Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education

Author: Sandy Kress

This is Dropout Nation

PISA Shows the Failures to Come

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If the signs reflecting stagnant student achievement in the US were only coming from the Program for International Assessment, I might not be as worried as I am. You know…

If the signs reflecting stagnant student achievement in the US were only coming from the Program for International Assessment, I might not be as worried as I am. You know the argument: Since our standards are not generally aligned with those of PISA and our teachers thus don’t teach to them, PISA results may not be an accurate measure of teaching and learning in these United States.

The problem is that PISA trends have begun to mirror – at least broadly – what we have seen in the last decade in our own National Assessment of Educational Progress. From 2009-2015, we saw absolute stagnation in the NAEP. One can see this generally in both national and state trends. Shockingly, even in the vast majority of states that were deemed as “doing things right” by the federal government and given additional funds under the Race to the Top program, there were no gains. This is contrast to the gains we made from 1999 to 2009, especially during the full implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act.

While one wants to be very careful about asserting cause or correlation, there are similar patterns in the PISA results. The 15-year-olds in the US who were assessed in science and math on the PISA improved from 2006 to 2009 by 13 points. Had our students made similar gains in subsequent years, we would have passed PISA averages and the results of many nations that have been ahead of us in the past.

Yet, from 2009-2015, US students fell back on PISA, by a depressing 18 points in math and 6 points in science. Thus, over the decade, we lost half our earlier gain in science and the entire gain and another 5 points in math. This backward motion is no way to catch up against our competitors. It certainly is no way to excel.

There are – to be sure – some data in PISA that show a decade-long improvement in the achievement of our lowest-performing students.  This could be a sign that the No Child Left Behind Act’s emphasis on addressing achievement gaps continued to provide great benefits beyond the years of full implementation. But we don’t see a positive impact at any percentile level or in the overall achievement data. So, this little piece of progress is positive but of too little comfort to overcome the significant losses we experienced in the past six years.

The big question arises: what caused this recent stagnation in both NAEP and PISA?

We must be modest in trying to answer that question. There are no scientific studies that are definitive. We do not know causality with certainty. But we can suggest hypotheses, based on earlier research and reason that merit consideration.

We know that, as indicated in abundant research, that accountability drives improvement in student achievement. Accountability in the states and the nation reached its high point in the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. And student achievement gains in that period far exceeded those of both prior and subsequent years.

But starting in 2009, the Obama Administration began weakening the accountability measures contained in No Child. Instead of addressing aspects of the law that could have been fixed with simple tweaks (or with a full reauthorization), the administration’s leadership at the U.S. Department of Education granted waivers that allowed states to water down accountability requirements in numerous important ways. Tragically, the waivers that brought about the weakening proved to be a true pig in a poke. Accountability was significantly lost, and the “reforms” for which it was waived either have never materialized beyond the paper they were written on or have gradually dissipated.

It’s particularly sad that the only “good news” that’s cited in the midst of these awful recent trends is the improvement in graduation rates. Yet, grad rates are the consummate lagging indicator. All the graduates who walked the stage since 2009 and by 2015 were 7th graders or older in 2009. There’s little evidence that policy in recent years improved the graduation of these students – and even worse, there is some evidence that states are once again gaming graduation rates. Instead of unjustified high fives, we ought to worry that our reduced accountability since 2009 will actually retard further improvements in graduation rates as today’s students approach high school.

I regret being pessimistic. But the truth is I see things getting worse in future years.

Awful recent policy decisions, such as the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act, will weaken accountability and slow progress even more. Unbelievably, the newest ideas flowing from this past election cycle may portend a less coherent and more harmful policy going forward. All this has yet to be “baked in the cake.” So, is it possible that we’ll see greater deterioration in future NAEP and PISA results? I believe we will.

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Killing No Child Left Behind School Leadership This is Dropout Nation

Every Child Abandoned

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This morning’s passage by the U.S. Senate of the Every Student Succeeds Act puts an unfortunate nail in the coffin of the No Child Left Behind Act and the strong…

This morning’s passage by the U.S. Senate of the Every Student Succeeds Act puts an unfortunate nail in the coffin of the No Child Left Behind Act and the strong accountability provisions that helped spur reforms that have helped more children attain high-quality education than at any other time in the history of American public education.

this_is_dropout_nation_logoBut the death of No Child came long before the passage and President Barack Obama’s seemingly inevitable signing of this legislation. In particular, today’s passage is just one of two dates that correspond to major mistakes in national education policy that should be remembered by people who care about building brighter futures for children.

The earliest date was in September of 2011. That is the time when now-former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced his grand waiver scheme to deal with problems arising from implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. The law was then four years overdue in being reauthorized. More schools were at risk of being identified as in need of improvement than the authors had intended in 2001, when the Act was passed. Instead of addressing this problem through legislation or administrative action, Duncan used the problem as leverage to force states to accept input policies he, along with the Obama Administration and centrist Democrat reformers, favored.

The administration had a choice about how to resolve the problem. It could have gone one of two directions. Unfortunately, the manner in which it implemented its decision represented a huge mistake that has had and will continue to have serious negative consequences for our nation’s schools and its students.

The Obama Administration could have, absent legislation, chosen to give states flexibility specifically to avoid over-identification in return for improvements and strengthening of their accountability systems. This would have been a superb occasion to advance and further refine the accountability provisions already in federal law.

Had this been the basis of administrative action, several good results would have likely occurred. First, accountability would have been improved. Second, relief would have been appropriate to deal with problems that were then arising from NCLB. Third, the Congress would likely have accepted the action because it fit within the legislative intent behind No Child. And finally, making accountability work smarter and better would have likely lessened the public opposition to accountability that has developed in the wake of a system that has not been updated and improved.

Instead the Obama Administration chose a different, fateful path. It weakened accountability. It did so by reducing the scope of accountability to a very few schools, permitting super-subgroups to be used to mask subgroup problems, and arbitrarily voiding certain consequences permitted under No Child. Further, the Administration decided without any Congressional authority whatsoever to create its own quid pro quo requirements for granting the waivers. Among other things, it demanded that states adopt certain content standards, which were generally deemed to be the Common Core standards. And it required that states develop certain kinds of teacher evaluation systems. None of this was authorized by the Congress, and all of this was highly controversial.

Even worse, the administration’s process for vetting proposals from states under the waiver process has been a demonstrative failure. As Dropout Nation has documented throughout the past four years, Obama and Duncan granted waivers to states that didn’t have reforms in place to make their plans successful, often over the   objections of its own peer review panels. Anyone who has spent time working on issues at the state level knows how difficult it is to implement anything amid opposition from teachers’ unions and school districts who rarely want to do the right things for children.

The point here is not to debate whether these were good or bad policies. The point here is simply to say that the Obama Administration weakened accountability in return for demanding state action to adopt policies based on its favored input strategies, using un-repaired features of No Child as the basis for the deals.

This strategy has failed. Not only has state performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress been stagnant in the four years this waiver scheme was put in place. As a result, the improvements in student achievement in the last decade (as measured through NAEP) have stalled.

Now, we have this date in this ending year, when both houses of Congress, with the Obama Administration’s blessing, gutted accountability with the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act. While annual testing and the provision for states to put together accountability plans with certain features continues to be required, this legislation fundamentally finishes off the evisceration of accountability begun by Obama and Duncan four years ago.

The federal government will have virtually no authority to enforce the meager “requirements” that remain. It will also have no power whatsoever to require any consequences for schools that fail to lift student achievement or close achievement gaps. The law has substantially weakened the rightful civil rights role played by the federal government in ensuring that children from poor and minority households, young men and women from black and Latino households long served poorly by public education, are provided high-quality education.

There are those reformers now cheering the passage of the bill who hope that states and districts will become accountable on their own. But this isn’t happening. As seen in Texas, California, and even in strong reform-oriented states such as Indiana and New York, traditionalists have been successful in weakening standards for high school graduation, getting rid of accountability measures, and ditching tests that are key in observing how well schools are serving our children. Opponents of reform have been successful in getting more money for doing less for our students — and that is all that has happened. And that can be credited to the Obama Administration’s decision four years ago to abandon strong accountability.

The celebration that those reformers who wanted an end to No Child, especially those in the Beltway, are doing right now will eventually turn to jeers and tears as they recognize what has been lost. The tools needed to provide high-quality education to children in our schools and beat back traditionalists who want anything but are now gone. What has replaced them will serve neither them nor our children any good.

Let’s hope for the best, and let’s work toward a far better end than I am predicting. But, from this month on, we must be exceedingly vigilant about the policies and practices that are adopted across the nation in the absence of federal pressure to improve and reform. We must watch all measures of student achievement, and if this month indeed proves to be the second red letter date marking the continuation of a long period of stagnation in student achievement, we must vow to bring news of such stagnation to the awareness of our fellow countrymen and women. And we must then press with all our strength for a return of the accountability we must bear if our young people are to be educated effectively to the high standards that are required for their success.

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Killing No Child Left Behind This is Dropout Nation

Retreat From Building Brighter Futures

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In no normal enterprise would leadership eviscerate policies, even flawed policies, if the policies effectively promoted the goals of the enterprise. But, of course, American public education is no normal…

In no normal enterprise would leadership eviscerate policies, even flawed policies, if the policies effectively promoted the goals of the enterprise. But, of course, American public education is no normal enterprise.

this_is_dropout_nation_logoConsequential accountability emerged as a major policy direction in education in the nation in the mid-1990s. Through the force of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001, accountability was extended to all the states in the early 2000s and deepened in its impact. This deepening was achieved principally by measuring student achievement each year (which made determinations of growth possible), insisting upon progress of key subgroups of disadvantaged students, and requiring consequences where adequate progress was not made.

Despite imperfections in the implementation of the policies and increasing resistance by forces of the status quo, some of the greatest gains ever on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were recorded during the peak of the consequential accountability movement. Whether one looks at the Long Term Trend data from 1999 to 2008 or the Main NAEP data from 2000 to 2009, the trajectories are impressively up for all subgroups in all subjects for students whose education was most affected by these policies.

Yet for a variety of mostly political reasons, policymakers began to wander off in unfortunate directions at the beginning of this decade. Declaring that No Child was “broken,” the current Administration made fateful decisions that weakened accountability instead of fixing the law’s problems. Unable to lead the Congress to a reauthorization of federal education law, the Obama Administration chose to waive the provisions of the law that were in need of repair as well as certain provisions it didn’t like.

Now here’s where the fatal move was made. Instead of demanding better, stronger, more effective and workable accountability from the states in return for relief from requirements that needed to be waived, the Obama Administration simply weakened accountability and instead demanded action on favored input factors, especially the adoption of certain content standards and teacher evaluation practices.

This was disastrous in several respects. First, it was disrespectful of Congress. The Congress had legislated on accountability for student results. It had not legislated in favor of one type of content standards versus another; nor had it called for teacher evaluation systems. Second, it further fanned the flames of hostility from various powerful interests who opposed the actions the Administration was taking unilaterally. And most importantly, it weakened accountability by limiting its application in a large number of schools, its coverage of all subgroups, and the range of consequences available.

Thus, instead of repairing and strengthening accountability, those in charge weakened accountability. And, in its place, they pushed favored input policies that have been weakly implemented, while further arousing ire and opposition to reform.

To what effect? NAEP scores have been largely flat on the Main NAEP since 2009. And the states that participated in the much vaunted, expensive Race to the Top program have neither raced to the top or anywhere near; nor have they generally made any progress at all since 2009.

In the midst of a breaking down of the law, an executive “doing its own thing,” and increasing dissatisfaction in the public, one might wonder where the Congress has been all this time. Reauthorization is now eight years overdue. Until very recently, there were occasional moans but no action. Now, suddenly, there appears to be coalescence around new legislation dubbed the Every Student Achieves Act.

What collection of policies merits this name? Essentially, the legislation keeps just a very few features of No Child (annual testing and meager pieces of accountability), purports to consolidate a few programs, adds a few new programs, keeps to current funding, adds no real choice, and reduces federal pressure on accountability, virtually to the very low level of that of the late 1980s.

Are key groups happy with this old approach that masks as a new approach? Certainly, conservatives aren’t. We’ll have the same level of borrowing and spending at the federal level. We’ll have no more parental choice. And yet we will get new programs.

Reformers aren’t happy either. The force that advanced civil rights is being seriously eroded. The law’s accountability features which helped lift student achievement and close achievement gaps are being virtually totally eviscerated.

Well – who then are happy with the legislation? The unions and other traditionalists, who despise the pressure of accountability, like the legislation. The states and local districts that want the money but would prefer to have it free of strings like it. And faux federalists, those who seem okay with borrowing and spending billions of federal dollars and keeping a massive federal machine in place to give states all this money basically free of criteria or requirements to get results for the money, support it.

The question arises: how in the world could anyone think this legislation could lead to every child achieving? At least No Child worked in the direction of its goal, and, while many children are still behind, distinctly fewer are today than when it was passed.

What reasoning could support the notion that what is essentially a return to policies that were in place when the NAEP scores were considerably lower than they are today would drive to every child achieving, even indeed to more children achieving than are today? I trust, as certain state chiefs have pledged, some states will keep up the work of reform. But where’s the evidence now of any abundant commitment to improvement that registers in distinctly better results? Other than in a handful of states and districts, one sees no forward motion on the NAEP anywhere.

While we are considering the matter of deception in words, let’s look at what may very well be the worst single feature of the new legislation.

The accountability that data and research have shown contributes to improved student achievement has been grounded predominantly in the expectation of improved student outcomes. We have had standards of learning, measures of progress in learning, and consequences for success or failure in improving learning outcomes. In virtually all systems of accountability at all levels, during the entire period of the accountability movement, accountability has been measured on the basis entirely, or virtually entirely, of outcomes.

If the measures of outcomes show deficiencies, the theory of action has been that inputs ought to be adjusted to get better results. In response to bad results, decision makers could deploy more effective strategies, better or more personnel, improved climate, better engagement of key players, or other inputs to effect improvement.

So, what does the new legislation permit? Up to 49 percent of the accountability criteria can be based by the states on any one or a combination of input factors, including school climate. This means (somebody’s judgment of) school climate could count more than, say, black students’ progress in math or Hispanic students’ proficiency in reading. Indeed if any input can drive 49 percent of an accountability rating, particularly if it gets an “A”, the input could totally dominate and determine ratings, even if real outputs get low to mixed marks.

This essay is intended to be a serious critique of recent moves to weaken accountability. Yet, as to calling it accountability when “the 49 percent input loophole” is permitted, I can think of no better technical term to use than to say this is disgusting.

Beginning in 2010 and accelerating through this legislation, we are witnessing a terrible retreat in the nation’s accountability for educating all its children, especially its disadvantaged children. We began to see signs of stagnancy in recent years, and we see them vividly today. I foresee continued stagnation well into the future, if not actual declines. This is nothing short of tragic. Our children require, and urgently so, that we continue, indeed speed up, the gains we made in the 2000s. Now, with this action, regardless of the misnomer people give it, we will languish in the years ahead.

The future will judge this turn harshly. But, worse, the children who fail to make needed further gains will be hurt by what’s being done, and the nation, as a whole, will suffer.

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At the State Level School Finance Matters

Does Money Matter? A Texas Story

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Maybe you have heard about this. Maybe you haven’t. But here in Texas, school districts, teachers’ unions and others are suing the state for additional funding. That case will soon…

Maybe you have heard about this. Maybe you haven’t. But here in Texas, school districts, teachers’ unions and others are suing the state for additional funding. That case will soon be decided by the state supreme court. This is a story of how districts doing poorly for children in the Lone Star State managed to do the seemingly impossible: Win support from state legislators and courts to all but end standards and accountability while obtaining more money from the state to meet requirements to improve student achievement that essentially no longer exist. Both legislators and judges seem estranged and apparently unaware of the deceptions fed to them.

statelogoDistricts in the state claim that they need dramatically more money to meet challenging college-readiness requirements mandated by the legislature. In short, current funding isn’t adequate. Theoretically, if districts were fulfilling their mandate to improve student achievement, this request may be fair. But there’s one problem: Those districts, along with their allies, have steadily and successfully lobbied districts to eliminate them. After years of working the halls of Austin, they succeeded in 2013, as college-readiness requirements were tossed into the trash.

What districts in Texas are doing is duplicitous, though not uncommon anywhere when it comes to the goals of all public education systems of increasing the flow of money and lowering expectations to help all students. Districts always talk out of both sides of their mouths to get what they want.

These efforts were decades in the making. Thirty years ago, reacting to Texas high school graduates who couldn’t read their own diplomas, the state legislature wisely put in place the expectation that a student needed to demonstrate on a test at least some minimum level of knowledge to be awarded a high school diploma.

Every couple of years, legislators backed by reformers as well as by political leaders such as now-former President George W. Bush would increase the content expectations to graduate, changing the name of the tests from Basic Skills to Minimum Skills to Academic Skills. By 2007, the Legislature put in place a 10-year plan which would require that by 2017, a student would need to be assessed on whether they had learned the high level content in order to be considered college ready. They called that test Academic Readiness.

By the later part of the last decade, Texas legislators adopted a series of vigorous and bipartisan college readiness policies. Appropriately, the Legislature ensured all entering high school students would be exposed to the academic content that research demonstrates will prepare them for success in college. They also directed the Texas Education Agency to ensure that there would be consequences for those school districts and campuses which did a poor job preparing our students for the demanding world of college and high-performance work. Because of the complexity, districts and the Texas Education Agency years were allowed to phase in the “college and career readiness” components over a period of years, slowly but surely to increase student performance levels.

So what happened?

In response to poor implementation of the law, and substantial pressure from lobbyists allied with the school districts, state legislators and the Texas Education Agency have dismantled the college readiness policies, and more. By 2013, districts along with affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers successfully lobbied the Legislature to eliminate state testing of college readiness. They also eliminated the rigorous course of study that exposed the vast majority of students to a college readiness curriculum. Instead, they placed most entering high schoolers on the lowest course of study. They even eliminated the need to pass all of the few graduation tests that remained to earn a high school diploma.

Districts and their allies swore that they would use this proposed flexibility judiciously. Legislative leaders believed them. They should have known better.

This past May, it was revealed that 90 percent of those who had failed one or two previously required graduation tests were handed a diploma anyway. Even worse, it isn’t as if students were passing rigorous exams. Thanks to the efforts of districts and their allies, the Texas Education Agency lowered the passing scores to levels that can only be called objectionable. For the math graduation test, students only need to answer 37 percent of the questions correctly to pass.

Meanwhile the state’s accountability isn’t aligned with ensuring that all children achieve college-and-career readiness. This is because 90-to-95 percent of schools in are given an acceptable accountability — even though college-readiness tests such as ACT show that fewer than one-in-five Texas high school graduates score at a level deemed college-ready. This can be seen in data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that shows that the state produced 246,500 bachelor’s and associate degrees and certificates in 2014, barely more than produced two years ago; this includes 79,700 Latino young people obtaining higher ed credentials (or just 6,000 more than in 2012), and even fewer young black adults (those numbers have only increased by 1,100 a year in the same period). Any hopes of 550,000 Texans obtaining higher ed credentials by 2030 is fantasy.

So, if the state considers nearly all schools acceptable, and if the Texas school system graduates almost 90 percent of students, where’s the need, much less a constitutional basis for, substantially more money? Beats me.

In 2015, in front of the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs complained, “Running school is hard but we can do it if you give us more money.” And, for the past few years to the Legislature, the education lobbyists complained, “Running school is too hard and we can’t do it. Make it easier.”

It’s time to wake up and call out the plaintiffs for their hypocrisy. Uttering cries of difficulty and helplessness, school districts have been playing both sides to get exactly what it wants: a lower bar, with higher funding.

If districts and their allies truly want to ensure that their students are college ready, then they should support the court’s ordering the state to restore the requirements that get kids college ready. If they don’t want higher standards, then they should own it. But then, they can’t ask for more money to reach standards they helped dismantle.

For the sake of our children and our economic future, I hope at least superintendents are willing to publicly, loudly and demonstrably choose the former. Hope springs eternal.

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School Leadership

When School Leaders Botch Accountability

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I find it bizarre and disappointing to read the constant barrage of commentary that the accountability measures put in place by states and through the No Child Left Behind Act…

I find it bizarre and disappointing to read the constant barrage of commentary that the accountability measures put in place by states and through the No Child Left Behind Act are only about shaming, hurting, or putting the “stick” to teachers and other adults working with our students.

transformersSome, but by no means all, of this moaning comes from traditionalist educrats and their supporters. This includes the National Education Association, the American Federation of School Teachers, and those associations representing suburban and even urban districts. They simply don’t like the pressure of accountability and want to eviscerate it altogether. Many of these folks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and quite a lot of people power and time over many years to destroy accountability instead of helping teachers, school leaders, families, and communities leverage those tools to help our children. They are what I call the “end, don’t mend” crowd.

Yet there are legitimate complaints from teachers and parents who have never been given the tools needed to help students, who have been victims of accountability practices from school leaders and others that have run amok and implemented poorly to the detriment of everyone else. These complaints deserve attention, merit fixing, and shouldn’t be dismissed by school reformers or anyone else. As powerful as accountability has been in helping more students achieve success, the tools cannot survive if we don’t address legitimate complaints.

What’s most disappointing about much of this is that many of these problems have actually been caused or worsened by inept school leaders who either weren’t trained in the best consequences to apply to improve teaching and learning or cynically chose the path of blaming accountability instead of fixing the problems it identified.

This is unproductive and shameful. Instead of responding with solutions that would actually use accountability to help teachers and improve schools, school leaders and others who run public education systems too often put a bad name on accountability and, at the same time, kept students behind.

I want to illustrate two ways that administrators could respond to a bad diagnosis in a more constructive way. These examples have been mentioned by other Dropout Nation contributors, including AndrĂŠ-Tascha LammĂŠ, and even your editor. This was (and still is) the purpose of accountability: to use standards and measurements to help schools improve. It was not to blame or shame, but it was also not to continue to hide problems or neglect to fix them.

The federal Institute of Education Sciences has produced 19 outstanding practice guides that, based on the very best research, show in practical ways how many of our most difficult problems in education can be best addressed. The George W. Bush Institute, with which I am affiliated, has compiled similarly excellent resources to help middle schools become more successful. There is no reason why school leaders don’t leverage those resources, along with the data from accountability, and improve their schools and districts.

My basic question is this: how many school leaders do you know who have turned to these resources and implemented them vigilantly and with fidelity to improve their schools? On the other hand, how many school leaders do you know who have complained about testing and accountability? If you know more of the latter than the former, you now know the nature of the main problem you face.

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School Leadership

Ending No Child Accountability Damages Children

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While watching the sorry spectacle of education policy making in the current session of Congress, we must remember above all else the main lesson of the last 20 years in…

While watching the sorry spectacle of education policy making in the current session of Congress, we must remember above all else the main lesson of the last 20 years in education in America: Accountability works!

transformersThe evidence behind the effectiveness of these policies is now clear and abundant. For me, of all the research that has been presented over these many years, the most convincing are the charts showing student achievement patterns on the Long Term National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Both before and after the peak of the accountability movement, student results were and have become again relatively flat. But the gains between 1999 and 2008 were significant.

For nine-year-olds: African American students advanced more than 1½ grade levels in reading and a little less than 1½ grade levels in math; Hispanic students advanced 1½ grade levels in reading and over two grade levels in math; and white students advanced about a grade level in both subjects. This means all subgroups of students advanced substantially, and, because disadvantaged students advanced the most, the achievement gap narrowed at the same time.

For 13 year-olds, all three subgroups advanced about a grade level in math, with the greater gains for African American and Hispanic students. In reading, where the results have unfortunately been flat over the long term for all students, African American students gained a grade level.

The data for students with disabilities show sizable gains as well.

One would think, in a rational world, that intelligent policy makers, looking at these charts, would quickly conclude that something good is going on, and it ought to be preserved. Even if there were problems associated with the policies, one would at least expect an approach of “mend, don’t end.”

But, amazingly, this is not the case. Educrats who have been pressed to change and improve under accountability policies never liked the pressure. So, they organized a ferocious campaign and poured millions of dollars into tarnishing and destroying the reforms.

If results mattered, the reforms would be preserved, improved, and extended. Instead, in today’s sad political environment, the reforms are deemed “much maligned,” and are in jeopardy of being tossed.

Ironically, perhaps, it is the Democrats, who count teachers and other education special interests among their strongest constituents, who are responding positively to the appeals of civil rights groups to preserve at least basic elements of accountability policies.

But, what’s with the Republicans who control the Congress? Are they insisting on real and significant parental choice? Are they standing behind their traditional position of refusing to borrow and spend on a function some believe can best be performed by the states? Are they supporting the honorable and sound conservative position from the early 2000s that accountability and choice ought to be the condition for federal dollars that are spent? No, no, and no.

Here’s the current prevailing Republican view at the federal level, and it’s one their sponsors are very proud of: Let’s continue to tax and borrow billions of dollars, ship them in large part to local bureaucrats and unions to spend without any requirement they prove results or to expand parent choice, and spout to the world that all of a sudden every child in America will now be well educated.

Even more stunning than all this is how these Republican leaders can feel so very proud of themselves as they jump into bed with the very folks who do more than virtually all others in money, organization, and nasty campaign rhetoric to taint, destroy, and defeat not only education reformers, but also Republican candidates for office at every level.

How very ironic that NEA and AFT stand poised to win their biggest political victory in 20 years — money without accountability or choice – delivered to them on a silver platter by a smiling Republican Congress.

Maybe it’s just quaint to think results should matter in the making of policy. Maybe it’s become quaint, too, even to think that common sense ought to matter in the making of policy. But as the Congress crawls back, even in the midst of a huge budget deficit, to “revenue sharing” as the model for this generation’s contribution to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, I can only shake my head.

We waited seven years of an overdue reauthorization for this? I hope to wake up and find it’s all been a bad dream.

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