Detroit News: Restore local control of schools

Restore local control of schools

Congress should reform No Child act to return flexibility to education

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra

We have come a long way since Congress voted 242-174 to prevent the federal government from spending tax dollars on national K-12 testing as proposed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

In three short years, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has become the largest expansion of the federal government into K-12 education since the U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979.

I voted against No Child, but a significant number of my Republican colleagues voted for it. They did so even though it contradicted our belief that local communities require freedom and flexibility to address their diverse local issues and that parents should be empowered to determine how to best educate their children.

One size fits all

For the first time, the federal government was given permission to basically dictate school curriculum by mandating testing, requiring performance and creating sanctions for schools that failed to meet federal standards.

No Child required national testing in math and reading in grades three through eight and once in high school for total of 14 federally mandated tests. Schools that fail to meet Average Yearly Progress -- even if it is caused by a student who might not speak English as a first language, is developmentally disabled or for other reasons -- face having federal funding withheld.

Despite a 41 percent increase in federal funding during the past five years, No Child Left Behind has required more local expenditures to comply with its mandates and has left communities with less flexibility to meet the needs of their children.

The regulatory burden imposed on state and local authorities has forced them to spend an additional $140 million just on paperwork each year. Teachers now teach to the test instead of helping students develop their unique abilities and critical thinking skills. One size now fits all schools across America.

No Child's unintended bias

Other unintended consequences of No Child include "soft discrimination" in which educators are seeking to discourage students who would likely fail tests from attending their schools and teachers encouraging poor-performers to stay home sick on test day. States are also lowering their standards so they meet standards and that sanctions are not imposed.

No Child has had a very limited impact on overall student improvement, but teachers, principals and school administrators will tell you there has been a seismic difference in how they educate children. They now turn for direction to Washington, where faceless bureaucrats at the Department of Education cannot possibly understand the needs in their local communities.

Teachers are requesting that their subjects be covered by No Child because that is where administrators are focusing their resources at the expense of other programs.

Congress will soon consider reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, and current suggestions would expand upon an already bad law. The reauthorization could add science, geography, government, civics, economics, history, physical education, art, as well as two more years of testing in high school, to the No Child testing regime. There is even discussion of establishing teacher pay for local schools through the federal legislation.

We can say goodbye to local control and hello to federal government schools since Washington would control nearly all K-12 core curriculum, testing and accountability, as well as teacher qualifications.

Let states opt out

I have an alternative. It is titled the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) Act of 2007, a bill that I introduced with 52 co-sponsors to restore local control in education. Under A-PLUS, states -- led by governors and state legislators -- would have the freedom to opt out of No Child Left Behind and reassert their leadership.

States would be required to demonstrate transparent accounting measures and would be held accountable to parents and taxpayers by annually reporting on the academic achievement of schools. Schools would continue to provide data on how all students, regardless of race, income level or learning ability, are not being left behind.

The best approach to meeting local educational needs is to eliminate red tape and the ineffective federal government bureaucracy. Congress needs to provide parents, teachers, school principals and communities with the freedom to chart a new course for local schools designed to best meet local students' needs.

The bottom line is that we need to ask the question: Who will decide the future of our children's education? Faceless bureaucrats in Washington, or parents and local school administrators who know our children's names and needs? My vote is for local control.

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, is a senior Republican on the House Committee on Education and Labor and a founding member of the Congressional Education Freedom Caucus. E-mail: letters@detnews.com.

No Child reforms
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, proposes that:
# States be allowed to opt out of the federal No Child Left Behind Act requirements without losing federal money.
# Public schools would still be required annually to report student achievement measurements.