Federal leverage unlikely to improve schools

WASHINGTON — "Call Ray Simon," says Secretary of Education Rod Paige to a visitor, who does. Simon, Arkansas' chief school officer, confirms that in the last five years the new high school teachers graduated by his state's colleges included 1,193 physical education teachers. And one physics teacher.

That, says Paige, is just one indicator of the cultural problems that make education in grades K through 12 resistant to change. It is particularly difficult to improve using federal leverage. Paige, the first black secretary of education, and the first to rise to that office from an urban school system — he was Houston's school superintendent — says his strongest weapon for reform is: shame.

He means the power to embarrass states if their results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the "nation's report card" administered and designed since 1983 by Education Department officials and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) — reveal that they are not progressing. This shaming power, although of uncertain effect, is, unfortunately, the principal lever created by the No Child Left Behind Act enacted in 2001.

Meaningful school choice — competition not just between public schools, but also between public and private schools — is probably the only strong means of enforcing accountability. It turns parents into consumers — comparison shoppers for schools. Although the choice provisions of the 2001 law are trivial, Paige has another hope.

Jan. 31 was the deadline for the states to file their accountability plans for achieving and measuring year-by-year progress by underperforming schools and students. Starting in 2005, states must administer their own standardized tests annually to all students in grades three through eight. The results will provide school-by-school results which can then be measured against NAEP to check the rigor of state tests and standards.

Each school's and district's results will be published, allowing school shopping by parents moving within a community or to a new community. And a school's unsatisfactory results will turn attentive parents into indignant consumers. Even if a state produces only a minimally rigorous accountability plan, NAEP test results will reveal the shortcomings of that state's educational product, measured against performances nationwide.