A conversation with ... Jack Jennings 

President and CEO of the Center on Education Policy

Jack Jennings is president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C. The Center, funded almost entirely by charitable foundations, is an independent organization founded in 1995 to help Americans better understand the role of public education in a democracy and to “convene people with differing points of view about public education to foster a reasoned debate on the schools.” Jennings founded the Center after serving for decades as subcommittee staff director and general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor, a position which involved him in nearly all major education debates held at the national level. In March, the Center released its third report on the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, titled “From the Capital to the Classroom.”

During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., California Schools Editor in Chief Mina G. Fasulo sat down with Jennings to discuss the report’s findings and how expectations for public education have changed in the past century.

Politicians have been quick to suggest in the press that public education seems to be failing. Is that an accurate assessment?

No, not at all. Public schools are doing better today than they have in the past. The problem is that the bar is being raised, so that things that were acceptable in the past are no longer acceptable and the expectation is that all children will do much better than they did before. The public schools are doing well. They’re meeting all sorts of challenges: immigration, strings on money, growth in the population. They’re doing well, but they have to do better.

One of the main goals of public education is to prepare students to become productive citizens and members of a democratic society. What does that look like for 21st century graduates? And in your estimation, has the purpose of high school changed over the years?

The purpose has changed from being an institution that sorts some students out for factory jobs, some for college and some would be sorted out for blue-collar jobs. Today, though, the expectation is that everybody’s going to go to college. Eighty to 90 percent of the kids expect to go to college after they finish high school. So it’s a different type of institution now, or it ought to be. It ought to be an institution that educates kids to higher levels than ever before. But one of the big problems is the high drop-out rate, especially among children of color and poor children. That was tolerable in the past when there were jobs, but now there aren’t a lot of well-paying jobs if you don’t have an education. So the real challenge is, how do you raise the bar for all children and challenge children more, while keeping all children in school? And that means there’s going to be a need for a lot of additional help for many kids to keep them in school.

Let’s talk about that a little bit. In California there’s been a shift toward focusing on preparing our kids for college and less of a focus on the vocational trade areas. What are your thoughts about that?

It’s a real dilemma because kids have clearly gotten the message that it’s economically better to go to college. Most kids want to go to college. Most parents want their kids to go to college. But if you look at the jobs being created in the economy, there will be a large number of jobs for college-trained people, but there will also be a large number of jobs for those that don’t have a degree. We’re putting such an emphasis on college preparation that kids who are going to have other [types of] jobs may not stay motivated or be educated well enough for those other jobs. The difficulty is that if a high school emphasizes vocational training, frequently there’s opposition from parents who don’t want their kids to be in a vocational track. They want their kids on an academic track. Frequently it’s parents of color who are concerned that if there’s a vocational track, their kids are going to be channeled into that track and never have a chance to go to college. So we have to find some way we can teach kids more and keep them in school, and yet prepare them for employment.

Do you think No Child Left Behind is doing that for us?

NCLB is putting the emphasis on raising test scores. Eventually there will be a greater alignment of teaching with state academic standards. But NCLB is not putting an emphasis on citizenship, which is another very distinguished goal of schooling.

And arts and sciences?

Right. In fact, the Center just released a report, “From the Capital to the Classroom,” which found some evidence that there’s been a narrowing of the curriculum in some school districts. It seems that, especially in the poor school districts, there’s a narrowing of the curriculum. And what’s going to happen in a couple of years when NCLB requires science testing and science has been squeezed out of the curriculum?

Yes, let’s talk about that for just a second. What do you think the parents and the business community expect from our schools as it relates to NCLB?

I think business expects that the schools will produce employees who are literate and who have work habits like punctuality and a sense of appearance. NCLB emphasizes increasing test scores based on state standards, which is not everything that the business community expects. But the business community – I think at least a number of leaders of large corporations – think that American schools are not doing well enough and that they have to be pressured to do better because other countries are getting ahead of us. And it is true, a number of other countries are getting ahead of us in terms of college-going rates and high school completion rates. The funnel of this [NCLB] reform has gone into raising test scores and not into a broader concept of education. I think parents want their kids to finish high school and go to college.

One aspect of NCLB that California has been dealing with is the change in what is designated as a program improvement district. Now, some of our lowest-performing districts are no longer on the list, yet some of the highest-performing have been added. It’s just very frustrating from our perspective. We understand about accountability, and we accept it. That’s where the school board perspective is. At the same time, there are so many policy issues contained in NCLB that need to be fixed.

One thing’s clear, we don’t have the right mix in NCLB today. Congress and the Bush administration want to hold tight on the law until people get used to the ideas and then they might be willing to consider change, but that’s going to be years off.

Exactly. And in the meantime we’re labeling kids and schools as failures.

And sometimes under different systems, because a state will praise the school and the federal system will condemn the school. So it gets very confusing to people.

It does, especially for the parents who are getting a letter. You’ve probably seen in the newspapers what’s happening in Florida where schools were identified as a distinguished school or a school of excellence by the governor, and yet they’ve been labeled as a failing school district by NCLB.

In fact, they’re lowering their standards in Florida now, trying to bring them more in line with the feds. About 90 percent of their schools have been identified as in need of improvement.

Is that right? Ninety percent – that’s distressing.

NCLB clearly needs work; it does not have the right mix of requirements now.

We represent the 5000-plus elected school board members in California, and every year we come back [to Washington, D.C.] and every year we get the “talk-to-the-hand” treatment, you know, telling us ‘we’re not doing anything until reauthorization.’ It seems like our efforts to genuinely try to fix NCLB are almost falling on deaf ears. Do you have any advice for us?

I think you’re falling on deaf ears because the Congressional leaders – Republicans and Democrats, the ones who helped to write the law – and the Bush administration don’t want to change it. That doesn’t mean that view will prevail. It depends on political pressures. It depends on a lot of things. But if you don’t complain, if you don’t bring your complaints out here, then people think everything’s fine. So you have to register what you think, but it can’t be just negativism. You have to say, if this is wrong, here’s a way to fix it.

Exactly. CSBA agrees with that perspective. In fact, we actually launched a “Fix No Child Left Behind” campaign in the spring of 2004, which continues to this day.

I think we’ve seen it.

Have you? We have five specific areas where we’re calling for change: specifically, special education, proficiency rates, participation rates, school choice and highly qualified teachers. We aren’t just saying ‘this is broken,’ but we’re actually offering up real policy changes that would help us implement what NCLB’s trying to do.

Let’s talk about your NCLB report, “From the Capital to the Classroom.” It shows that the law has had a number of positive effects, but in California we’ve had a very tough time with implementation. What negative aspects of the law has your research revealed?

The testing of disabled students and the accountability provisions for English language learners — those are the two main accountability provisions. And then there are big concerns about the capacity of states and school districts to carry out the act, especially states’ ability to provide the technical assistance to schools identified for improvement, and to a certain extent the same issue with districts. With the districts, it was more the teacher quality issue and meeting the qualified teacher requirements. Those are the three main findings.

What responsibility do you think the U.S. Department of Education should have to prove that NCLB’s requirements are meaningful and achievable?

Well, they should listen to the people who are carrying out the law to see what the complaints are. Now we’ve had three years experience and the complaints are coming in uniformly. There are complaints about the lack of capacity to help schools that are identified for improvement. There are consistent complaints about holding disabled children and English language learners levels of proficiency too high. There is a series of other problems. The Department has an obligation to listen to people and to make accommodations where possible.

And again, I’m sure you’ve heard that when California identified the program improvement districts based on participation rates, our highest achieving districts — according to our own accountability system — were identified as program improvement districts, because California law has a provision that guarantees parents the right to opt their children out of testing. So they didn’t show up for testing day and schools missed their targets.

You’re not the only one.

Oh, really? You mean there are actually other states that have the same opt-out provision?

Yes. We talk about it in our report. I think there are 10 states, but most of the opt-out provisions are very narrow. The report said it’s had little effect, in part because when you get stuck on a participation issue and you’re identified, that’s something you can fix. You can get the bodies there [for the test]. In California, though, kids know that this test ... Does not count.

Exactly. They know they don’t have to sit in the classroom and be put under so much pressure.

Well, another problem teachers mention is that there are no student consequences. All the pressure is on the school and the teachers, but the kids don’t care.

But what can you do about that?

Yeah, especially with high school kids.

I have a student in high school, one in middle school and two in elementary and you can just imagine our dinner conversations. They know they need to take the tests seriously, because I go round and round with them about No Child Left Behind and how important it is from our perspective. And yet at the same time I share with them that that law needs fixing.

Now for one last question: NCLB requires all states to adopt academic standards and yet no one has determined what it actually costs school districts to help all students meet these standards. Meanwhile, lawsuits in many states – New York, Nebraska, California – are demanding adequate, not merely equitable, school funding to enable them to meet these standards. Do you think that’s a growing trend?

Yes. The longer No Child Left Behind stays on the lawbook the more likely it is that more states are going to be sued on adequacy grounds. Because the law is very strong in identifying schools that have problems and it’s very weak on providing the tools to teachers to solve those problems. And people won’t sit still. If they see that the law isn’t providing the help, they’re going to go to court and try to find some other way to do it. And with these adequacy lawsuits, two-thirds of the plaintiffs are winning now. Since the law doesn’t address the issue of resources, it means people will find another way to get at the issue of resources and that will be through litigation.

Mina Fasulo (mfasulo@csba.org) is Editor in Chief of California Schools.