George Will Goes Backward on Accountability

I was startled and disappointed to see George Will's column in the Washington Post last weekend, rejecting the notion of national standards and accountability in K-12 education. In the past, the Washington Post has lent their support to ideas of national accountability, and as much respect as I have for George Will, I think he's missing the boat here.

Certainly there are acknowledged flaws in the current NCLB law -- we need to be honest about the fact that state-provided proficiency data is unreliable when the states draft their own standards and assessments -- but the answer is not to go backwards and pull away from the law. Instead, we should be looking for ways to revise accountability, and I'm not the only one who believes this can be done without the kind of federal decree that Will is so dead-set against.

Will writes, quoting a report from the Thomas P. Fordham Institute:

The rationale for standards-based reform was that expectations would become more rigorous and uniform, but states' proficiency tests vary "wildly" in difficulty, "with 'passing scores' ranging from the 6th percentile to the 77th."

Now the solution Will offers to this dilemma is to scrap national involvement in education altogether, in the hopes that "America is always more likely to have a few wise state governments than a wise federal government," and allowing the states to continue to set their benchmarks and proficiency standards willy-nilly.

I disagree.

This isn't a conversation about states' rights, but one of national priority. All students, whether they live in New Hampshire or Nevada, have the right to attend schools with high expectations for their learning.

The solution, I think, is to arrive at a more fair set of standards, ones that don't water down the content or the benchmarks, ones that will give our students the rigorous education they deserve.

One of the better ways to get there would be to have each state benchmark their standards against those of the ten highest-performing nations, instead of against a mandate handed down from Washington. What's at stake here is an individual's readiness to compete in the global economy, and we need a national, not a state strategy, to make sure that individual is prepared. The federal government's involvement, if any, could be to provide financial incentives or pay for the design and administration of state-designed rigorous tests.

Yes, there is error in NCLB, but repealing the law won't make states raise the bar - the law must become truly national, truly fair, in order to leave no child behind.