What You Should Think About the New Version of No Child Left Behind, Part (and Title) II

The House Committee on Education and Labor released the second part of its discussion draft amendments to the No Child Left Behind Act this morning. The first part, discussed on Q&E earlier this week (and at Eduwonk here), dealt with Title I of the law, which contains the high-profile and deeply controversial accountability provisions. But there are actually eight more titles to NCLB, page upon page dealing with a host of issues big and small, everything from multi-billion dollar programs to "exchanges with historic whaling and trading partners (really). The most important is Title II, which focuses on teachers.

And if there's one theme that runs through both parts of the draft, it's that this committee is really getting serious about improving the quality of teachers for low-income and minority students. Academic research shows that teacher quality has a huge impact on student learning--particularly for academically vulnerable students. It also shows that effectiveness in the classroom varies a lot among individual teachers. If a low-income student gets three to five unusually good (i.e. one standard deviation above the mean or more) teachers in a row, they can catch up to their more privileged peers. If, on the other hand, they get a bunch unusually bad teachers in a row, they're often left so far behind that it's all but impossible to catch up.

The tragedy is that the latter circumstance is far more common than the former. High-poverty schools often have tremendous difficulty attracting and retaining experienced, qualified staff. They have less money, the students are harder to teach, and they often fail to give teachers a safe, supportive working environment. Tthe values and ethos of the teaching profession, moreover, tend to associate the "best" students with the best teachers. Teaching AP students in a wealthy suburb is a high-status, often well-paid job; teaching remedial courses to recalcitrant students in a hollowed-out urban high school is not.

The discussion drafts attack this problem on multiple fronts. First, as discussed earlier, by improving the "comparability" provisions guaranteeing that schools receiving Title I funds must first receive an equal share of state and local funds. Right now there's a huge loophole in that provision which requires districts to count a first-year teacher being paid $30,000 as equal to a veteran teacher making $60,000 per year for the purposes of determining how much money schools receive. The draft would change that and require districts to use the actual dollar amount in question. That, in turn, would obligate districts to put more experienced, well-paid teachers in high-poverty schools (or lower student-teacher ratios).

The amendments to Title II eliminate the so-called High Objective Uniform State Standards of Evaluation (HOUSSE) exception to NCLB's requirement that all students be taught by a "highly-qualified" teacher. To be highly-qualified, you have to have a bachelor's degree, a teaching license, and demonstrated content knowledge in the subject you teach, either by majoring in that subject in college or passing a state certification test. The last requirement was included in part because of studies from people like Penn's Richard Ingersoll showing that a lot students--particularly low-income and minority students--are taught by teachers without enough content knowledge in their field, a particular problem in high school where subjects are more advanced. But a lot of states used the HOUSSE provision to essentially grandfather veteran teachers out of the requirement entirely. The draft would close that loophole.

The Title II amendments also put a big new requirement on the NCLB teacher quality grant program. This is the biggest federal education program you've never heard of, providing $3 billion a year. The draft says the feds "may not provide any assistance" (i.e. money) to states that don't comply with "section 1111(b)(11)(C)" of NCLB. What's that? A little-known section that's actually been on the books since NCLB was enacted five years ago, but has been virtually ignored by the states. It requires states to "determine whether poor and minority students are being taught disproportionately by teachers who are inexperienced, out-of-field, or not highly qualified." If they are (they are), states have to create and implement a plan to fix the problem. Under the proposed language, the Secretary of Education must withhold the state's share of the $3 billion if the state "fails to provide evidence...that the [State Department of Education] is implementing policies designed to eliminate disparities in teacher assignments and school staffing between and within school districts..."

(This last proposal is a perfect illustration of the "ask-then-tell" principle of federal-state policy formation. First you politely ask states to do some difficult but virtuous thing they don't want to do. Then you wait one reauthorization cycle (usually about seven years), carefully documenting their utter refusal to do so. Then you tell them to do the right thing, using the threat of withheld federal funds as the hammer.)

All of these provisions will be hotly debated, because teachers unions are likely to see them as infringing on the autonomy of teachers to decide where to work. To be sure, teachers aren't pawns or soldiers to be deployed at the whim of state or district bureaucrats. But equal access to quality teaching is a major civil rights issue that cries out for change. It's a long-accepted principle that all children deserve equal access to education funding. These proposed amendments simply extend that resource-equity principle to the single most valuable resource schools have: their teachers. States and districts need to do much more to build schools for low-incomes students that the best teachers will want to work at, and to pay teachers more money for the hardest and most important job in education: helping disadvantaged students learn.