Fantasy and Fraud: No Child Left Behind

In 2001, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Bush administration’s ambitious public education law. Its main goal is to close the student achievement gap between whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and will reward schools that narrow it and punish those that do not. The White House is convinced that if no other administration could close the gap, it was because no one understood the power of accountability programs and charter schools.

This is a goal that cannot be achieved and reflects a staggering lack of realism. The main result of the law will be more fraud in the education system. Schools already cook the books to make their students look better, and the punishments President Bush has in mind will only give them more reasons to cheat. On the other hand, when this attempt to eliminate the racial gap inevitably fails, it will open more eyes to the reality of racial differences.

All on their way to “proficiency.”

All Must be “Proficient”

NCLB requires that all students who are not officially “learning disabled” be “proficient” in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year, and that schools show “adequate yearly progress” towards that goal in the meantime. “Proficiency” will be defined by the states which must come up with “high-quality tests” for it. By the 2005-6 school year, all schools must test students in reading and math every year in grades three to eight, and at least once during grades ten through twelve. Schools must also develop plans to reduce dropout rates, and show they are sticking to them.

The law also sets qualification requirements for teachers, and requires that schools cut down on crime and violence. It is supposed to help them prevent and prosecute crime by improving communication between schools and police, but it also punishes schools classified as “persistently dangerous.”

The act massively increases education spending. Since it was passed in 2001, federal grants to schools have increased 28 percent, from $28 billion to $35.8 billion. Much of the money is for teacher recruitment and training, reading instruction, and special education, but a whopping $11.7 billion now goes to “Title One” schools, that is, schools that get extra money because their students are poor. This is an increase of 33 percent over 2001, and was required by No Child Left Behind. Poverty is so rewarding it has become the fashion: No fewer than 58 percent of public schools now get Title One money. The program has increased more under Mr. Bush than during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration.

But NCLB can take as well as give. If a Title One school fails to make enough progress for two straight years, the school district must let its students go to other, better schools. If the school still fails to improve, the district must start replacing staff and perhaps even reopen it as a charter school. (A charter school is relatively free from the education bureaucracy: Principals can hire non-union teachers, and have more say in curriculum and budgeting than other principals.) The law rewards schools that meet federal standards by giving them more money.

In order to spur schools to close the racial gap, the law judges a school’s performance not by the overall student average, but by the performances of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians, as well as poor students, the “limited English proficient,” and so forth. Therefore, if all the students in the school make adequate progress except for blacks, the school still fails to meet federal standards. There will be lower standards for low-performing groups until 2014, but in that year every single student of every group (except for the “learning disabled”) must achieve proficiency.

When this attempt to eliminate the racial gap inevitably fails, it will open more eyes to the reality of racial differences.

Teachers and journalists have attacked the act for its delusional optimism, and rightly so. The most widely-used test for measuring performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam (NAEP). In 2002, only 36 percent of 12th graders were “proficient” or better on the NAEP reading test. That was 42 percent of whites, 16 percent of blacks, and 22 percent of Hispanics. In 2000, the latest available year for math scores, only 17 percent of 12th graders were “proficient:” 20 percent of whites, but only three percent of blacks, and four percent of Hispanics. It is inconceivable that every student in America will be “proficient” in math and reading by 2014.

Some people argue that the NAEP score of “proficient” is a very high standard, and “proficiency” will end up closer to the NAEP score of “basic.” Even this more modest goal is impossible. In 2002, 79 percent of white 12th graders, but only 54 percent of blacks, and 61 percent of Hispanics met this standard in reading. In math, 74 percent of white, but only 44 percent of Hispanic, and 31 percent of black students were “basic” or better. Therefore, even if the standard is equivalent to NAEP “basic,” blacks and Hispanics will have to make tremendous progress.

Some states have already adopted the NCLB system of evaluating each racial group separately rather than grading a school on average performance of all students. The result is a huge increase in “failing schools,” and is a taste of what is to come. In Florida, for example, no fewer than 87 percent of schools failed to make “adequate yearly progress” last year; for South Carolina, New Jersey, and Delaware, the figures were 77 percent, 58 percent, and 57 percent. In California, 800 schools flunked the state’s evaluation, but when all racial groups were evaluated separately the way NCLB requires, 3,000 schools failed.

NCLB has other crazy requirements. It will, for example, be impossible for schools to be fully staffed with “highly qualified” teachers—by federal standards—by the 2005 school year. Only 63 percent of math teachers nationwide now meet the standard. Also, students in “failing” schools are supposed to be able to transfer to better ones, but this policy won’t work because the good schools are full. In 2003, 19,000 Chicago students asked to transfer, but there were places for only 1,000 of them.

Of course, schools can be expanded and teachers can be qualified. It is the goal of closing the racial gap that is fantastic. Always, everywhere, whites and Asians outscore blacks and Hispanics. To require schools to close the gap is to encourage them to lie.

This gap is large and persistent. In fact, test results show that by the time they finish high school, minorities (unless otherwise specified, this means blacks and Hispanics) are approximately four academic years behind whites. Their achievement test scores in 12th grade are, at best, about equal to those of whites in the 8th grade, and sometimes dramatically lower. The graph below this paragraph, taken from No Excuses by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (see sidebar, page 6) deserves careful study. Please note that the racial comparisons are not of children in the same grade, but of 8th grade whites and Asians and 12th grade blacks and Hispanics. It shows that an employer who hires a black or Hispanic with a high school diploma will, on average, get the intellectual equivalent of a white 14-year-old. Things are actually even worse. Only slightly more than half of blacks and Hispanics even graduate from high school, as opposed to 72 percent of whites, so the dropouts are even more miserably qualified.

The gap is not closing. The graphs on the next page, also taken from the Thernstrom’s informative book, show where the average score of black and Hispanic 17-year-olds fell in the white percentile distribution between 1975 and 1999 on NAEP tests of reading and science. Thus, if the black score is 25, it means 75 percent of whites scored better than the average black. The science scores are particularly dismal. In 1999, 90 percent of white 17-year-olds scored higher than the average black, and 78 percent scored higher than the average Hispanic. In the past 29 years, neither minority group has ever scored higher than the 30th percentile of the white distribution in reading, math or science. Between 1975 and 1990, blacks and Hispanics narrowed the gap with whites on the reading test, but it has widened since then. In math and science, the racial gap has scarcely changed at all since 1975

Scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) show the same pattern. In 1976, there was a 240-point gap between black and white combined scores, and the difference narrowed to 189 points in 1988. Since then, the gap has grown larger again, reaching 206 points in 2003. The gap between whites and Hispanics has changed in the same way. In 1976, there was a 163-point gap between whites and Mexicans, which narrowed to 124 points in 1990, and is now back to 158. The scores of other Hispanic groups show the same pattern.

Liberals and conservatives have different explanations for the gap. Liberals blame poverty, racism, and school funding. Conservatives blame bad teaching, school bureaucracy, and “minority culture.” The classic liberal statement was Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 best-seller, Savage Inequalities. Mr. Kozol argued that considerably less money was spent per capita on minority than on white students and that minority schools were therefore squalid and overcrowded. He examined a few inner-city schools and compared them to better schools in rich suburbs, but did not try to prove his examples were typical by looking at large-scale studies. He believed money would eliminate the performance gap.

No Excuses decisively refutes Mr. Kozol. The Thernstroms look at average spending on minority and white students in the period Mr. Kozol covered—1989 to 1990—and find there were only negligible differences in per-student spending by race. Since then, the trend has been towards almost complete equality in spending on whites and minorities. This reflects deliberate transfer of money from white taxpayers to minority schools.

The racial gap . . .

The Thernstroms also make short work of another “savage inequality,” class size. At the time Mr. Kozol was writing, class sizes were actually smaller at mostly-minority than at mostly-white schools. The average across the board was 17.7 in 1992, in the range educators call “ideal.” Since then, average class size has dropped to 15.1. The Thernstroms acknowledge that some high-minority schools are squalid, but blame this on negligent school employees and destructive students rather than on lack of funding.

The Thernstroms are rightly skeptical of any claim that more money will close the racial gap or produce any other real improvement. They note that per-pupil spending has nearly doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2000, but performance has stayed flat. They also give an extreme example of spending on minorities that led nowhere. In 1985, a federal judge ordered Kansas City to upgrade its schools to attract more white students to the 75-percent-black system, and raise abysmal test scores. Over the next 15 years, the city raised property taxes, and spent $2 billion on schools. Central High School got an Olympic-size pool with six diving boards, a classical Greek theater, an eight-lane indoor track, a gym stocked with professional equipment, a planetarium, a recording studio, and a 100-acre farm. It got a world-class Russian fencing coach, and enough violin teachers to give private lessons to a whole elementary school. All this did no good. In 2000, Kansas City schools were no more racially integrated than before, and test scores were as bad as ever (see AR, Dec. 1995, for a detailed account).

Shaker Heights, a wealthy Cleveland suburb that serves many children of educated black parents, has tried for years to narrow the race gap. It spends 50 percent more money on each student than the national average, but black high school students still lag far behind whites: They are about four times more likely to fail state proficiency tests and less than a tenth as likely to pass those tests with honors. Shaker Heights may have worked harder for equal results than any other school district but still has almost nothing to show for it.

The racial gap starts even before students get to school, so it is hard to blame free-floating school “racism.” Black preschoolers score considerably lower on ability tests than white preschoolers. Differences in social class or parents’ education do not explain the gap either. Indeed, the performance gap between the children of black and white college-educated parents is even greater than the average black/white gap.

Nor can “racism” explain why Asian students perform as well or better than whites. It is likewise worth noting that, as the graphs on pages three and four show, Hispanics almost invariably outscore blacks, even in reading, despite the fact that immigrants often speak poor English. This is very hard to explain in terms of “racism,” poverty, etc.

… will not go away.

The failure of the liberal explanation suggests the gap reflects innate racial differences, but conventional “conservatives” like the Thernstroms claim the problem is “cultural.” They blame the misbehavior of minority students, the lack of an atmosphere of learning at home, and minority teachers who promote ethnic separatism. These things probably contribute to the gap, but conservatives refuse to consider the possibility that these things themselves may be innate.

Behavior differences make it hard for blacks to learn. Black kindergartners are less persistent, less eager to learn, and less able to pay attention than white kindergartners, and these differences continue through high school. Blacks are 21/2 times more likely than whites to be suspended from school, and students in high-minority schools are sixteen times more likely to be robbed than students in largely-white schools. One teacher at a heavily non-white school said her job was “nine-tenths policeman, one-tenth educational.”

Minority households are different from white households. Minority parents spend much less time reading to children or teaching them the alphabet and numbers. Nearly half of black fourth graders spend five or more hours watching television or videos on a typical school day. Fewer than 20 percent of white fourth graders watch that much.

Needless to say, none of these arguments in any way refutes the view that the racial problem is genetic. What the Thernstroms describe is to be expected from low-IQ people who do not plan for the future. The behavior and environment of minorities are not some unfortunate accident that somehow manages to befall them wherever they go. It reflects who they are. The Thernstroms, for example, point out the disadvantages for minority children of the large number of single parents—as if blacks and Hispanics were just plain unlucky to be having so many illegitimate children.

The Thernstroms’ research suggests minority students are doubly disadvantaged by the effects of innate racial differences, because minority teachers gravitate towards minority schools. Teachers who do well on tests teach better, and there are large race differences in scores on teaching exams. Although the passing grades are often called “ridiculously low,” serving only to screen out illiterates, more than 30 percent of black and Hispanic teachers fail them, as opposed to fewer than 10 percent of whites. Low-IQ minority students have trouble learning; low-IQ teachers have trouble teaching.

Schools often encourage minorities to see themselves as ethnically separate, and stress white racism to encourage feelings of grievance. Some minority schools promote outright black and Hispanic nationalism. This may or may not affect grades, but the Thernstroms are convinced racial nationalism keeps non-whites at the margins of society, and lowers their performance.

There actually are a few reasons for the race gap that cannot be blamed on racial differences. The National Education Association (NEA), the main teachers’ union, has made it virtually impossible to fire incompetent teachers, and has opposed accountability programs, charter schools, and school vouchers, all of which tend to improve schools. The burden of the NEA’s obstruction to change falls mainly on minority students, who are less able to afford private schools not under the NEA’s control.

Charter Schools

Conservatives are enthusiastic about charter schools. Indeed, faith in charter schools is at the foundation of NCLB, which gives districts the option of reopening bad schools as charter schools. The Thernstroms write glowing profiles of several charter schools, and offer evidence that they improve performance. These schools do this by working students extremely hard, instilling respect for authority, and severely punishing misbehavior. They also add many more hours of instruction: For example, the school day at Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut, runs from 7:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The school year is two weeks longer than normal, and students can attend summer school.

But do charter schools close the racial gap? For most of them, the Thernstroms do not give enough test data for a clear answer, but the students at Amistad Academy, which is 66 percent black and 33 Hispanic, scored at about the state average in 2001. This is very good for minorities in a state that is still 78 percent white, and is certainly evidence that intensive teaching improves performance. The crucial question, of course, is how well whites would do in an equally intensive school?

Secretary of Education: fraud is rewarded.

Furthermore, the minorities at Amistad Academy and the other charter schools that so impress the Thernstroms are not random samples. The schools do not have admissions tests, but they require a firm commitment to education from students’ families. Parents must promise to encourage learning at home, and agree to a long school day. Minority parents who go to the trouble to find out about charter schools, talk to school officials, and abide by school rules are not average. Moreover, students who break academy rules are expelled, and this weeds out the worst.

Good results from charter schools are encouraging, but they are not proof—they are not even very strong evidence—that the racial gap can be closed. Instead, they suggest that white students are poorly served by public schools, and that if minority students do well in charter schools, whites would probably do even better.

For years, the evidence has shown that all students benefit from intensive education, but that smart children benefit even more than dull children. The average performance rises, but the gap between the best and worst grows wider. The only way to eliminate the racial gap would be to teach nothing at all and leave our children all equally ignorant.

Fraud

NCLB sets up so many impossible expectations that only liars will prosper. Previous federal and state-level accountability programs have already prompted schools to disguise failure, particularly that of minorities, and NCLB’s requirements will only make things worse.

Rod Paige, Secretary of Education, is an instructive example. From 1994 to 2001, he was superintendent of schools in Houston, where high test scores for poor Hispanics and low dropout rates were the envy of the nation. Mr. Paige got his current job on the strength of his supposedly stellar performance, and the accountability program he used to perform these miracles became the model for NCLB.

It has since become clear that much of the success was a fraud. Robert Kimball, assistant principal at Sharpstown High School in Houston, discovered that although his mostly-Hispanic high school had a freshman class of 1,000 that dropped to fewer than 300 by graduation, the school was on record as not having had a single dropout. Nor was this an anomaly. A state audit found there were 2,300 more unreported dropouts in the district. Fourteen schools that had the highest performance rating were busted to the lowest rating on the basis of their actual dropout rates.

States may even have to cut spending on white students to fund the required increases for non-whites.

There were other tricks. In order to improve average scores on the state math test given in the 10th grade, many schools held weak 9th graders back a year so that only good students took the exam. After two years in the 9th grade, they moved straight to the 11th grade, bypassing the exam. Houston principals cheated because the district gave them bonuses for good reports and fired them for bad ones. As Mr. Kimball noted, “The principals who survive are the yes men.” NCLB encourages the same kind of dishonesty

Either Mr. Paige knew what was going on and was a fraud, or didn’t know and was incompetent. In either case, he is the kind that succeeds under the current racial orthodoxy, and it was his system that was the model for NCLB. For months, Mr. Paige refused to comment on the revelations, and now dismisses them as “inflammatory” and “unfair” attacks by political enemies. He is already claiming great success for NCLB.

Dishonesty has cropped up all over the country in the wake of accountability programs. South Carolina reported 2001 graduation rates of 87 percent; on closer inspection, it turned out to be 57 percent. California claimed a rate of 87 percent when it was really 70 percent. Indiana reported a graduation rate of 90 percent that was actually 74 percent.

One reason for high dropout rates is that schools push out weak students so they can raise test scores and comply with accountability programs. The New York Times recently found that five to ten percent of New York City students are pushed out of school. The same thing happens in Miami.

When states require accountability, the number of students classified as “learning disabled” suddenly rises—because they are excused from testing. In North Carolina, the number of students excused from testing more than doubled from four percent to 10 percent after the state set performance requirements.

NCLB also has penalties for “persistently dangerous” schools, but leaves the definition of “persistently dangerous” up to the states. The result is yet more dishonesty. This year, California reported it had no persistently dangerous schools, although one Los Angeles high school had 289 battery cases, two assaults with a deadly weapon, a robbery, and three sex offenses during 2001-2. School officials are also rumored to be sweeping crime under the carpet.

The Democratic charge that NCLB is an “unfunded mandate” is also true. Good schools that get an influx of students from bad schools will have to hire new teachers and maybe even build new classrooms, but the law does not now cover these costs. “Failing” schools must hire tutors for poor students, but no one know how much tutoring they will need. These costs come on top of the expense of developing tests and training “highly qualified” teachers. If the government is serious about NCLB, it will have to spend a lot more money.

Also, since the act shifts disproportionate amounts of money to students who are “left behind”—minorities—it means failing minorities will cost white taxpayers even more than they do now.

They are all being left behind.

Many states have already cut their meager programs for gifted children so as to shovel money into the gaping maw of NCLB.

Because the new system will make it look as though entire schools—not just minorities—are failing, many states will be tempted to design ridiculously simple tests non-whites can pass. They will be free to do this because the definition of “proficiency” is largely up to the states. The result will be a patchwork of different tests, and a child who is proficient in one state will be a failure in another.

Finally, transferring students from failing schools to successful ones means busing inner-city bruisers to white schools. The results are likely to be the same as in the 1960s and 1970s, when busloads of poor blacks threw happy, successful schools into chaos. Under busing, test scores plummeted.

On the other hand, some good may actually come of this law. The NEA resists even the most obviously needed changes in schools. NCLB gives government officials the power to go over the head of the NEA and dismiss incompetent teachers and principals, and turn failing schools into charter schools. The administration is generally hostile to education fads and multicultural nonsense, so putting more power in its hands may result in some improvement.

Finally, the inevitable failure of NCLB to close the racial gap will be further proof of the intractability of racial differences. The neo-conservatives who smugly tout charter schools and accountability on television will end up failing just as badly as the liberals did. The failure of one more expensive government program to make blacks and Hispanics act like white people will nudge America further towards racial understanding.

Original article

(Posted on July 29, 2005)

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