Enforcement Key in Overhauling Nation’s Schools

If history is any guide, the Bush administration will face stiff resistance as it pushes states to carry out the ambitious education reforms passed by Congress this week.

The bill calls for annual math and reading testing for all third- through eighth-graders, but its first test will be a political one, said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez).

“You need to be a tough cop on the beat to enforce what Congress says it wants states to do,” Miller said Friday.

In the past, he said, the federal government has “caved in like a cheap suit” rather than insist that states ensure that all children are making academic gains.

Miller was a key member of the committee that drafted the final bill, which President Bush is expected to sign soon. It has been widely characterized as the most important piece of education legislation passed in Washington since 1965.

But the hard work that must be done before the bill has a chance of achieving its aims falls to the states. They will have four years to create ambitious, academically challenging standards and tests to be used as benchmarks of student progress.

Currently, only 15 states test all students in grades three through eight in math and reading, and only six of those states have the capacity to specify results based on students’ family income, ethnicity and language.

The bill also requires states to check the progress of schools that don’t meet the bill’s goals and help those that lag behind. Schools that repeatedly fall short face losing students, money and even autonomy.

Offsetting the bill’s demands is a commitment of more money. On Thursday, Congress appropriated an additional $3.1 billion for education this fiscal year. California will receive $560 million of that total, with the largest amounts going to help disadvantaged students and to train and recruit teachers.

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige told reporters in a conference call this week that he would insist that states comply with the nearly 1,200-page bill’s expectations, even if it means withholding aid from states that do not do so. “The country can count on us keeping our promise,” he said.

Leading the department’s enforcement efforts will be Undersecretary Eugene W. Hickok Jr., who was Pennsylvania secretary of education before joining the administration. Known for upsetting the status quo, Hickok headed the Education Leaders Council, a group of state education officers who supported reforms such as school choice.

“It falls to us now . . . to make this new law a reality across the country,” said Hickok. “Our goal is to create a change in the culture of education which will now emphasize performance and results rather than just inputs.”

Similar sentiments were expressed in 1994, the last time the federal government enacted education reform. Under that law, states were supposed to develop ambitious expectations for students and put in place tests to measure whether all students were meeting them.

But so far, only 16 states have met all of that bill’s requirements, even though the deadlines have long since passed, Paige said. Six states have agreed to take steps to comply with the law, and 28 others--plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands--have been given waivers for more time.

But no state has been penalized for failing to satisfy the earlier law’s requirements, even though the 1994 law gave the secretary of Education the power to do that.

California is among the states not in compliance. Although it tests students in grades three through eight, those tests are too basic to meet the federal requirement. The state has submitted a compliance plan, which the U.S. Department of Education has not yet approved.

Suellen Reed, the state superintendent of public instruction in Indiana and chairwoman of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said states are much better positioned to follow the new law than they were in 1994. Every state except Iowa has created state academic standards, although not all of them have received federal approval. And most states are working on their testing systems.

“You are going to have some states that are going to really struggle to make this happen,” she said. “I think that flexibility is what’s going to make it successful.”

But Lindsey Kozberg, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education, said the new law gives the administration less leeway in how to enforce the bill. The department cannot grant extensions beyond the 2005 school year, when most of the bill’s provisions must be in place.

David L. Shreve, an education lobbyist with the National Conference of State Legislatures, said he wasn’t sure the administration could or would follow through on its tough rhetoric. Much will depend on the regulations that the department writes to implement the law, as well as on how strictly the department enforces those regulations, he said.

If the regulations are too open-ended, he said, states could comply but still not improve students’ academic achievement.

Moreover, he said, he doubted that the administration would be willing to take the political risk of withholding aid meant to serve poor children. “No president in his right mind wants to see the feds withhold federal education funds when there’s an election coming up,” he said.

Maris Vinovskis, a University of Michigan professor who has studied education reform, said history is not on the administration’s side.

Every time the federal government vows to demand that states be accountable for academic performance, it has eventually backed down.

Vinovskis said: “History tells you to be skeptical because every set of new reformers comes in and says we’re going to be different from the past and we’re still waiting.”