With all of the hubris of a President in his first term, George W. Bush famously declared that his administration would revolutionize public education in America by saving poor, minority children from the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Certainly, despite some conceptual challenges, the philosophy behind the President’s marquee initiative No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an important milestone for civil rights.  By requiring disaggregated student academic data broken down into subgroups such as race, ethnicity, and class, this law sought to hold states accountable for closing the severe academic achievement disparities experienced by many poor and minority students. 

Regardless of the tremendous potential of NCLB, it is decidedly not surprising that the law’s implementation and that of other important programs in Bush’s Department of Education have fallen far short of their promise. 

Indeed, we now have evidence that the even the U.S. Department of Education (“Department”) has not escaped the pattern of failure that has dogged the Bush Administration on everything from Hurricane Katrina and the national debt to the War on Iraq.

The Kings of Kickback

It was supposed to be an innovative new program, aimed at helping poor children improve their reading skills.  Reading First, a $1 billion-a-year program administered by the U.S. Department of Education, sought to bring scientifically proven reading instruction methods to low-income schools by giving grants to states.  

Several weeks ago an inspector general at the Department found that billions of Reading First dollars have essentially been squandered by Bush Administration officials who directed funds to support only those states who used the textbooks and reading programs of favored publishing companies and research experts; some of whom had political and financial ties to the Bush Administration.  The report found evidence that Department officials also aggressively sought to stack internal review panels with experts who had links to their favored textbook publishers, thus ensuring a biased grant selection process. 

Perhaps even more damning than the specter of profiteering raised by these new revelations, is the fact that it has been done at the expense of struggling low-income, black and brown children across the U.S.  For, contrary to the declared goals of Reading First, the textbooks and programs that the Department pushed states to adopt had very little to no basis in scientifically-backed research. 

Ironically, in their zeal to use the $1billion-a-year appropriation by Congress as a slush fund to benefit their friends, a recent Washington Post article revealed that department officials actually bypassed Success for All—a phonics-based reading program backed by 31 research studies proving its effectiveness.

So it is with unending weariness that we now learn that our kids have essentially been used as educational guinea pigs—the recipients of untested reading programs that could have the effect of permanently undermining their ability to become highly literate members of society.  While states and some experts claim that students have made modest progress under Reading First, one can’t help wonder what the potential impact could have been had the program had been implemented according to its stated objectives.

Some Children Left Behind?

The sad fact of the matter is that if we can’t trust the Bush Administration with our young men and women in Iraq, why would we trust them with our kids at home?  Indeed, the ongoing issue of trust is one that continues to plague implementation of No Child Left Behind.

One of the significant goals of NCLB was the strong emphasis placed on making sure states provided all students with “highly qualified” teachers.  This requirement mandated that teachers teaching core subject areas must have demonstrated competence in the subject matter.  The law gave states until the end of the 2005-2006 school year to devise a plan to “ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified or out-of-field teachers.”

Studies have shown that teachers are the single most important factor in determining the academic success of students.  Yet, a 2004 U.S. Department of Education statistic reports that in schools where at least 75% of the students are low-income, there are 3 times as many uncertified or out-of-field teachers teaching both English and science than in schools with middle and high income students.    

A 2005 Harvard Civil Rights Project study of 11 states also shows that schools serving the highest percentage of minority students have fewer teachers with full credentials, twice as many teachers with emergency credentials, and more inexperienced teachers than schools serving the fewest minorities.

So everyone knows that severe equity gaps in access to quality teachers play a role in undermining the educational progress of poor and minority students.  Yet, the original July 2006 deadline for states to submit their plans for closing this gap has passed and there is evidence that the Department of Education may still be playing footsy with states that are seeking ways to skirt or escape compliance with the law.

An August 2006 report by the Education Trust found that of the 47 states who submitted their teacher-equity plans to the Department only 3 (Nevada, Tennessee, and Ohio) actually complied with NCLB’s requirement to assess whether low-income and minority students were more likely to be assigned to unqualified or out-of-field teachers in core courses and whether they are more likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers.  And, only two (Nevada and Ohio) actually proposed a plan for closing the teacher equity gap.  Three states (Missouri, New Mexico and Utah) failed to submit a plan.

Responding to external pressure, the Department called on States to revise and resubmit their plans by September 2006.  Now there are significant concerns among education advocates that the Department may give states a pass regardless of the quality of the plans submitted. 

“The Department should hold states accountable to the equity-plan requirements, no matter how long it takes to get it right,” said Heather Peske, a Senior Research Associate at the Education Trust. “This shouldn’t devolve into a bureaucratic paper-shuffling exercise at the expense of low-income and minority students.”

Skewing the Data

When the data tells a story you don’t want to hear what do you do?  Do you give an honest accounting of the story or do you change the data?

By now, we all know that visuals and sound-bytes matter more than reality to this Administration.  Of course it was good P.R. for Republicans to be seen as champions of a law that sought to combat the time honored U.S. tradition of shunting low-income, students of color into substandard schools with poor quality teachers and few resources.  Now we know that even the basic tenet of NCLB—using disaggregated data to illuminate what is really happing to poor and minority kids in the public education system—is being threatened by a potentially devastating new rule being pushed by the U.S. Department of Education.

On August 7, 2006, the Department issued a proposed guidance that would offer schools, colleges, and other institutions a choice of how they maintain, collect, and report student racial and ethnic data to the U.S. Department of Education.  Departing from standards set by Census and the Office of Management and Budget, the proposed rule introduces a two step self-identification question; first asking whether the student is of Hispanic/Latino origin regardless of race and then asking the student to select one or more races from the following categories:  American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black, white, and/or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.  

The proposed rule then instructs schools, colleges and state governments to aggregate their data into seven categories that includes the five listed above plus “Hispanics of any race” and “two or more races.” 

Civil rights advocates have found a number of problems with this approach.  For example, if a student reports that he or she is of Hispanic origin, the proposal would automatically categorize that individual as Hispanic without regard to whether he or she also has a racial identity that is black, white, etc.  Similarly, non-Hispanics who identify with two or more races would be lumped into a multiracial category that would hide their specific racial and ethnic mix.  These measures would have the effect of producing a severe over count of Hispanics and a severe undercount of African Americans and other single-race groups.

An extensive analysis conducted by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University finds that “the proposed changes would suddenly produce vast changes in the apparent racial composition of our educational system, create a large new category that is a grab bag of many forms of multiracial backgrounds, and would very seriously undermine both research and policy analysis work that is essential to understanding racial change and racial inequality as well as to monitor civil rights enforcement.”  

So why would the department pursue a rule change that would seriously undermine the reliability and validity of racial and ethnic data when NCLB, their marquee law, relies on this data to make it work? 

Part of the answer may lie in a report produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that concludes, “Concerns might be raised that by switching to the new standards and expanding the number of categories for which data are reported, especially by establishing a more than one race category, states could attempt to spread students across more categories and fall below the minimum size threshold for which [NCLB] data must be reported (commonly referred to as the n-size). [emphasis mine]”

In short, states may be able to use the proposed changes to game the system in a way that enables them to hide what is really happening to low-income and minority students in the U.S. public education system.

Conclusion

For too long, the educational progress of our children has been compromised by state-sponsored public education systems that have sought to cover up their criminal act of systematically providing a substandard quality of education to poor and minority students.

That is why civil rights and community advocates everywhere should make a strong effort to protect aspects of NCLB that allow the nation to have a clearer picture of how low income students and students of color are faring in U.S. schools.  And, despite differences of opinions about some of its methods, advocates should also embrace NCLB’s goal to ensure that all students reach a level of academic proficiency that enables them to be successful in college, work and in life. 

When NCLB comes up for reauthorization next year, we must work to change aspects of the law that could be improved and to keep those aspects of the law that enable us to monitor civil rights and the educational progress of poor students of color.   Advocates must also remain vigilant and challenge tactics that may undermine the reliability of student racial and ethnic data. 

Finally, we must place pressure on members of Congress to conduct oversight hearings into the Reading First debacle and demand that the program be revamped in a way that will truly provide low-income students with the quality reading support they need to become high achievers. 

BC Editorial Board member, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore is President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a public affairs consulting firm based in Washington, DC.  She is the author of The Political Action Handbook:  A How to Guide for the Hip Hop Generation and co-editor of Strengthening Communities:  Social Insurance in a Diverse America. Maya can be reached at MayaRockeymoore.com.

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