AEI: Accountability Without Angst?

This is a fascinating report on public opinion regarding NCLB, and how it has changed over the last five years. Bolded parts are mine.

Accountability without Angst? Public Opinion and No Child Left Behind
By Frederick M. Hess
Posted: Wednesday, February 21, 2007
ARTICLES
Harvard Educational Review (Volume 76, Number 4, Winter 2006)
Publication Date: December 29, 2006


Resident Scholar Frederick M. Hess

In this article, Frederick Hess discusses public opinion trends related to educational issues from the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 through 2006. Using data from three separate public opinion polls, Hess analyzes the general public’s and parents’ opinions on several issues, including the proper use of large-scale assessments, the appropriateness of punitive action for failing schools, the place of school choice, and the responsibility for closing achievement gaps across groups. Among many important findings, the author determines that NCLB has had little effect on the public’s general opinion of public schools; that there is little public support for the sanctioning of struggling schools; and that while the public feels that schools should not be blamed for existing achievement gaps, schools should be responsible for closing them. He concludes with a discussion of implications for policymakers and practitioners.

With January 2002 now a distant memory, it is easy to forget that the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was initially embraced as a bipartisan triumph. During a cross-country victory tour, President George W. Bush joked and bantered with Democratic heavyweights Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative George Miller. The president proclaimed, “As of this hour, America’s schools will be on a new path of reform, and a new path of results” (White House, 2002). Kennedy declared, “This is a defining issue about the future of our nation and about the future of democracy, the future of liberty, and the future of the United States in leading the free world” (2001).

The final bill, aided by the bipartisanship and goodwill that infused Capitol Hill in the months after September 11, 2001, ultimately sailed through both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives endorsed the bill 381-41, and the Senate did so with a vote of 87-10. These were far bigger majorities than those that enacted the less-ambitious Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which passed a Democratic House 263-153, and a Democratic Senate 73-18.

The enactment of NCLB reflected several things, including strong public support for the notion of educational accountability. In 1999, 72 percent of the American public said that a lack of adequate standards was a problem for K-12 schooling (Johnson & Duffett, 2003)[1]. More than 90 percent of parents thought students should have to pass a standardized test in order to be promoted, and more than 70 percent favored raising the requisite standards even if it meant “significantly more” students would be held back (Johnson & Duffett, 2003, pp. 8-9). Bush courted that sentiment during the 2000 campaign, when he abandoned the Republicans’ 1996 call to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and sharply scaled back rhetoric favoring school vouchers. Instead, he frequently echoed the language of President Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats,” as he called for testing, accountability, and a focus on closing the Black-White achievement gap. Decrying the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” Bush ran dead even with Democrat nominee Al Gore on education--erasing the 33-point advantage on education that Clinton had enjoyed over Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole in 1996 (Hess & McGuinn, 2002, p. 85). Given broad bipartisan agreement on the desirability of testing, accountability, higher standards, and public school choice, the post-2000 debate over the shape of NCLB focused on details, mechanics, and a slew of awkward compromises (DeBray, 2006; McGuinn, 2006; Rudalevige, 2003).

Within a few years of its passage, NCLB faced a wide range of criticism from states’ rights conservatives denouncing federal overreach to progressive educators criticizing excessive testing (Manna, 2006). While the bipartisan “Washington consensus” supporting the legislation has largely held thus far, its durability will ultimately rest on public support for the law’s key elements.

Strong claims have been made about public perceptions of NCLB. In 2006, Public Education Network president Wendy D. Puriefoy said her organization’s polling showed that “Americans support the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and believe accountability is necessary to improve our public schools” (Public Education Network, 2006). Offering a different take, Pam Solo, president of the Civil Society Institute, has argued that “there are clear signs of an unprecedented bipartisan revolt afoot against the No Child Left Behind Act. . . . Those responsible for implementing NCLB at the local level--administrators, teachers, parents, school boards--are increasingly skeptical [of] NCLB’s rigid approach. . . . Americans of all political stripes are rebelling against [the law]” (U.S. Newswire, 2005).

NCLB includes a bevy of programs and requirements relating to standards, testing, accountability, teacher quality, reading, research, and other topics. But at its heart are the law’s testing and accountability provisions that have dominated the public debate and that constitute the most visible and significant changes wrought by the law (Finn & Hess, 2004). Because the law is far too sprawling to address here in its entirety, I limit the following discussion to public opinion of its testing, accountability, and remedy provisions.

NCLB requires annual testing in reading, mathematics, and science in grades 3-8, and once in high school. Each state must establish an acceptable system that uses those test results to determine whether schools (and districts) are making “adequate yearly progress” (AYP). Schools and districts identified as “in need of improvement” for a given number of years are required to adopt a series of mandated remedies. For schools, the remedies include, in sequential order, allowing students to attend another public school, offering federally funded afterschool tutoring, and “restructuring” persistently low-performing schools[2].

Educational Accountability and Public Opinion

The fate and implementation of all legislation depend to some extent on public support. A jaded or skeptical public will eventually influence policymakers to change course. At the same time, public opinion of legislation is itself shaped by a variety of factors, including experience, the words and deeds of public officials, and the activity of government agencies and administrators.

Public accountability systems like NCLB are particularly dependent on public support because their successful implementation relies on the public’s willingness to have faith in admittedly imprecise testing metrics and accountability systems. As I have argued previously, “proponents have difficulty standing firm on the details of any particular accountability system because essential components relating to content, testing, passing scores, and sanctions are inherently arbitrary. The closer one gets to crafting and enforcing standards the less defensible specific program elements can appear. In the end, standards are a useful artifice” (Hess, 2003, p. 72).

Public accountability systems are most likely to be successful when embedded in policymaking, practice, and decision making (Weil, Fung, Graham, & Fagotto, 2006). A community’s willingness to rely on test results and to accept crude judgments of school performance and disruptive remedies depends on its faith in the law[3]. If voters are unconvinced by the requirements, believe the wrong schools are being deemed “failing,” or dislike the required sanctions, public officials may quickly find excuses to backpedal. Understandably, the likelihood that educators will treat the statute as more than another passing fad may then depend on whether they believe policymakers are committed to it for the long haul. The history of accountability laws reveals a tendency for officials to roll back the more disruptive elements over time (Hess, 2002). Ultimately, public opinion will help determine how actively state boards and local superintendents implement NCLB and frame national debates on the law.

No scholarly analysis to date has broadly examined public opinion toward NCLB. The scant work that has addressed it in any depth has been highly specialized and typically reliant on a single national or statewide poll, as in the case of research examining parents’ views toward NCLB’s choice provisions (Howell, 2006), attitudes toward arts education or bilingual education in light of the law (Chapman, 2005; Stritikus & Garcia, 2005), or the influence of high-profile events on opinions of public schools (Pride, 2002). A few scholars have discussed public opinion in the context of larger analyses of public education (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003), and a handful of others have intensively examined public opinion on issues like school choice (Moe, 2001), schooling and school reform (Hochschild & Scott, 1998), and local educational governance (Berkman & Plutzer, 2005). In general, however, scholars have devoted limited attention to public opinion on education, with nearly all of the examination of educational polling data provided in the discussions that accompany the release of new surveys. Such analyses are typically careful and informative, but the authors are limited by their need to keep their discussion within the confines of a given survey.

Analysis of Public Opinion

While there are several surveys and many different questions that could be included in this analysis, I focus here on how public opinion has evolved with regard to key elements of NCLB. Given that thrust, the dictates of coherence call for using education surveys that have been administered on a regular basis since 2001. Consequently, I have opted not to use occasional questions embedded in broad surveys but have instead drawn on polls, conducted by three different organizations, that provide longitudinal and in-depth examinations of public opinion with regard to schooling. Two surveys that provide this degree of longitudinal and detailed examination are those conducted annually by the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup (PDK/Gallup) and Educational Testing Service (ETS), which are the only annually administered, education-specific polls of the general population. I also draw on the occasional, highly respected education polls conducted by Public Agenda, which probe more deeply into public opinion on particular educational issues.

Now, no poll can ever provide a definitive explanation of public opinion. Survey responses are always a product of wording, question order, survey design, and sampling protocols. There are inevitably concerns about every set of polling questions. Critics, for instance, have suggested that the polling conducted by PDK/Gallup reflects a bias against school vouchers (Moe, 2002). It is understood that readers may reasonably question the validity or reliability of the opinions reported for any given question. Being sensitive to such concerns, I have sought to use multiple surveys and emphasize broad patterns of opinion rather than isolated findings.

Moreover, because I am particularly interested in the change in responses since NCLB was adopted, concerns about directional bias in questions are rendered somewhat less problematic; those biases should be consistent over time. For instance, unless question wording has changed, any bias implicit in a given question should be constant across the years. So, when comparing public opinion in 2006 to that in 2001 or 2002, trends can be revealing even if one is skeptical of how a given question is worded.

Finally, given space constraints, the discussion here is limited to the views of the general public and parents--not those of educators, administrators, or students, which while well worth exploring, are simply beyond the purview of this article. Similarly, while variation in opinion among demographic populations is informative, a fine-grained analysis was not possible in this article largely because the set of polls examined generally do not report their findings by age group or ethnicity.

The Shape of Public Opinion

This analysis addresses four key questions: How has public awareness of and support for the No Child Left Behind Act changed over time? What did the public think about the logic and design of the law when it was first passed? How has the public’s thinking about the aims and design of NCLB changed over time? And, finally, what does all of this mean for the implementation and future of NCLB?

Awareness and Aggregate Support

In 2002, neither PDK/Gallup nor ETS asked how much Americans knew about or how favorably they viewed NCLB. However, since 2003, PDK/Gallup has asked both questions. In 2003, just 24 percent of respondents said they knew a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about the law, while three-quarters said they knew “very little” or “nothing at all” (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 23). By 2006, 45 percent of respondents said they knew a “great deal” or a “fair amount,” but 55 percent still said they knew little or nothing (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 33). While different in the particulars, the ETS numbers show the same trend. In 2005, ETS reported that the percentage of respondents aware of the NCLB reforms had doubled since 2001, but that even in 2005, just 61 percent said they had heard of the law (ETS, 2005, p. 9). In 2006, Public Agenda reported that 55 percent of parents said they knew “a great deal” or “a fair amount” about NCLB, while 44 percent said they had heard little or “nothing at all” (Johnson, Arumi, & Ott, 2006a, p. 10). All in all, these figures were not surprising, given what we know about public awareness of other significant changes in national policy, such as the 1996 welfare reform or the 2003 addition of a drug benefit to Medicare.

In 2003, PDK/Gallup first asked respondents to give their impression of NCLB, based on what they had “heard or read about” it. That year, 18 percent said they favored the law, 13 percent did not, and 69 percent did not know (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 24). By 2006, the favorable figure had climbed fourteen points, to 32 percent, and the unfavorable figure increased eighteen points, to 31 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 34). The percentage who viewed the statute “very favorably” increased from 5 percent to 9 percent, while the percentage who viewed it “very unfavorably” grew from 6 percent to 13 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 34). In short, the mildly favorable 2003 numbers had settled into a rough split by 2006.

The 2005 ETS poll suggested a modestly more positive take on the law, reporting that 45 percent of respondents held a favorable view of NCLB and 39 percent an unfavorable one (ETS, 2005, p. 9). Among those with “strong” views, opinion was split, with 19 percent favorable and 21 percent unfavorable (ETS, 2005, p. 10). In 2006, Public Agenda reported that 24 percent thought NCLB was leading schools to improve, while 21 percent thought it was “causing problems” (Johnson, Arumi, & Ott, 2006b, p. 10). Similarly, in 2006, PDK/Gallup reported that 26 percent of respondents said it was their “impression” that NCLB was “helping schools in their community,” and 21 percent that it was “hurting” them (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 35). Though there was some variation across polls, the emerging picture was of a modestly informed public with mixed feelings.

Public Opinion in 2001 and 2002

With that as prologue, how did Americans feel about NCLB, testing, accountability, and NCLB-style remedies at the time the law was enacted? For starters, note that Americans have traditionally been fairly upbeat about the state of their community schools, even in the face of dire warnings. In 2001, while NCLB was being negotiated, 51 percent of adults gave their community’s schools an A or a B, while just 13 percent said they deserved a D or an F (Rose & Gallup, 2001, table 1). In 2002, just after the law’s passage, the verdict was similar: 47 percent As and Bs and 13 percent Ds and Fs. Parents with students in public schools were even more positive (Rose & Gallup, 2002, table 1). The pattern of strong support for local schools was consistent with public opinion toward local schools going back nearly four decades (Elam, 1978). Meanwhile, the public is traditionally much more mixed toward the nation’s schools as a whole. In 2001, 25 percent of respondents gave the nation’s schools an A or a B, 19 percent a D or an F; in 2002, 24 percent gave them an A or a B, 16 percent a D or an F (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 43). Ultimately, however, when seeking to convince parents and voters to tolerate NCLB-required sanctions, restructuring, or other disruptions in local schools, it is the public’s feelings about local schools that will matter most.

Testing and AYP

Turning to the testing and accountability requirements of NCLB, there was substantial public support for an increased federal role when the law was passed--to a degree often overlooked by casual critiques. In 2002, the first PDK/Gallup poll taken after the law was enacted found that 57 percent of respondents thought that the “federal government’s [increased] involvement in local schooling was a ‘good thing’”; just 34 percent thought it a “bad thing” (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 44). The public backed legislation that would require schools to use an annual test to track “student progress from grades 3 to 8” by a margin of 67 percent to 31 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 45). In fact, respondents seemed surprisingly comfortable with aggressive federal involvement in testing, with 68 percent endorsing the proposal that “all fifty states [be required] to use a nationally standardized test” and just 30 percent preferring to allow each state to design its own test (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 45). This is noteworthy, because the legislative champions of NCLB studiously avoided any hint of a national test, in significant part out of concern that raising the question would have stoked heated popular opposition and sunk the bill. At the same time, more than three-quarters of respondents said that the local school board or state government--and not the federal government--should have the “greatest influence” on deciding “what is taught” (Rose & Gallup, 2003, table 7). It is unclear whether respondents were distinguishing “testing” from “curriculum,” had conflicting preferences, or were confused by the issue. Nonetheless, receptiveness to federal activity in 2002 is noteworthy, given that concerns about federal overreach have been a rallying cry for many NCLB critics (Uzzell, 2005).

Policymakers have fretted that the public will tolerate only so much testing in the schools, and some NCLB critics have argued that testing overload will spur a backlash (Kohn, 2000; Meier & Wood, 2004; Ohanian, 1999). In 2002, most Americans were comfortable with the prevailing approach to testing: 47 percent of respondents told PDK/Gallup in 2002 that there was “just the right amount” of emphasis on testing in the public schools, while 31 percent said that there was “too much” and 19 percent that there was not enough (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 53). Public Agenda reported even stronger support for existing testing requirements among parents in 2002, with 61 percent affirming that “things [were] about right,” 12 percent saying their child took too many standardized tests, and 9 percent saying they took too few (Johnson et al., 2006b, p. 9).

In 2002, the public was also willing to tolerate some curricular narrowing. When asked about reducing the emphasis on other subjects in order to emphasize math and reading, 56 percent said it would be a “good thing” and 40 percent a “bad thing” (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 53). In other words, the public seemed prepared to accept some reduction in areas like history, science, or the arts in order to increase attention to numeracy and literacy.

Achievement Gap and Disaggregation

NCLB was largely designed to eliminate the “achievement gap” reflected in the different levels of academic achievement between White and Asian students on one hand, and Black and Latino students on the other. As former secretary of education Rod Paige declared, “I could make the case that the whole $22 billion in [NCLB] is about closing the achievement gap” (2002). Supporters of NCLB’s effort to shrink the racial achievement gap frequently cited the finding that typical Black twelfth-grade students performed at about the same level as the typical White eighth grader (Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003). In 2002, was the public aware of this? If so, was it supportive of NCLB’s approach to closing the gap?

That year, 49 percent of respondents said White achievement was higher than that of Black and Latino students, but 38 percent thought it the same and 4 percent thought it lower (Rose & Gallup, 2004, table 1). In other words, more than 40 percent of the public was not aware that the achievement gap existed. Of those who said there was a gap, 80 percent thought closing it was “very important” (Rose & Gallup, 2002, table 2). Even among those who thought closing it important, however, there was a belief that schools were generally not responsible for the gap. Just 29 percent of respondents said they believed that the racial achievement gap was due primarily to schooling, while 66 percent thought it due primarily to “nonschool” factors (Rose & Gallup, 2002, table 2). Though the majority did not believe schools were responsible for causing the gap, respondents in 2001 did say, by a margin of 55 to 44 percent, that schools should be responsible for closing the gap (the question was not asked in 2002; Rose & Gallup, 2001, table 2).

Public enthusiasm for testing appeared to rest in part on a faith that all students would pass. When asked how likely it was that all students would be able to pass the NCLB-mandated tests by 2013-14, 80 percent of respondents said it was very or somewhat likely, while just 18 percent said it was unlikely (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 45). However, it is unclear how deeply this conviction was held or how the public’s thinking would change if large numbers of students failed to pass the tests (unfortunately, PDK/Gallup has not repeated this question since 2002). If students do not pass, NCLB requires that schools be held accountable. Let us now turn to the question of what kinds of measures the public would condone.

Remedies

In 2001 and 2002, there was some evidence of support for intervention in low-performing schools. Public Agenda reported in 2001 that 74 percent of those who rated their public schools as fair or poor said they would like to see more community involvement in the schools (Farkas, Foley, & Duffett, 2001, p. 17). However, there was little evidence of a public appetite for disruptive change. In 2001 and 2002, PDK/Gallup asked whether respondents would prefer to see a focus on “reforming the existing public school system” or “finding an alternative to the existing” system. In 2001, respondents favored reforming the current system by a margin of 72 percent to 24 percent and, in 2002, after the passage of NCLB, they did so by a margin of 69 percent to 27 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 43). There is nothing surprising about this finding--Americans tend to be risk averse on such questions. However, this trend suggests that NCLB proponents would find public support more readily when they emphasized conventional school improvement than when championing new options such as charter schools or virtual schools.

Initially, the public was enthusiastic about the NCLB provisions that offered new choices and tutoring to children in schools that repeatedly fail to make AYP. By a margin of 90 percent to 9 percent, respondents favored allowing approved providers to offer afterschool tutoring to students in schools deemed “in need of improvement” (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 46). Almost as popular was the proposal to allow students in these schools to attend another school within the district; respondents endorsed public school choice 86 percent to 14 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 46). These figures comported with earlier findings of broad public support for public school choice. In 1999, Public Agenda reported that 79 percent of respondents strongly agreed that “parents should have the right to choose” their child’s school; 13 percent agreed, while just 7 percent disagreed (Farkas, Johnson, & Foleno, 1999, p. 30).

When the issue shifted from offering options to imposing sanctions on schools, however, the public was significantly less enthusiastic. This was consistent with the public’s preferences prior to NCLB. In 1999, Public Agenda asked whether respondents thought America’s schools were doing pretty well, had some good qualities but needed “major change,” or had “so much wrong with them that we need to create a whole new system.” Just 16 percent opted for “a whole new system,” while 19 percent said the schools were doing well and 62 percent that they needed “major change” (Farkas et al., 1999, p. 30). Attitudes toward school “reconstitution” reflected those preferences. Two of the school reconstitution options contemplated under NCLB include changing principals or overhauling the faculty. When asked how they felt about “not renewing” principals or teachers at schools identified as in need of improvement, the public favored each measure, but only by a relatively modest 56 percent to 40 percent margin. When asked about the more dramatic step of closing schools identified as in need of improvement, respondents were firmly opposed, with just 21 percent supporting such a step and 77 percent opposing it (Rose & Gallup, 2002, table 8). Such responses reflected little support for the more aggressive interventions that NCLB envisioned for schools that persistently fail to make adequate yearly progress.

Perhaps the most telling signal of the public’s reluctance to “punish” low-performing schools was the 2002 response to PDK/Gallup’s query of whether these schools should receive additional money from the district. By a 77 percent to 22 percent margin, respondents favored such action (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 46). In other words, contrary to the arguments of some analysts that accountability requires adverse consequences for mediocre performance (Hess, 2004), the public overwhelmingly rejected such a punitive approach just as firmly as it opposed closing low-performing schools.

One of the most discussed reconstitution options has been transforming persistently low-performing schools into charter schools (West & Manno, 2006). How did the public feel about that notion in 2002? Many respondents were not familiar with charter schools when NCLB was enacted, with just 55 percent saying they had heard of “so-called charter schools” in 2001, and 56 percent in 2002 (Rose & Gallup, 2002, table 1). In 2002, when informed that charters are freed “from many of the state regulations imposed on public schools,” 44 percent of respondents favored them and 43 percent opposed them. The mixed results also held a strong warning for those who would use charters to pressure traditional district schools. In 2002, just 30 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents said that they would support funding charters if it reduced the funds for “regular public schools,” while 65 percent would not (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 51). The public was mixed on charters when they were posed as an alternative to the traditional public schools but opposed when they were described as a competitor. In short, the public is highly skeptical of any remedy regarded as threatening the traditional district schools. This is entirely consistent with Stanford political scientist Terry Moe’s observation, in his magisterial 2001 volume on public opinion and school choice, that Americans generally share a “public school ideology”--an emotional attachment to the ideal of public schooling (p. 86).

Summary of Opinion in 2001 and 2002

A portrait of public opinion circa 2001 and 2002, then, reveals a public that believed local schools were pretty good, was divided on the quality of the nation’s schools, was favorable toward more testing and a heightened federal role, believed the racial achievement gap to be a problem, and endorsed proposals to provide families in low-performing schools with afterschool tutoring and more public school options. At the same time, the public was mixed on more serious sanctions and charter schooling, rejected investing in new options at the expense of--rather than in addition to--traditional district schools, and wanted to concentrate on “reforming” familiar schools. In short, when NCLB was first enacted, Americans were broadly sympathetic to its aims and its logic, so long as it was implemented with a gentle touch. Let us now consider how public opinion has evolved in the years since the law’s adoption.

Public Opinion in 2006

How has public opinion changed since NCLB was first enacted? While five years is a limited period of time in which to judge change and not long enough to gauge how public thinking will settle after prolonged acquaintance with NCLB, it is nonetheless a substantial interval. Consider the fact that five years is longer than the length of a president’s term--and the public routinely forms strong opinions in that period of time. Five years was also the period for which the law was authorized, meaning it is scheduled to be reauthorized by Congress in 2007. Thus, developments in public opinion to date should not be overstated, but nor should their utility or relevance be dismissed.

Overall Grade

Some critics have suggested that NCLB is part of a broader campaign to undermine public confidence in schools (Darling-Hammond, 2004), while advocates have argued that NCLB-style accountability will boost support for schools (Stotsky, 2001). In fact, between 2001 and 2006, Americans’ regard for local schools was essentially unchanged. In the 2006 PDK/Gallup poll, 49 percent of respondents gave their local schools an A or a B and 14 percent a D or an F (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 2). This was essentially unchanged from the 51-13 split in 2001 and the 47-13 split in 2002 (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 2).

At the national level, in 2006, 21 percent of respondents gave the nation’s schools an A or a B and 17 percent a D or an F (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 4). These figures were again quite similar to the 25-19 split in 2001 and the 24-16 split in 2002 (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 3). There is little evidence that, in its first four or five years, NCLB noticeably affected the public’s assessments of local or national school quality.

It can be said then that parents do not think schools are broken and are hesitant to embrace radical calls for change. In fact, while critics like David S. Kahn (2006) have argued that schools have worsened in recent decades, the public disagrees. Public Agenda reported in 2006 that 61 percent of parents think schools are better today than when they were growing up, and just 14 percent think they are worse; 65 percent think schools are harder today, and just 9 percent think they are easier (Johnson et al., 2006b).

Sympathy for the premise underlying NCLB is greater among Black and Latino parents than among White parents. In 2006, Public Agenda reported that more than 50 percent of Black and Latino parents thought that too many students dropping out of local schools was a serious problem, while just 29 percent of White parents agreed (Johnson et al., 2006a). More than 45 percent of minority parents thought insufficient attention to reading, writing, and math was a serious problem, compared to 31 percent of White parents (Johnson et al., 2006a). When asked whether their local superintendent was working hard to ensure that low-income and minority children performed as well as their peers, 43 percent of Black parents gave the superintendent fair or poor marks, while just 20 percent of White parents did (Johnson et al., 2006a, p. 15).

Testing and AYP

When assessing the fairness and usefulness of the components of the NCLB testing regimen, the public has doubts about the law’s approach to measuring adequate yearly progress. NCLB grades schools based on whether the requisite percentage of all students--and various subpopulations--score at the proficient level in reading and math on the state assessment. This approach relies on student scores on a particular assessment at the end of the year, rather than on measuring how much students have improved during the course of the year. PDK/Gallup polling finds that respondents are uncomfortable with reliance on a particular state test--at least when the question is put so starkly. When asked in a 2006 poll if it is “fair” to determine whether a school is in need of improvement on the basis of student performance on “a single statewide test,” just 28 percent said yes, while 69 percent said no (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 36). Similarly, when PDK/Gallup asked respondents in 2006 whether a test that only covers English and math provides a fair picture of whether a school is in need of improvement, just 18 percent said yes and 81 percent said no (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 37). Of course, NCLB’s proponents rightly argue that this question somewhat mischaracterizes the law, which, for instance, stipulates that factors like school safety, attendance, and graduation rates receive due consideration when calculating AYP. Nonetheless, to the extent that NCLB accountability is perceived to rely on narrow snapshots of school performance, its support plummets.

When asked whether they were concerned that focusing only on English and math would “mean less emphasis on art, music, history, and other subjects,” 78 percent of 2006 PDK/Gallup respondents said they were greatly or fairly concerned, while just 16 percent said it was not much of a concern (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 38). Readers will recall that this seemingly contradicts the public’s earlier, more nonchalant, stance on “curricular narrowing” (Rose & Gallup, 2002, p. 53), suggesting either that public attitudes changed dramatically or that respondents were reacting to different wording in the questions.

The NCLB focus on year-end performance levels rather than student improvement has also occasioned much debate, with defenders arguing that this design is imperative if schools are to focus on closing achievement gaps (Education Trust, 2003), and skeptics suggesting that such assessment is a profoundly flawed measure of school quality (West, 2005). What does the public make of all this? In 2006, PDK/Gallup reported that 81 percent of respondents preferred measuring performance based on the improvement that students make during the year, while just 17 percent favored relying on year-end scores (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 43). ETS reported results that were consistent though far less lopsided, with 53 percent of adults indicating they wanted school accountability based on “student progress” and just 32 percent that they wanted it based on “student achievement” as measured against an established standard, such as a year-end level-based assessment (ETS, 2005, p. 12). The evident preference for the value-added approach that NCLB rejects (but that the U.S. Department of Education is permitting two states to experiment with in 2006-2007) has remained consistent since 2003, when these questions were first asked.

While some critics have suggested that the amount of testing required by NCLB is fomenting a public backlash[4], public concern about testing increased only modestly between 2002 and 2006. In 2006, 39 percent of respondents told PDK/Gallup that there was too much emphasis on testing in the public schools, 25 percent that there was not enough testing, and 33 percent that there was “about the right amount” (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 14). This reflected an eight-percentage-point increase since 2002, from 31 percent to 39 percent, in the number of respondents who thought there was too much emphasis on testing (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 12). In 2006, Public Agenda reported even less evidence of parental concern, with just 17 percent saying that their child was required to take “too many standardized tests.” This represented an increase of five percentage points from 2002 (Johnson, Arumi, Ott, & Remaley, 2006c). Meanwhile, this same survey reported that 64 percent of parents thought that there either should be more
tests or that the number was “about right” (Johnson et al., 2006c, p. 9). Perhaps more telling, Public Agenda reported that 48 percent of parents regarded standardized tests as “necessary and valuable” and another 38 percent as a “necessary evil,” while just 12 percent said they do “more harm than good” (Johnson et al., 2006c, p. 9).

In 2005, the last year the question was asked, the public endorsed expanding the amount of high school testing--from just one high school grade to annual testing in grades 9 through 11--by a 67 percent to 28 percent margin (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 13). There is also no evidence that increased testing has fueled concerns about teaching to the test. In 2003, when the question was first asked by PDK/Gallup, 66 percent of respondents said standardized testing encourages teaching to the test and 30 percent that it does not (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 15). Three years later, in 2006, the percentage worried about teaching to the test was essentially unchanged, at 67 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 15).

Has the attention NCLB directs to math and reading encouraged the public to value only basic skills? Occasionally, PDK/Gallup asks whether respondents would prefer that public high schools offer “a wide variety of courses” or concentrate on a few basic courses like English, math, history, and science. In 1979, the public backed the basic-courses option by a small margin of 49 percent to 44 percent. By 2001, respondents preferred a wide variety of courses by a margin of 54 percent to 44 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 38). After the adoption of NCLB, public support for variety continued to climb, to 58 percent in 2006 (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 24). The advent of NCLB had no apparent impact on a trend of gradually increasing public support for more variety in the high school curriculum.

Limited support for NCLB’s emphasis on performance snapshots requires federal officials to engage in a delicate dance. PDK/Gallup reported in 2006 that if large numbers of public schools fail to make the NCLB requirements, 48 percent of respondents would regard that as evidence that the schools are to blame, but 41 percent that the NCLB legislation itself was at fault (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 44). If NCLB leads to large numbers of schools being labeled in need of improvement, it might prompt as many as two-fifths of adults to take a second look at an accountability system about which they harbor some doubts.

Achievement Gap and Disaggregation

Somewhat surprisingly, the increased attention paid to the “achievement gap” in recent years has not increased public concern about the problem. From 1997-2000, the years preceding NCLB, for instance, the achievement gap was mentioned an average of just eighteen times per year in the Congressional Record. Between 2001 and 2006, however, the average number of references in the Congressional Record more than doubled, to forty-four times per year[5]. Similarly, the term appeared much more frequently in U.S. newspapers after the adoption of NCLB. In 1999, there were 338 articles in major newspapers that mentioned the achievement gap. Since 2001, the term has appeared more than one thousand times each year in those same papers[6]. In 2002, 80 percent of the public said the racial achievement gap was very important (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 18). By 2006 that figure had slid thirteen points--nearly back to its much lower 2001 level--with 67 percent terming the gap very important (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 18). Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents blaming schools--rather than “other factors”--for racial gaps in achievement also fell back to its 2001 level, declining from 29 percent in 2002 to 19 percent in 2006 (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 9). After a burst of attention to the racial achievement gap immediately after NCLB was enacted, the public reverted to a lower level of concern and to its reluctance to blame schools for the gap.

However, in 2006, 57 percent of respondents thought that the public schools should be responsible for closing the gap, even though they did not blame the schools for causing it. Thirty-nine percent of respondents did not think that schools should be held responsible for closing the gap. This figure marked a level of commitment just a touch higher than that recorded in 2001, when 55 percent of respondents thought public schools should be responsible for closing the gap and 41 percent did not (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 20)[7].

The public remains optimistic that the gap can, in fact, be narrowed. In 2006, 81 percent of respondents said it can be “narrowed substantially” while maintaining “high standards” for all children; just 17 percent disagreed (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 19). NCLB, of course, was designed to ensure that all students in a given state are held to the same standard of achievement, with student achievement reported by disaggregated subgroups in order to ensure that schools were leaving no subgroup behind. Americans, however, appear to be of two minds regarding the NCLB premise that all students and schools should be held to a uniform standard of achievement. On the one hand, ETS reported in 2005 that 55 percent of respondents believed that “all students, teachers and schools should be held to the same standard of performance,” while just 34 percent disagreed (p. 11). On the other hand, respondents appear less supportive of race-based reporting and uniform standards than the ETS results may suggest. For instance, the 2006 PDK/Gallup poll reported that 43 percent of respondents believe that test data should be disaggregated by race, ethnicity, poverty level, disability status, and English-speaking ability, while 54 percent disagreed (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 40). Support for disaggregation had not increased at all since 2004, when the question was first asked; that year, 42 percent supported disaggregation and 52 percent opposed it (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 40).

On a similar note, in 2006, just 21 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents thought that students in special education programs should be “required to meet the same academic standards as all other students in that school,” while 75 percent of respondents rejected the notion (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 42). Just 33 percent of respondents thought standardized test scores for these students should be included with those of other students when deciding whether schools are in need of improvement under NCLB; 62 percent rejected the idea (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 41). Support for including the scores of students in special education programs when calculating whether schools made AYP dropped six points between 2004 and 2006, and those most familiar with NCLB are the most strongly opposed to including these students’ scores (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 41). These findings offer little reason to believe that public skepticism regarding disaggregation--at least with regard to students enrolled in special education--is softening.

Remedies

In 2003, PDK/Gallup asked for the first time, “If a school is identified as in need of improvement and you had a child there, would you prefer to transfer your child to a school identified as not in need of improvement or to have additional efforts made in your child’s present school?” Seventy-four percent of respondents preferred “additional efforts” in the current school, and just 25 percent opted for a transfer. By 2006, the percentage of respondents preferring additional efforts had increased to 80 percent, while just 17 percent said they would choose the transfer (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 39). This response is important on two counts: First, a public that is generally supportive of public choice prefers additional school efforts over the chance to change schools; second, the question is worded to suggest that parents would be able to move their child (although, for various reasons, the promised options have not materialized for many children in schools identified as needing improvement) and makes no promises about the results of reform efforts, yet respondents still have a strong preference for schools’ vaguely defined, “additional efforts.” Similarly, in the 2005 PDK/Gallup poll, respondents said they would prefer reforming their existing schools to finding an alternative system by a 68 to 23 percent margin[8]. This response was largely unchanged from the 72 percent to 24 percent margin reported in 2001 (Rose & Gallup, 2005, p. 57). Again, there appears to be a strong preference for reforming the familiar rather than for measures framed as providing a new alternative.

A telling PDK/Gallup question asked in 2003 and 2004 but not in 2005 or 2006 was whether, given a chance to obtain tutoring for a child, respondents would prefer “tutoring provided by teachers in [their] child’s school” or by an “outside agency” that the parent could select from a state-approved list. In 2003, respondents preferred teachers by 52 percent to 45 percent (Rose & Gallup, 2003, table 18); in 2004, they did so by a 55-40 split (Rose & Gallup, 2004, p. 43). Among parents, the preference for teachers over other providers was even more dramatic: 54 percent to 42 percent margin in 2003 and a 60-34 split in 2004 (Rose & Gallup, 2004, table 13). There is little evidence of widespread discontent with educators, only a limited desire for new educational providers, and no indication that the passage of time was increasing the inclination to look to outside agencies.

Support for charter schooling has increased sharply in recent years but reflects a trend similar to that of tutoring. By 2006, public support for charters stood at a 53 percent to 34 percent margin, up markedly from the 44 percent to 43 percent margin reported in 2002 (Rose & Gallup, 2006, table 6). However, support has typically wilted when charters are framed as being in competition with, rather than an alternative to, traditional district schools. When asked in 2005 if they would support charter schooling if it reduced funding for the local schools, just 28 percent of respondents said yes, while 65 percent said no (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 11). That was largely unchanged from the 30 percent to 65 percent margin reported in 2002, suggesting that growing support for charters was entirely contingent on the promise that they would not be competing with public schools (Rose & Gallup, 2005, table 11)[9]. More generally, there is little evidence that NCLB has altered traditional preferences for school reform strategies--at least as of 2006. Public Agenda reported in 2006 that when asked what position would most incline them to support a local school board candidate, 45 percent of parents said a call for “more money and smaller classes,” 22 percent said support for “more testing and higher standards,” and just 9 percent a call for “charter schools [to] revitalize public education” (Johnson et al., 2006c, p. 7).

When NCLB was first enacted, the public showed little interest in remedies that were perceived as punitive. In 2006, after several years of experience with the new law, not much had changed. The public broadly supports measures that promise to give more options to families in low-performing schools, but only as long as those remedies are not seen as an assault on the traditional district schools.

Conclusions

The evidence suggests that most Americans continue to be relatively happy with their local public schools and have mixed feelings about the nation’s schools as a whole. This pattern has been evident for decades, and there is no evidence that the first five years under NCLB have altered it. In fact, there is little evidence that NCLB is affecting public judgment about school quality, school choice, testing, or harsh measures for low-performing schools.

Broadly speaking, NCLB implementation has proceeded amid two conflicting public desires. While there is strong public support for accountability in the abstract, there is much discomfort with elements of NCLB-style accountability in practice--including the reliance on test scores, levels of student achievement, and disaggregation. Consequently, those committed to preserving an NCLB that looks like the law passed in 2001 will likely be successful at swaying public opinion to the degree that they succeed at framing the law as nonthreatening and supportive of traditional district schools. To the extent that the law is seen as prescriptive, disruptive, or punitive, proponents will find themselves struggling against public sentiment.

The public appears more amenable to an active federal role than some have suggested. Americans are also relatively unconcerned about the current amount of testing, endorse the principles of NCLB, believe schools can and should reduce the racial achievement gap, and strongly support public school choice and tutoring options. However, given that the public thinks their local schools are doing quite well, voters and parents understandably recoil from talk of punishment and harsh-sounding “either/or” choices. The public prefers tutoring by teachers over tutoring by approved outside providers, would rather try to improve schools than seek new options, and does not welcome remedies that seemingly come at the expense of the traditional district schools. As AYP targets rise and more schools are labeled in need of improvement in the years ahead, public distaste for punitive measures, the genial certainty that local schools are quite good, and a belief that all students will pass the requisite tests may undermine support for the law.

The public’s conflicted feelings have prompted NCLB’s supporters to favor broad and aspirational language when discussing the law. In particular, they have sought to harness public support for the notion of accountability and marry it to the specifics of NCLB, while seeking to downplay the law’s potentially punitive elements. For instance, President Bush, famous for his reluctance to “do nuance,” has been quite nuanced when championing NCLB. He has consistently avoided discussing sanctions or failure, instead emphasizing that “these [NCLB] reforms express my deep belief in our public schools and their mission to build the mind and character of every child, from every background, in every part of America” (U.S. Department of Education, 2001).

In 2006, Congressman George Miller of California, ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, explained that “No Child Left Behind is making a difference. School districts across the country have taken the goals of this law to heart and are working to improve the academic achievement of their children” (Miller, 2006). Sensitive to popular concerns, public officials have made few efforts to justify or prepare the public for NCLB’s potentially disruptive or unpleasant consequences. To take just one example, by late 2006, the U.S. Department of Education had not yet compiled a tally of how many school districts were failing to make adequate yearly progress.

Meanwhile, because the law’s premise has broad support across the political spectrum, including from influential progressive organizations like the Education Trust and the Center for American Progress (CAP), even some of NCLB’s more ardent critics have been reluctant to challenge its precepts. CAP, perhaps the leading progressive think tank, has staunchly defended the law’s core principles, offering the opinion that “current measures of accountability, particularly those mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, seek to ensure steady achievement gains by all students in all schools. We applaud these efforts and, in doing so, recognize that standardized tests are a valid and important measure of student performance” (Center for American Progress, 2005). Confronted with strong progressive support for the aims of the law, political candidates and even union officials have complained about practice rather than principle.

Given the public’s lukewarm feelings toward NCLB and lack of enthusiasm for central components of the law, however, legislative support for the statute’s level-based accountability model may ultimately rest on a shaky foundation. Hattiesburg, Mississippi, school superintendent Annie Wimbish has previewed the kind of critique that might prove effective when she states, “I believe in accountability, but I believe the assessment piece [of No Child Left Behind] is warped. It’s one test, one day, one shot at measuring what people have learned” (Kaffer, 2006). Critiques that laud NCLB and accountability in principle while raising doubts about how NCLB measures school performance or sanctions schools in need of improvement are likely to resonate with a clear majority of voters and taxpayers.

Finally, NCLB has emboldened its proponents to focus on achievement gaps with an intensity that could leave them out of step with public sentiment. While Americans are mixed on the urgent need to address the racial achievement gap, the school’s responsibility for the gap, and the practice of disaggregation, the Bush administration and NCLB proponents have aggressively wielded the law’s emphasis on achievement gaps as a political tool. When Utah was on the verge of opting out of the law in 2005, the U.S. Department of Education mounted a full-scale assault, charging that NCLB critics were insufficiently concerned about the plight of minority children. One Education Department press release, for instance, declared, “States across the nation who have embraced No Child Left Behind have shown progress: student achievement is rising and the achievement gap is closing. The same could be true in Utah, whose achievement gap between Hispanics and their peers is the third largest in the nation and has not improved significantly in over a decade” (U.S. Department of Education, 2005). The Education Trust charged that although “about one-quarter of Utah’s students don’t meet state standards in language arts and math [and] the picture is even worse for Latino and Native American students. . . some lawmakers and educators in Utah are expending enormous energy to fend off. . . the federal law that aims to raise overall achievement and close gaps between groups” (Education Trust, 2005). Similar language was used by the administration and NCLB proponents to answer Connecticut’s objections to the law (Spellings, 2005). Because it is unclear whether the public fully endorses NCLB’s emphasis on closing racial achievement gaps or the implicit premise that schools that are failing to do so are inadequate, the effectiveness of such language and tactics over time is uncertain.

Implications

For scholars, this discussion raises more questions than it answers. Why has there been so little change in the shape of public opinion? Is it an indication that public sentiment is relatively firm, that people are not yet familiar enough with NCLB to revisit assumptions, or that the right arguments have not yet been made? How such questions are answered will play a critical role in determining the story of twenty-first-century American education.

Are the public’s various policy preferences as stable as polling seems to suggest, or is this an artifact of question wording or a lack of experience with alternatives? Is the public really as receptive to federal leadership and testing as some of the 2002 results suggest and, if so, what does that mean for efforts to promote national standards or a national test? Why does the public appear so skeptical of harsh-sounding measures; is this an instinctive reaction, a preference for the familiar, or does it reflect a deep-rooted notion of how schools should operate? Where does the public look for leadership on these questions? Is the static shape of opinion the product of particular influences? Are there particular voices or appeals that could move opinion sharply? Finally, since it appears that firm preferences may simply be due to question wording or survey framing, would differently framed questions or experimental survey designs provide new insights into public opinion?

For policymakers and practitioners, the implications are less esoteric. A public sympathetic to the premise of accountability but uncomfortable with many elements of NCLB will not be enthusiastic about either a retreat from federal leadership or aggressive intervention in failing schools.

For NCLB’s proponents, there are various scenarios under which the current shape of public opinion might prove unproblematic. One such scenario suggests that Americans will grow more comfortable with accountability systems over time, and that although there may be initial reticence about accountability, even its unseemly components may eventually appear unexceptional and perhaps necessary. A second suggests that although the public may have abstract concerns with how accountability is designed, it wants accountability and is willing to tolerate various imperfections if schools are thought to be improving. A third scenario suggests that generalized reactions to the law do not really matter--what matters is the sentiment among the active, involved, and organized constituencies, especially the visible and morally authoritative African American, Latino, and civil rights communities. Especially relevant here is NCLB’s potential to create influential new constituencies among families who use public choice or supplemental services, among supplemental service providers, and among superintendents or civic groups that find the law’s provisions a useful lever for change. As such constituencies emerge, they will alter the face of education politics and work to protect favored components of the law. Provisions like supplemental services, which naturally foster such groups, are likely to fare better than testing or accountability requirements, which lack natural constituencies.

While such scenarios are certainly possible, the public currently appears to reject some key elements of NCLB, and those components may very well be rolled back during implementation and reauthorization. The U.S. Department of Education has already modified the testing requirements for students in special education and English Language Learner programs and relaxed the rules governing how the performance of these students is to be factored into AYP calculations. Given the public’s disinclination to grade schools uniformly on year-end student achievement results, the law’s level-based approach to accountability may potentially prove more vulnerable than casual observers might expect. Generally, as long as current public opinion holds, critics are likely to have limited success directly opposing the premise of accountability, reducing the amount of testing, or attacking remedies like supplemental services and public choice. They are more likely to make headway challenging the more aggressive restructuring interventions envisioned by NCLB, questioning the identification of large numbers of schools as in need of improvement, and advocating steps to “refine” the accountability system. Through implementation and reauthorization, NCLB may well evolve into a law offering something like the authoritative but genial measures that Americans say they prefer--and one that may ultimately have only a modest impact on the rhythms of American schooling.

Finally, those who would champion NCLB as a means of radically reinventing American schooling--whether that includes an aggressive embrace of choice, competition, sanctions, institution building, or anything else--should recognize that they are challenging a broad and deep-rooted public consensus. This leaves two choices: either convince the public that preferred measures are merely efforts to reform the public schools rather than a call for dramatic change, or work to alter the public’s preferences. If public opinion moves significantly in the years ahead, due to experience or argument, then the political debate and the vista of possibilities will expand accordingly.

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The author would like to thank Rosemary Kendrick, Juliet Squire, Thomas Gift, and Morgan Goatley for their invaluable research assistance and the Koret Foundation for the generous support that helped to make this research possible.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, the term “the public” refers to adult Americans.
2. For a full discussion, see Hess and Petrilli (2006).
3. “Disruptive” remedies in the case of NCLB include the requirements that schools and districts labeled in need of improvement be subjected to a graduated set of sanctions, including the threat of state takeover or mandated changes in staffing.
4. For instance, education advocate Jonathan Kozol launched a drive “to resist the testing mania” in summer 2006. See a reproduction of the petition at http://www.eduwonk.com/archives/2006_06_25_archive.html.
5. Based on author tabulations using Thomas database.
6. Based on author tabulations using Lexis-Nexis.
7. This question was not asked in 2002, so it is not possible to determine whether public sentiment on this count jumped up in the year after the enactment of NCLB as it did on other questions regarding the racial achievement gap.
8. This question was not asked in 2006.
9. The question was not asked in 2006. This omission is potentially significant, because support for charter schooling increased from 49 percent for and 41 percent against in 2005 to 53 percent for and 34 percent against in 2006. It is possible that this development was accompanied by a greater public willingness to redirect funding from district schools to charter schools.

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar at AEI.