Education reform law needs...reform

STATES WILL REBEL UNLESS IT'S FIXED
San Jose (CA) Mercury News Editorial, March 17, 2004

The Bush administration did some minor tinkering this week to a law that needs major changes. The revisions are an encouraging sign that the president is willing to compromise to salvage what's worthy in No Child Left Behind, the 2-year-old education reform he championed.

The changes address one of the law's key elements: that every classroom teacher in America be highly qualified. That's a laudable goal. For too long, the least experienced and least trained teachers have ended up in the hardest jobs, teaching poor students in urban districts. But the law's provisions have threatened to compound a teacher shortage while forcing experienced teachers into early retirement.

Under the law, all teachers, by June 2006, must have a bachelor's degree, hold a teaching certificate and demonstrate competence in every course they teach. It's the latter demand that's at issue, especially for high school and middle school teachers who teach multiple subjects.

For new teachers, the new requirements are tight. They must either have majored in the subjects they plan to teach, or they must pass an exam proving their knowledge. Veteran teachers who don't have the course work and don't want to take a standardized test -- a daunting prospect for some -- can go through an evaluation that considers classroom experience and training. It's too soon to predict how many will be caught in that filter.

Clearly, you want a physics teacher who has studied Newton's Laws; yet there are some terrific science teachers in middle school who never majored in biology. And there are unemployed engineers who certainly know enough math to teach it -- yet many can't, without returning to school to take what they already know.

The latest changes will provide flexibility and extend the compliance deadline for rural districts and science teachers in those states -- California is not one of them -- that offer a general science certification.

Bigger battles -- over the law's mechanics, the philosophy behind it and the Bush administration's failure to fund it fully -- are sure to come. Many schools have been sanctioned because fewer than 95 percent of students took standardized tests. Some schools have been dinged if one racial or ethnic group failed to make a yearly goal -- even by just a few percentage points.

No Child Left Behind requires that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014. In a few years, most public schools in America will face stiff penalties for failing to improve fast enough.

Next week, state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell will go to Washington to lobby for a more plausible plan. It would permit slower rates of improvement as long as they are steady.

The administration should hurry to fix the law, before states rebel, and Congress decides to gut it.