“No Child Left Behind”: Modest Success

The Economist takes a look at Bush’s effort to improve public schools. Tests, especially the nationally-administered “Assessment of Educational Progress,” have brought increased accountability to public education. And scores have risen slightly (see chart). But systemic rewards tied to passing scores mean superior students and those farthest behind get less attention than those on the cusp.

Like Steve Jobs, The Economist has little respect for teachers unions:

The toughest obstacle to improving the worst is the strident opposition of the teachers' unions to meritocracy. . . [B]ad teachers are nearly impossible to sack. . .So the worst teachers linger for ever, while many talented people who might otherwise become teachers shun a profession where their talents will be neither recognised nor rewarded.

All this would be technically simple to fix. Tenure could be abolished, principals could be allowed to hire and fire freely and teachers could be paid by results. School funding could also be made dependent on how many parents choose to send their children to a particular school, so that good schools would expand and bad ones would close or be taken over. But all this is politically impossible—especially with the Democrats, who grovel to the teachers' unions, in charge of Congress.