EducationNews.org

An Interview with Sandy Kress: Reflecting on No Child Left Behind

 

Michael F. Shaughnessy - June 23, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

 

Mr. Kress served as senior advisor to President George W. Bush on education with respect to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.  He also previously served as president of the board of trustees of the Dallas Public Schools. Sandy Kress' practice focuses on public law and policy at the state and national levels with a strong focus on education matters, including policies, reform and accountability. 

Mr. Kress formerly served on the Education Commission of the States, and he currently serves as counsel to the Governor's Business Council.  He is also a life member of the board of directors of the Texas Business & Education Coalition.

In 1991, Mr. Kress was appointed by Texas Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock to the Educational Economic Policy Center. He was later asked to chair the Center's Accountability Committee.  This committee produced the public school accountability system that was later adopted into Texas state law and recognized as one of the most advanced accountability systems in the nation. Lieutenant Governor Bullock also appointed Mr. Kress to serve in 1994 on the Interim Committee to study the Texas Education Agency.  In December 2007, Mr. Kress was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve on the Select Committee on Public School Accountability which is tasked with thoroughly reviewing the public school accountability system.

Governor Perry appointed Mr. Kress in April 2007 to chair the Commission for a College Ready Texas.  This commission issued recommendations to promote greater college/work readiness among Texas high school graduates.

Mr. Kress was also appointed by Governor Perry in December 2007 to serve on the Governor’s Competitiveness Council which was launched to identify obstacles to global competitiveness and to seek recommendations on ways Texas can enhance its economic footing for long-term, sustained success.

Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mr. Kress was a partner in the Dallas law firm of Johnson & Wortley, P.C.  He also served as deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1977 to 1980.

Mr. Kress received his A.B. in 1971 from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. with honors in 1975 from the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as president of the student government.  He is a member of the Texas and District of Columbia Bars.

  

1)  Now that President Obama has been in office a while, it is probably time to turn his attention to NCLB. He has not, as far as I know come out with any major new initiatives AS FAR AS I KNOW...what do you know?

 

If you mean magic bullets by "major initiatives," I would agree that I have not seen any from President Obama and Secretary Duncan. But, as a person who does not believe in magic bullets, I praise the President and Secretary on this.

 

They have correctly analyzed where we are in the reform process and have promoted the best next steps.

 

We need to strengthen and improve our standards. We need better assessments with higher performance standards. We need more effective teaching, with effective teachers more common in schools that serve the poor and greater pay for more effective performance. We need better data to improve instruction and bring about more efficient and effective performance in our education systems. And we need fundamentally to transform low performing schools.

 

These are the "initiatives" the Administration and the Congress are taking. They are, in my view, "major" and good.

 

Having said that, I'm not ready to give a high grade yet to the current crew. There are challenges ahead, and I worry, for example, about what the Secretary means when he says current reforms are "tight where they should be loose and loose where they should be tight."

 

If this means letting up on the pressure of accountability, this move alone will totally de-value all these initiatives. All the gains we've gotten in the best performing states like Massachusetts, Texas, Virginia, et al, and the nation as a whole, since 1999, are due more than anything else to the reality that "we've been tight" as to accountability.

 

2)  I recently met Senator Tom Udall at a Town Hall meeting and the one topic that he was besieged with was NCLB. Long story short, teachers, counselors, principals all seem to have concerns. Any thoughts on specific things that really need to be adjusted?

 

Ever since NCLB was passed, I've believed that it should be administered with appropriate flexibility. Recently, there have been moves in that direction - permitting growth measures to reward significant student growth short of proficiency, greater differentiation in consequences for schools that need improvement, greater clarity in how to assess disabled and English language learners, and ways to raise performance standards without being penalized under the AYP requirements.

 

While more work needs to be done to manifest these "fixes," I wish I could advise all those concerned that much of this flexibility exists today, and some of it could be made to exist with creative policies and practice. In that regard, I hope Secretary Duncan will continue the work Secretary Spellings began to implement reasonable flexibility.

 

Having said that, I believe it is crucial that the Secretary and the Congress not cross the line between flexibility and weakening. That line marks the difference between making accountability work smartly and so reducing the impact of accountability that we risk going back to the lower levels of student achievement in the 90s.

 

3)  Will some merit pay ideas really bring about any appreciable difference?

 

I don't see this Administration and the Congress pushing merit pay. What I see is a broader push for greater professionalization of teaching - recruiting the most able to go into teaching (TFA, Uteach, et al), creating a system of better teacher evaluation and smarter and more relevant professional development (New Teacher Project, NCTQ, et al), and more differentiated roles and compensation (TAP, et al).

 

As important as effective teaching is to improved student achievement, I think these efforts are crucial to greater student success.

  

4)  There continually seems to be, in my mind, a significant discrepancy between the number of kids that exist in the real world, and what Washington D.C. seems to think exists. What accounts for this discrepancy, and how do we go about reconciling it?

 

Obviously there is a disconnect between where kids are in the real world and the thinking in Washington as well as many state capitols. But that disconnect is cause for worry in the following respect.

 

Almost 30 percent of today's youth drop out and face dismal prospects ahead. Almost half of those who graduate may not have the skills and knowledge necessary to get high paying jobs in the new economy or further education/training for such jobs.

 

This is what has worried both serious Democrats and Republicans in DC for the past decade or two.

 

5)  What role is good old Arne Duncan going to play in any revision? Where is the leadership in the House and Senate or is there just going to be a status quo approach?

 

I think Secretary Duncan, Chairman Miller, and Chairman Kennedy all worry about these things and will work hard to make progress. I think there are Republican leaders, such as Congressman Boehner and others, who get it as well. There are forces, of course, that will press to preserve the status quo. I can't predict how things will turn out. Again my main hope is that, whatever fixes there may be, and steps ahead, there will continue to be strong and real accountability for states and districts that receive federal aid so that poor kids and kids of color continue to make academic gains.

 

6)  There are probably a boat load of reasons why kids don't make Adequate Yearly Progress - what latitude needs to be examined in this realm?

 

 

One thing that boggles my mind is the irony of having all the complaints about kids being unable to get up to the ayp bar on the one hand and the complaints on the other hand that ayp bars allowed by NCLB are varied and unacceptably low! Go figure.

 

There is no reason why the vast majority of students can't be taught to the level of proficiency set in virtually all the states. Indeed, if they can't, I do wonder what all this talk is about how we need even higher standards.

 

Truth is: virtually all cognitively able students should be getting to the proficiency bar, and we ought to begin to set carrots for them and schools and districts to get to higher standards.

 

I do realize there are issues for significantly cognitively disabled students and newcomers with language issues. Further work should be done here, in my view.

  

7)  The teacher shortage exists. It is real. How is Washington going to find highly qualified teachers and how much latitude are school systems going to be allowed and how much should they have?

 

You're right: there are real issues about teacher shortages. But, given all the interest I see in the applications to programs such as TFA and Uteach, I have hope.

 

I would love to see Secretary Duncan use some of the Race to the Top funds to support activities in the states to bring TFA-like strategies to attract more content majors to go into teaching. Further, I hope he will reward states that set up the sort of teacher professionalization measures I described above. If states have more professional personnel policies, I believe that, too, will attract more fine people into teaching, which we will need not only to make up for shortages but also to bring greater effectiveness to teaching.

 

 

8)  In terms of statistics, you and I both know we can get some statistically significant differences that are not realistically important. Are the number crunchers just as the title of the book goes, " lying with statistics"

 

People do use statistics to support their own views. There is no doubt about that.

 

It is terribly important that we look at the data critically - mainly to be honest and objective about where we are and where we need to go.

 

Having said that, I am aware that there are so many sources of data and that it's hard to make sense in many instances of the crosscurrents, the conflicting messages that come from them all.

 

Two lessons seem clear to me:

 

1) We have a long way to go. SAT and ACT data, along with international comparisons, show that there's a long climb ahead to reach the top of the mountain.

 

2) Yet, it is equally clear that from 1999-2008, as measured not so much by state tests but rather by long term NAEP, the standards based reform movement is yielding real and significant academic gains. Poor and minority youngsters who were largely stuck in the late 80s and early-mid 90s have improved a grade level or more almost across the board in the past decade. And now Jack Jennings' group, an impartial one to be sure, says these gains are apparent all across the spectrum of students, exploding the myth that these reforms have encouraged merely teaching to kids "on the bubble."

 

It is complex. Statistics can say many things, yes. But I believe the data are overwhelming in showing that standards based reforms work. To make further progress, we need more of them, not less.