Submitted by Paul Hoss, Mar 5, 2007 22:07

The reauthorization of No Child Left Behind is the manifest destiny of education reform. Among other things it needs to include: national standards, common achievement levels, expanded accountability to the secondary level, and adequate funding.

A number of states administer "feel good" tests, relative to the federal tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the "nation's report card?" In 2005 Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students in math and found eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above proficient while the NAEP test indicated only 21 percent of Tennessee's eighth graders proficient in math. In Mississippi in, 89 percent of fourth graders performed at or above proficient on state reading test, while only 18 percent demonstrated proficiency on the federal test. In Alabama 83 percent of fourth-grade students scored at or above proficient on the state's reading test while only 22 percent were proficient on the NAEP test. In Georgia, 83 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient on state reading test, compared with just 24 percent on the federal test.

Oklahoma, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, Virginia, and Texas were also found to be guilty as charged in the area of "truth in advertising" where their determinations for proficient didn't seem to mean what they said. The duplicitous attempts by these states to meet proficiency by 2014 to comply with the NCLB legislation has created a firestorm of demands for federal standards and defined achievement levels as the only reliable indicators of performance at Washington's disposal.

With testing already in grades three through eight for No Child Left Behind, it's time the feds insisted on accountability through high school. Most states already have secondary tests and more than half have high stakes tests linked to their high school diplomas. It may only be a matter of deciding which grade level to test nationally.

For Title I, the cornerstone of NCLB, the authorization for 2006 was $22.75 billion. However, President Bush only requested $13.3 billion. Local and state school budgets are already tighter than the bark on a tree. If the feds only come up with sixty percent of their promise, school children nationwide unquestionably suffer.

Paul Hoss

Marshfield, Massachusetts

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