Living in a Post-NCLB World, Part II

Kevin Carey:

A couple of weeks ago, in the course a long post about how we came to live in a post-NCLB world, I wrote:

Why did this happen? First, because NCLB didn't work very well. The federal government is good at distributing money. It can fund research, provide information, and set standards. It has a significant if limited capacity to prohibit people from doing bad things. But it is very difficult for the federal government to make state and local governments do good things they don't want to do. And that's where NCLB fell down. You cannot create a regulatory apparatus that mandates, via adherence to enforceable rules, the transformation of bad schools into good ones.

I've been thinking about this some more and thought it would be worth elaborating.

Brown v. Board was a case of the federal government prohibiting people from doing bad things. It hasn't been easy-the civil rights division of the Justice Department is still overseeing and litigating numerous related cases today-but it worked, in large part because both the problem and the solution were easy to identify. If a small, angry man is standing in the entrance of the local high school swearing eternal fealty to segregation, it's not hard to figure out what needs to change. The remedy is also straightforward: send in the national guard to remove the segregationist and unchain the high school doors.

After Brown, the next big judicial push for educational justice came in school funding. Because the Rodriguez case closed off the federal courts, this battle was fought state by state. Again, it wasn't easy. There were numerous losses, some cases dragged out for decades, and recalcitrant legislatures reneged on their constitutional obligations to poor children. But there were also many victories, in large part because, again, the problems and solutions were straightforward. Money is easy to count. If poor districts get much less of it than rich districts, there's only so much states can do to defend themselves. If subsequent counting shows persistent financial disparities, you get hauled back into court.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 9, 2010 2:03 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas