A Slight Agreement with Cornyn

» DMN: E-mail Q&A on No Child Left Behind Act with Texas Sen. John Cornyn (William McKenzie)

I don't want to necessarily come across as wishy-washy on this, but it looks like this is the week for me to say something nice about every candidate for the US Senate seat here in Texas.

Corny on ending of federal encroachment on education:

Determining whether students are able to perform at grade level depends on transparency and effective reporting. A-PLUS allows states to implement accountability and testing systems that will give parents, teachers, and taxpayers the important information they need to understand whether students are really learning.

For example, states can assess and compare the performance of their students by using a common benchmark or ruler, such as the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) or the Stanford-9 tests.

It bears repeating that the states play a significant role in making education policy decisions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the cost of public elementary and secondary education is primarily borne by the states and localities. In fact, for over two decades, the federal share has been less than 10%.

I strongly believe that states should serve their students well not because Washington tells them to, but because their state citizens have the power to insist on it. A-PLUS lifts the heavy federal hand of NCLB and gives states incentives to achieve high standards in education.

To my own way of thinking, Cornyn is mostly correct here. I'm sure there's aspects of his NCLB substitute that I'll disagree with, and likely a few that qualify as dealbreakers. But the premise is correct. Federal spending on overall public education clocks in around 10%. That 10% tail shouldn't be wagging the dog - it should be doing things that states don't have enough incentive to do, it should be accenting and rewarding things that meet a genuinely federal need. But it shouldn't be directing school district-level priorities just so the chick who the Chron wants to lead my alma mater can sound important.

NCLB deserves to be repealed. I'm skeptical that anything bearing the imprimatur of Cornyn and Jim DeMint warrants high standing for it's replacement. From McKenzie's article, it looks like California Congressman George Miller (the chairman leading the issue in the House) is at least toying with some different ideas on school accountability. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of it all. My own half-cent idea is that college admissions be incorporated as an element. It's not necessarily a perfect measure, nor is it an end-all suggestion. That which gets measured for education tends to get distorted once it's used as such. But college admission is a very tangible, result-based assessment that can be easily tracked. Start adding in some ancillary data like college graduation and I suspect you'll have a very good picture of how productive a school is. After all, the work that goes into producing potential college graduates is somewhat more difficult to game than the current method.