‘No Child’ has its flaws

A trio of Democrats seeking office huddled Wednesday to talk among themselves about education, providing an evening’s respite from the health care wars but not from rhetoric beaten to a pulp by the raw might of partisan twaddle. The federal No Child Left Behind law is damnable (kind of), public schools are positively starved for cash, student-teacher ratios must be kept low and hang those accursed unfunded mandates.

So let’s have it then. No Child “is a noble cause” but it “pigeon-hole[s]” everyone, says Greg Marrow, the challenger to incumbent Republican Steve Landes in the 25th District. Then comes Erik Curren, tussling with Republican Dickie Bell in the 20th: “What I don’t like about No Child Left Behind is unfunded federal mandates ... .” Ah, there it is.

Curren acknowledges, as do many people, that No Child has succeeded in narrowing the performance gap between high- and low-achieving students. He is bothered “the idea that the federal government should be creating a sort of teacher-proof system where it’s like connect-the-dots.” His point is not altogether clear, but on what appears to be the substance of it – that federal government should not be running local classrooms – we concur.

No Child was more a political cause than a noble one, a statist reach by President George W. Bush to craft a domestic and bipartisan triumph based on its sound and feel more than its efficacy and constitutionality. Republicans favored it because it aimed to hold teachers accountable. Democrats favored it because it aimed to bridge achievement gaps between the classes.

The law’s effect is quintessentially big-government, producing negligible gain at extraordinary expense. States set their own standards, so many have lowered the achievement bar to the floor. Bush had hoped to drive an increase in the number of charter and other alternative schools but was foiled by states doing a delicate dance around the law’s intent.

Chris Saxman, the Republican delegate in the 20th who dropped out of the race last month, long has lobbied for Virginia to jerk free of No Child, but that would cost the state federal money. Lawmakers rarely say no to being extorted by the feds, even if it spawns additional expense to meet the law’s requirements (here, the unfunded mandate). Saxman is an impassioned advocate of school choice, which the three Democrats said they support, albeit with a predictable caveat: Curren frets over choice hurting public schools.

That rationale is the mantra of choice obstructionists. Frequently, they’re beholden to teachers unions, which frequently resist accountability and contribute heavily to Democrats. This combined with the political expedience of backing teachers – 26th District candidate Gene Hart, the third Democrat in the room Wednesday, chimed in with the others on calls for increased teacher pay – drives what typically constitutes education policy on the left. Republicans have not done better, No Child being an attempt to seize an issue they’d ordinarily surrendered to the opposition. 

Education reform is needed, and so too a recognition of the hollowness of worn mantra. More education spending and higher teacher pay are palatable as components of a platform the intent of which is to sway votes, but the evidence does not support the concept that more money translates to significantly better results. School choice and competition ought to be viewed as essential components of improving the larger system but these are parts of the answer not the answer in its entirety.

What No Child shows most tellingly is the inefficacy of big government as education overseer and innovator. Ideas should rise from local communities rather than descend from Washington’s ivory towers. Local delegates could be integral to this development. In Saxman’s absence from the campaign, the words and voids on the subject of education all are familiar. Democrats on Wednesday seized sameness rather than the day. That will improve neither education nor their chances of winning in November.