100% What?
The most toxic flaw in NCLB was its legislative command that all students in every school must be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. By that magical date, every single student must achieve proficiency, including students with special needs, students whose native language is not English, students who are homeless and lacking in any societal advantage, and students who have every societal advantage but are not interested in their schoolwork. All will be proficient by 2014, or so the law mandates. And if they are not, then their schools and teachers will suffer the consequences.
The term “proficiency”—which is the goal of the law—is not the same as “minimal literacy.” The term “proficiency” has been used since the early 1990s by the federal testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, where it connotes a very high level of academic achievement. The federal assessment refers to four levels of achievement. The lowest is “below basic,” which means a student who is unable to meet the standards for his or her grade. The next level is “basic,” which means that a student has partially mastered the expectations for the grade. Then comes “proficient,” indicating that a student has fully mastered the standards for the grade. And at the very top of the performance levels is “advanced,” which represents truly superior achievement. On the 2007 NAEP for fourth-grade reading, 33 percent of the nation’s students were below basic; 34 percent were basic; 25 percent scored proficient; and 8 percent were advanced. Now, in a nation where only one-third of students meet the federal standard for proficiency, we are expected to believe that fully 100 percent will meet that standard by 2014. It will not happen. Unless, that is, the term “proficiency” is redefined to mean functional literacy, minimal literacy, or something akin to a low passing mark (say, a 60 on a test with a 100-point scale, a score that once would have merited a D, at best).
The goal set by Congress of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is an aspiration; it is akin to a declaration of belief. Yes, we do believe all children can learn and should learn. But as a goal, it is utterly out of reach. No one truly expects that all students will be proficient by the year 2014, although NCLB’s most fervent supporters often claimed that it was feasible.* Such a goal has never been reached by any state or nation. In their book about NCLB [No Remedy Left Behind], [Chester E.] Finn [Jr.] and [Frederick M.] Hess acknowledge that no educator believes this goal is attainable; they write “Only politicians promise such things.” The law, they say, is comparable to Congress declaring “that every last molecule of water or air pollution would vanish by 2014, or that all American cities would be crime-free by that date.” I would add that there is an important difference. If pollution does not utterly vanish, or if all cities are not crime-free, no public official will be punished. No state or municipal environmental protection agencies will be shuttered, no police officers will be reprimanded or fired, no police department will be handed over to private managers. But if all students are not on track to be proficient by 2014, then schools will be closed, teachers will be fired, principals will lose their jobs, and some—perhaps many—public schools will be privatized. All because they were not able to achieve the impossible.
* including Margaret Spellings in a Forbes editorial.
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic, 2010. 102-103. Print.
