Opinion: The “No Child” pitchwoman

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Every couple of days, the U.S. Department of Education sends out another press release saying that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is talking about the No Child Left Behind Act in Texas, or Minnesota, or whatever state her neverending pitch for the law is taking her.

Spellings has been a major improvement over predecessor Rod Paige. She has tried to make implementation of the school accountability law more flexible, more sane. But traveling around the country spouting predictable phrases about school reform are not going to make an insane law sound sane to the masses.

NCLB was a well-intentioned law. It was a truly bipartisan law. Accountability is a good idea for schools that for too long have promoted and graduated kids with deplorable reading and math skills. But it’s a remarkably badly written law. Good schools along with bad suffered under its ‘failing’ labels and sanctions while sanctimonious lawmakers refused to consider changes. Imagine a law that actually punishes states for setting high standards, and you’ve got NCLB. Now that the law has come up for reauthorization, at least one of those lawmakers, California’s Rep. George Miller, would like to make substantial changes, while the Bush administration wants the law kept almost exactly as it is. Other lawmakers would just like the law to die, period. With the current stalemate, that’s a real possibility. It would become just another relic and the schools would be right back where they were six years ago.

All the press conferences around the heartland are not going to make people love this law. Instead of going on the road to promote NCLB, Spellings should be beating a regular path to the White House to convince the president that NCLB needs a major rewrite. Otherwise, it will be hard for anyone to mourn its premature death.