New education leader must focus on NCLB

Along with admiration for Arne Duncan’s impressive reforms while Chicago’s school chief, Barack Obama has also expressed respect for his inside jump shot. As predicted, the president-elect last week tapped Duncan, his close friend and basketball buddy, to serve as his education secretary.

After graduating from Harvard in 1987, the 6-foot-5-inch Duncan spent fours years playing pro ball in Australia’s National Basketball League. His former coach, Brian Goorjian, told the Melbourne Age newspaper, “Of the players I’ve had, he didn’t have a lot of gifts. He made the most of what he had.”

That resolve will come in handy as the 44-year-old Duncan teams up with a president with ambitious plans for improving American education. Duncan himself has pushed bold reforms during his seven years leading the nation’s third-largest school district, including closing failing schools, opening more charters and experimenting with incentive pay for teachers.

In their first few months in office, the two men will face the challenge of appearing to be decisive, responsive and forward-thinking on education issues without spending a lot of money. That won’t be easy since most of Obama’s promised changes to President Bush’s landmark No Child Left Behind Act demand new investments.

During the campaign, Obama touted a comprehensive series of education reforms, ranging from $10 billion federal grants for early education to $4,000 tax credits for college students in exchange for community service.

Obama and Duncan first have to address No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to be reauthorized last year. Obama is not among those calling for a repeal of NCLB; he credits the controversial law with forcing schools to focus on standards and accountability and to take seriously the performance of minority and poor students.

Obama and Duncan can make some changes to NCLB that won’t cost billions. They can follow through on the U.S. Department of Education’s plan to impose a federal formula to calculate graduation and dropout rates, which are now so muddled that many states have no accurate count of how many kids finish high school.

The two leaders can also go further and encourage national standards and assessments, putting an end to the sham in standards and testing. Allowed to set their own benchmarks for success, many states simply lowered their standards and then proclaimed that more students than ever are passing.

Obama will have to loosen federal dollars to create federal tests, but he can mount a case for urgency. The United States is falling behind its peers around the world in educational attainment. The assumption that American parents don’t want their kids held to national standards is absurd.

Parents understand that their children are not only competing with kids from Maine and California, but also with their peers from China and India. Today’s high school freshmen will not only have to meet national standards to succeed, but also international standards. Parents understand the necessity of strong national standards and a common curriculum.

Obama and Duncan can and should take steps to quell the criticisms that NCLB has “made a fetish of testing and test prepping,” as alleged by critic Diane Ravitch. They can move away from a reliance on absolute scores and rate schools on how far they advance students. Under the growth model, a third-grade teacher whose students end the year reading on second-grade level would be ranked a success if her students began the year reading on a first-grade level.

They ought to move quickly on Obama’s plan to broaden pre-k opportunities for low-income children. For states that have already invested in pre-k, including Georgia, the grants could be used to expand pre-k to at-risk 3-year-olds. The achievement gap can’t be narrowed without a strong commitment to quality pre-k.

In his introduction of Duncan, Obama said, “When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn’t blink.”

That’s good, because in his efforts to fix U.S. schools, Duncan may have to stare down resistant teacher unions, skeptical administrators and disengaged parents.

Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)