Accountability school watchword

It's hardly a secret that Utah lawmakers and Utah State Office of Education leaders have great distaste for the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The act, intended to reform public education across the board, is perceived by state officials to be an intrusion on state rights.

No surprise then, that Utah education officials and some members of Utah's congressional delegation have declared their support for new federal legislation that would allow Utah — or any other state — to opt out of NCLB and instead use federal money to satisfy education needs, according to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

From local school boards to the statehouse, education is rightly a function of local government. One sad reality of federal involvement in public education has been establishing unfunded mandates. NCLB is such a mandate. Although it has been somewhat refined in the past few years, the early benchmarks determining whether schools had attained annual yearly progress were so flawed that Olympus High School, long considered an academically sound school, didn't make the grade. No small wonder that Utah leaders were disillusioned by NCLB.

But unlike other state accountability measures, NCLB's provisions forced struggling schools to examine what they were doing. Then they did more. They did better. They wanted to improve their schools foremost for their students. But they also wanted to avoid being labeled a "failing school."

Hoekstra's bill, the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act of 2007, would enable the states to provide to the secretary of education a "declaration of intent" to assume full responsibility for their respective students' education. The states would continue to receive federal funding but they could advance their own policies. The states would have to comply with federal civil rights laws and provide "transparent accounting" measures to the federal education secretary.

Utah education officials, who sought a waiver of some NCLB requirements in 2005 but were denied, are "excited" about the bill because they believe it would enable them to serve students better.

The bill, called the A-PLUS Act for short, has some very appealing aspects. But it remains to be seen if a state accountability program that lacks the heft of federal sanctions will result in the same degree of heavy lifting many schools have exhibited under the federal program. Yes, A-PLUS would free them from onerous federal mandates but it also means the accountability ball is solely in the state's court.