dollars in new money for school reform are being "largely wasted," used "mostly to plug holes in district budgets" rather than to strengthen the capacity of state agencies to assess and turn around failing schools.

Unless something is done soon, the already shaky public support for NCLB will crumble. There are those who would welcome this outcome. Some liberal defenders of the education establishment never liked the accountability movement and are rooting for NCLB to fail. Many conservatives have never accepted the idea that Washington should have any role at all in local schools; others are eager to spin an eventual failure of NCLB as evidence that the public education system is unfixable, and vouchers are the only alternative.

The truth is that failing schools can be turned around, as North Carolina, Kentucky, and several other states have shown. There's no reason to think that these successes can't be greatly expanded upon if the lawmakers in both parties who vigorously supported NCLB become just as energetic in fixing it. They can start by making sure the key actors--the state departments of education that are supposed to lead the whole effort--have the capacity to do so.

Research assistance for this article contributed by Washington Monthly intern Nicole Cohen.

Marc S. Tucker is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based non-profit that consults with states and provides technical assistance and staff development to districts and schools, Thomas Toch is director of the NCEE Policy Forums program and a frequent contributor to The Washington Monthly.