NCLB REQUIREMENTS BEING EVADED -- VOUCHERS NEEDED INSTEAD

As President George W. Bush began his second term, education policy-makers were wondering whether he would spend some of his political capital on further expanding school choice or instead invest it wholly on extending the testing regimen of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into the nation's high schools. During his first term, Bush used federal power and his bully pulpit to advance parental choice more than any previous president had done. The president championed a pilot program of vouchers to enable children in some of Washington, DC's worst public schools to transfer to private schools; backed Education Savings Account tax breaks for families saving for children's K-12 tuition; and pushed for NCLB-mandated public school choice or free tutoring for children stuck in low-performing schools. In his second Inaugural Address, on January 20, Bush vowed to "bring the highest standards to our schools and build an ownership society."

However, Bush's early emphasis since the election appeared to be more on toughening standards than on stressing ways for families to take ownership of their schools through choice. At a pre-Inaugural talk at a public high school in northern Virginia, the president unveiled a proposed $1.5 billion initiative to beef up reading and math standards in high schools. Bush told J.E.B. Stuart High School students, teachers, and staff his initiative would enable high school teachers to analyze test data and determine which ninth-graders were at risk of falling too far behind to graduate. To ensure the intervention is successful, Bush said, he wants to test ninth-, 10th-, and 11th-grade students in reading and math, as NCLB now requires in grades 3-8. "Listen, I've heard every excuse in the book not to test," Bush commented. "My answer is, how do you know if a child is learning if you don't test? We've got money in the budget to help the states implement the tests. There should be no excuse saying, well, it's an unfunded mandate. Forget it--it will be funded."

Nevertheless, expanding NCLB-required testing will not be an easy sell on the political left or the right. Teacher unions continue to attack testing as part of their strategy of opposing greater accountability and NCLB in particular. Several state legislatures, some of them Republican-controlled, also have balked at current federal requirements, threatening to pull out of NCLB and forfeit federal aid or to seek exemption from testing. For education reformers leery of increased government involvement, NCLB's boosting of choice could be seen as a positive trade-off. As Bush told his Stuart High audience, "Accountability systems don't work unless there are consequences. And so in the No Child Left Behind Act, if a school fails to make progress, parents have options. They can send their child to free after-school tutoring, or they can send their child to a different public school."

Unfortunately, the public school choice option remains more of a promise than a reality. In December, a 55-page General Accounting Office (GAO) report found less than 1 percent of students eligible under NLCB to transfer to better-performing public schools actually did so. The GAO said thousands of students were denied choice because their districts determined there was no space for them, even though federal education officials had said claims of limited capacity could not be used to deny students choice. The GAO also found many local school bureaucracies failed to inform parents of their educational options until after a school year had begun.

Bush's original blueprint had a far more robust choice mechanism: converting NCLB aid to school systems into vouchers enabling students in deficient public schools to select private schools. However, prominent members of Congress from both parties insisted the voucher provisions be eliminated at the start of NCLB deliberations early in 2001. Early signs are that the Bush administration currently values bipartisan support for NCLB over a tough fight for vouchers.

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TEACHER AT FAMOUS BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOL DOWNPLAYS EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

It may indeed be true that school marks are not the best predictor of success at university. IQ and similar tests do seem to be the best predictors of subsequent educational achievement (as Eton itself has found) -- so why not use such tests to determine university entry if "potential" is to be assessed independently of school performance? Since minorities mostly do badly on IQ tests that won't happen -- showing that it is not really an assessment of "potential" but rather social levelling that is the aim of the exercise

All universities should require significantly higher grades from applicants from leading independent schools because of the quality of education they receive, a senior teacher at Eton said yesterday. It would be unjust if parents were buying entry to elite universities for their children rather than the opportunity for their children to reach their academic potential, he said. "I would feel it totally wrong if an independent school were getting a higher proportion of pupils into Oxford and Cambridge than their real ability merits," said David Townend.

Mr Townend, 58, an assistant master, admitted that his remarks would be unpopular with some parents. They would also be controversial at a time when the heads of independent schools feared that their students could miss out as universities strive to meet the Government's targets for increasing the number of state school entrants. But Mr Townend, who has taught chemistry at the Berkshire school for 37 years, said social justice demanded that universities follow Bristol's example of taking school background into account when sending out their offers of places. He proposed a motion which was overwhelmingly passed by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers at its annual conference in Torquay committing it to campaign for entry to higher education to be on potential alone. The union voted to encourage universities to make allowance in the selection procedures for a variety of educational provision experienced by individual candidates at school or college. "It must be right that pupils from Eton should be required to achieve significantly higher grades than someone who has not had the benefits we at Eton can provide," Mr Townend said.

Universities have been given "benchmark" targets by the Higher Education Funding Council for increasing the proportion of state educated pupils they admit. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service is also changing the application form to include questions indicating a candidate's school and social background. This month the London School of Economics admitted that it sets aside 40 places which are available only to applicants from low-achieving state schools.

Mr Townend told the conference of teachers from state and independent schools that he would not want to see universities set quotas for state school pupils, which would be unfair. However, research had shown that teachers in the independent sector tended to overestimate the grades their pupils would achieve at the end of their courses while those in the state sector underestimated them. It would be much fairer for pupils to apply to university only after they had received their results, argued Mr Townend, who said that he believed passionately in social justice. "I emphatically state that entry to university should be on potential alone. "Oxbridge asks for three As and many good universities from the Russell group ask for 3 Bs from Eton. I see no reason why they should not offer much lower grades from schools without such good results."

Last year Eton introduced psychometric tests designed by Durham University for all applicants at the age of 11 and they had been used to measure the potential of junior scholars. Early indications were that the tests were a good measure of ability and potential, he said.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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