The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 — which requires states to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students in exchange for more federal dollars — is the most far-reaching educational reform since the country embraced compulsory education in the early 20th century.
But it is unlikely to succeed unless Congress strengthens the law and puts a lot more money behind it when it moves to reauthorize No Child Left Behind later this year.
Gee, that's a shocker. All we need is to throw more money at the problem. Maybe we should just raise the funding level of all Title 1 schools to the Washington, D.C. level, $25,000 per student. Just look at the smashing results they're getting.
First of all, NCLB did not require states to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students "in exchange for more federal dollars." The deal under NCLB was that states would get to keep their existing ESEA funding only if they stopped wasting it and started using the money more effectively to "close the achievement gap." This is the reason why the Feds have a role in education in the first place. NCLB merely provided additional funding to effect the new accountability measures set forth in NCLB.
So do schools need more money to close the achievement gap? There certainly isn't any hard evidence to suggest that this is true and there are a few schools that achieve acceptable performance at existing levels, some for far below the typical funding level in most major cities.
The big news, however, is that the Times seems to be strongly behind NCLB:
This report reflects the growing and welcome consensus that No Child Left Behind, and the quest to improve public schooling for all children, are here to stay.
I read that as strong support for accountability measures, leaving the no-accountability nutter crowd increasingly marginalized. That's a good thing.