December 2007 Archives

I've already highlighted Title I's big boost under the fiscal 2008 bill. But two other programs in or related to NCLB also got dramatic increases.

The school improvement program under NCLB will receive $491 million in 2008, up from $125 million in 2007. Although on the books since 2002, Congress didn't put any money into the fund until last year. Now states will have some money to turn around their lowest-performing schools. If you want to see which states received shares of the 2007 money, see the Department of Education's announcement that came out earlier this week.

States also will benefit from Congress' expanded investment in data. Spending on the statewide data program will almost double, going up to $48.3 million. With data upgrades on the way, maybe additional states will qualify to use growth models for NCLB accountability. For some states, though, it'll take more than one year to have everything in place. Here is a description of the program.

HOLIDAY NOTE: This is my last entry until 2008. One of my colleagues may post an item or two next week, but not me. I'm departing soon on a tour of the Midwest to be with family for the holidays. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all.

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President Bush remains optimistic that NCLB can being reauthorized next year. Asked about his relationship with Democrats in Congress, he volunteered that the K-12 law is one place where he might find common ground with the opposing party. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of this morning's press conference:

"There's some areas where we can work together, like reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, although I will warn Congress that—in that the current bill doesn't expire, if they try to weaken the current bill, I'll veto any attempt to weaken it. But I believe we can strengthen it. I spoke to Senator Kennedy on this issue, and Congressman Miller and Senator Enzi and Congressman Boehner about how to strengthen No Child."

Several comments:

1.) Although the president refers to "the current bill," I believe he's referring to the current law, given his statement that "the current bill doesn't expire."

2.) Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, doesn't necessarily agree with the president's sentiments. In two statements in since November, he has criticized the president for political grandstanding on NCLB and for failing to work with Democrats to add money to the law (see here and here).

3.) Back in October, the president dropped a similar hint that he would veto an NCLB bill if he didn't like it's accountability rules. He never issued a veto threat against a discussion draft proposed by Rep. Miller and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., his GOP counterpart on the committee. But Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made it clear that she didn't like bill's accountability measures.

4.) I'll have plenty of fodder for this blog in '08.

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Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., is reaching out to some of NCLB's fiercest critics.

As I reported in the current issue of Education Week, the chairman of the Senate education committee met with the leaders of the national teacher's unions. Now, author Jonathan Kozol posts an open letter describing his meeting with Sen. Kennedy. (Link courtesy of Alexander Russo's This Week in Washington.)

In Mr. Kozol's recounting of the Dec. 5 meeting, Sen. Kennedy was receptive to the liberal author's criticisms of the law. In particular, Mr. Kozol says, they talked about NCLB's testing requirements (which Mr. Kozol calls "punitive and demoralizing") and the lack of opportunity for students to transfer out of their districts. Mr. Kozol, who has been on what he calls a partial hunger strike, outlined the rest of his ideas in a seven-page letter to the senator.

Mr. Kozol reports he's optimistic that Sen. Kennedy is open to big changes to NCLB. That would be a dramatic shift. Although President Bush takes credit for NCLB's testing-and-accountability rules, they never would have passed Congress if Sen. Kennedy hadn't agreed with him.

There's more to come. Mr. Kozol writes that he's scheduled to meet with the senator again in January.

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Education Week's final issue of 2007 is full of stories about teacher quality and licensing. But it's light on NCLB news. Still, it's got several pieces—including a lengthy one on growth models—that show NCLB remains at the forefront of educators' minds.

On the front page, Michele McNeil reports on the presidential campaign, looking at how the candidates with gubernatorial experience are approaching educational issues (Governors Cite Education Records). New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, has a sound-bite policy NCLB: Scrap it. But Republicans Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have more nuanced approaches. Romney shepherded testing measures during his term as Massachusetts' chief executive, and Huckabee of Arkansas also has spoken in favor of the law's testing-and-accountability approach. But neither has a detailed platform addressing NCLB. As the story notes, four of the past five presidents have had experience as governors. Will one of these three be next?

In the Washington section, I offer a story wrapping up the state of NCLB reauthorization at year's end (Amid Pessimism on NCLB, Talks Continue). The most significant news nugget, which I haven't seen reported elsewhere, is that top Democrats called in the union presidents for a powwow. NEA President Reg Weaver characterized the meeting as informal and said no deals were struck. He also told me that no staff members were in the room with him, AFT President Ed McElroy, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. It could be a sign of progress.

In the In Perspective section, I explain that growth models are almost certain to be the next version of NCLB accountability ('Growth Models' Gaining in Accountability Debate). But lots of questions remain. Among them is: How does an accountability system recognize the value of high-achieving schools where most if not all students are meeting a state's proficiency goals? "There's got to be some sort of mix" of growth and status models, one expert told me. In that same package, Alyson Klein writes that the number of schools making AYP using growth models is small in six of the states participating in the federal pilot program (Impact is Slight for Early States Using 'Growth'). The data is based on original research by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. Tennessee and Arkansas didn't provide the answers to center's detailed questionnaire.

In the Commentary section, Judith L. Pace argues that schools are short-changing social studies in the NCLB era (Why We Need to Save (and Strengthen) Social Studies). "We are in danger of losing a generation of citizens schooled in the foundations of democracy—and of producing high school graduates who are not broadly educated human beings," she warns.

And Norm Fruchter writes about the flaws in New York City's new method of grading schools (Accounting Is Not Accountability). One lesson for NCLB: States need to look at more than two years of data when grading schools based on student growth. "Much research indicates that year-to-year school level fluctuation in test scores makes ... comparisons [from one year to the next] meaningless," he writes.

And that ends a year in which Education Week spilled a lot of ink writing about the No Child Left Behind Act. We're already at work on the first issue of 2008. I'll keep the blog going a couple more days before closing the books on 2007.

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Congress has set aside its debate over NCLB, but the public hasn't. The law, its virtues, and its flaws have been featured all over newspapers, magazines, and blogs over the past few days.

Monday's Washington Post examines the decline in the amount of music instruction since NCLB's enactment. Over at the Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey corrects the Post's math and points out the narrowing isn't as serious as the newspaper reported.

In the American Prospect, Richard Rothstein predicts that NCLB won't survive the congressional postponement. Republicans aren't loyal to President Bush, as they were in when the law passed in 2001, and they have "rediscovered their belief in local control of education," Rothstein writes. Democrats were hoping the law would be a reason to flood schools with federal money, but they've discovered that the accountability rules have "corrupt[ed] schooling in ways that overshadowed any possible [test] score increases."

In the end, Rothstein predicts: "Eventually, under a new administration, [the Elementary and Secondary Education Act] will be renewed, perhaps including vague incantations that states establish their own accountability policies, once Washington abandons the field."

But BoardBuzz doesn't want Congress to wait for a new president. It points to a school board member's op-ed that calls for Congress to fix the law now. "Students should not be told to 'wait it out' until after the 2008 presidential election when Congress can find the time to fix an unsound and underfunded law," John Pennycuff, president of the Winton Woods School District Board of Education, writes in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Finally, the vacationing Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute got so exercised over a line in my latest NCLB story that he e-mailed to tell me. I wrote that "supporters of [NCLB] suggest that many of its goals will be undermined" if Congress doesn't reauthorize it in 2008. Not so, Coulson wrote me. He pointed me to his op-ed on international test scores, which found no perceptible change in U.S. students' reading achievement and decline in their mathematical abilities.

And I thought I would lack material for the blog on the week before Christmas.

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Title I appears to be the big K-12 winner in the latest plan for fiscal 2008. The program for disadvantaged students would receive a $1.2 billion increase. That's a 9.3 percent increase over the current spending level of $12.8 billion.

Looking back at my previous posts on the targeting of Title I funding (see here and here), Congress continued its seven-year effort to direct money away traditional funding formulas. The two new formulas (the targeted formula and the education finance incentive formula) would receive a $1.3 billion increase. The basic formula (which goes to almost all districts) would decline a bit ($81.5 million, or 1.2 percent); the concentration formula would receive $1.4 billion—the same amount it has received each year since fiscal 2002.

Overall, 42 percent of the money will go to the new formulas in fiscal 2008. That compares to 36 percent in fiscal 2007—and 0 percent in fiscal 2001.

(To see the proposed spending levels for Department of Education programs see this report. You'll need to scroll down to page 350.)

As Michael Dannenberg pointed out at AFT's Let's Get It Right, Congress has chosen to phase in the targeting to the nation's neediest schools. That's done mostly for political reasons. But will a 9 percent increase for fiscal 2008, the targeting is sure to increase by another small increment.

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First "Family Guy," then "Boston Legal" takes a shot at NCLB.

A tipster reports from his iPhone that Tuesday's episode entitled "No Brains Left Behind" portrayed NCLB in a negative light. In it, a girl is expelled for shredding tests and is charged under state law for tampering with the exams. In the courtroom, she goes into a diatribe against NCLB and testing. (Note: I haven't seen the episode. "Boston Legal" isn't one of the shows available on ABC's Web site. All I found was this plot summary, which alludes to the girls expulsion but doesn't mention NCLB.)

It's not the first time "Boston Legal" has lashed out against the law. In a January 2006 show, Michael J. Fox's character says: “We treat our teachers like crap…. And the government in their ‘No Child Left Behind’ law has created a monster.” That's according to a timeline about NCLB events posted by the Arizona Education Association.

Back in 2003, my former colleague Michelle Galley interviewed a communications expert about how the Bush administration was branding the phrase "No Child Left Behind."

"What's brilliant is that no one can argue with" not wanting to leave a child behind, said Jessica Schwartz Hahn, then the executive vice president of Widmeyer Communications.

Today, though, the meaning of the phrase has turned into something else. Judging from the portrayal on prime time this week, Americans think of testing and unfair expulsion when they hear the phrase "No Child Left Behind."

I ask: Does that make it, as Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said "the most tainted brand in America?"

My tipster asks: Will the Hollywood writers strike be good for NCLB?

UPDATE: Eduflack also writes up the "Boston Legal" episode. He describes the girl in the NCLB plot line as "a high-achieving high school student stealing her school's standardized tests to spotlight the inadequacies of high-stakes testing." He also offers a correction: The girl was not charged with a crime; she went to court to overturn her expulsion.

As for NCLB's status as a brand, here's what Eduflack says: "The only positive out of all this, I suppose, is that NCLB is known well enough as a brand that it can stand as a story line on a top prime-time television program, without needing explanation or set-up. As silly as blaming NCLB for our high school woes may be, those TV producers assume that their viewers know NCLB, know the issues around AYP and high-stakes testing, and will buy into the concerns over teaching to the test and preparing students for the challenges of the future. Maybe the NCLB brand name is better recognized than Eduflack has assumed"

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The debate over NCLB's future remains dormant. The pages of the current issue of Education Week reflect the lack of action.

The top story is on the expansion of the U.S. Department of Education's growth model pilot project ('Growth' Pilot Now Open to All States). (See blog items here and here.) All states may not be ready to join the pilot now, but Scott R. Palmer, a Washington attorney who advocates for states, suggests they're moving toward being ready to do so in the next few years.

In Federal File, I note that advocates of high school reform are heartened by the variety of proposals to improve secondary schools. But they don't want to wait until NCLB is reauthorized for them become law (Advocates Putting Lens on High School in NCLB Renewal).

In the commentary section, Joseph A. Aguerrebere Jr., Paul D. Houston, and Gerald N. Tirozzi argue that NCLB should endorse an effort to create professional standards defining the skills of an effective principal (Toward the 'Highly Qualified' Principal). Congress should avoid the mistakes of the current law's "highly qualified teacher" rules, which give states the power to write their own definitions. The next NCLB should finance a process to set national standards for an effective principal, the authors argue.

That's all folks. This has been the shortest roundup of NCLB news in the short history of this feature. We'll have a larger menu of NCLB news for the final issue of 2007, I promise.

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I meant to return to the Title I formula yesterday, but I was distracted by "Family Guy" and George Will.

Kevin Carey and Michael Dannenberg have added comments on the Title I formula over at AFT's "Let's Get It Right." (For my response, see here.) Carey and Dannenberg raise issues I uncovered while I was reporting last week's story on the increased amount of the targeting of Title I's $12.8 billion on the poorest districts. Because of space constraints, I wasn't able to include them in my article.

With the unlimited space available here, I'd like to add to Carey's comments about the per-pupil Title I allocation to districts. He calls it an "egregious and under-recognized flaw" in the formula.

Here's how it works: Districts' per-pupil allocations are calculated based on their state's per-pupil spending. This is inherently unfair, Carey argues, because it rewards wealthy states and hurts states that don't have the economic base to support their schools.

If Congress would change Title I so per-pupil allocation is the national average for all districts, it would create a dramatic shift in the way money flows. Looking at data from the fiscal 2007 year, here's what I found:

States that would have gained more than 10 percent
Nevada, North Carolina, Utah, Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Florida, and Oklahoma.

States that would have lost more than 10 percent
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Michigan, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Indiana, and Illinois.

That's a total of 19 states.

Would changing the per-pupil allocation solve the problem of targeting? As I look at these lists, I'm not so sure it's a panacea. Some of the potential winners aren't necessarily high-poverty states, while some of the losers have significant pockets of poverty.

But I do see political implications. The Senate's education committee has Democratic members from Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Ohio, and its chairman is from Massachusetts. Then again, the Senate majority leader is from Nevada, and Republicans have elected Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to their No. 3 leadership post.

In 2007, we didn't hear much about the Title I formula. If NCLB reauthorization gets serious in 2008, perhaps we will.

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I'm always interested to see how the public perceives NCLB. Not everyone understands growth models or the Title I formula. But NCLB has worked its way into American consciousness.

Yesterday, for example, NCLB was the topic of George Will's column and in the plot of "Family Guy." That spans the sublime to the ridiculous—or ridiculous to the sublime, depending on your perspective.

In his Sunday Washington Post column, Will summarizes the conservative critique of NCLB. He endorses the NCLB proposals of Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J. (see here and here). Their plans, he writes, "would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out."

Over at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Michael J. Petrilli responds that NCLB's problems could be solved by national standards and tests. If the federal government pays for their development costs, he writes, states would be responsible for implementing them.

In prime time, the high school principal on "Family Guy" expels the title character's son because the kid is the "dumbest student we have." And the school is using history textbooks from 1948 because "NCLB cost us federal funding because test scores were too low," he tells the PTA. (You can watch the episode at Fox on Demand.)

As most of you know, NCLB doesn't take away schools' money for low test scores. And the law doesn't encourage principals to expel their students. But "Family Guy's" writers decided to rely on the perception that the law does those things as the premise for their episode. In the end, they reinforced that perception for the show's estimated six million viewers.

Last month, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., told a reporter that NCLB is "the most tainted brand in America." That may not be an exaggeration, judging from yesterday's newspaper and last night's prime time fare.

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Following up on yesterday's post on growth models, here is my story on the Department of Education's announcement and here is a copy of the letter going to state chiefs.

In the letter, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings explains the criteria that the department will use to evaluate states' applications. Quoting from the letter, states must:

"1. Ensure that all students are proficient by 2014 and set annual goals to ensure that the achievement gap is closing for all groups of students identified in the statute.
2. Set expectations for annual achievement based on meeting grade-level proficiency, not based on student background or characteristics.
3. Hold schools accountable for student achievement in reading/language arts and mathematics separately.
4. Ensure that all students in tested grades are included in the assessment and accountability system, hold schools and districts accountable for the performance of each student subgroup, and include all schools and districts.
5. Include assessments that produce comparable results from grade to grade and year to year in grades three through eight and high school in both reading/language arts and mathematics, have been operational for more than one year, and have received full approval or full approval with recommendations before the state determines AYP based on 2007-08 assessment results.
6. Track student progress as part of the state data system.
7. Include student participation rates and student achievement on a separate academic indicator in the state accountability system."

How many states will end up qualifying? Just 34 states have the basic data elements necessary to conduct a growth model, according to the Data Quality Campaign. (Look here to see if your state is one of them.)

How many of those states are able to guarantee that their assessment system produces results from grade to grade? A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation suggests that many states might have problems proving that. (From personal experience, I have my doubts about Virginia—one of the 34 states with adequate data.) Additional states will be disqualified because the department hasn't approved their assessment systems.

How many states will be using a growth model for the first time in the 2007-08 school year? Will it be two? five? 10? More? Any guesses out there?

P.S. In his statement, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, endorses the idea and chastises the Bush administration for not being serious about NCLB reauthorization.

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The U.S. Department of Education is going to send a letter to state school chiefs, inviting them to propose growth models for the latest round of the department's pilot project.

Here's the twist: The department will approve every application that meets its criteria, Keri Briggs, the assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, told me.

When Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings created the growth-model experiment in 2005, she capped participation at 10 states. She has approved nine states so far.

Now Ms. Briggs said the department will remove the cap if necessary.

The department will keep its rules for approving growth-model proposals. The most important one is that students must demonstrate growth that puts them on a pace to be proficient by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

UPDATE: This post originally said that the department sent the growth-model today (Dec. 6). Now, I've been told that the department has postponed sending it until tomorrow. Check back at this space for a post on the topic tomorrow, complete with links to the letter and my story about it.

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Over at "Let's Get it Right," AFT's John asks about the contradictions between my reporting on NCLB's Title I formula and data provided by the National Assessment of Title I. The gist of my story is that the NCLB has changed the way Title I's $12.8 billion flows to districts. Big cities and counties with large numbers of disadvantaged students have benefited.

Yet, here's an important quote that John uncovered from the National Assessment of Title I's final report: "At the district level, Title I targeting has changed little since 1997-98, despite Congress’ efforts to target more funds to high-poverty school districts by allocating an increasing share of the funds through the Targeted Grants and Incentive Grants formulas."

As I look at the data in the report, I see a pattern that is mentioned in my story. The schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students—but not necessarily large percentages of them—are receiving disproportionate amounts of the Title I increases. As I reported, districts in Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery County, Md., have seen their Title I grants increase by more than 50 percent over the past six years. (That rate of increase is faster than some of the nation's largest urban districts.) The Title I grant to Gwinnett County, Ga., has more than doubled since NCLB passed.

These suburban counties have extreme poverty and wealth in their large geographic areas. They qualify for money under the new grant formulas because the formulas reward districts based on either the number or the percentage of Title I students they enroll. The suburban areas benefit at the expense of districts with large percentages of impoverished students, whether the other districts are urban, small suburban, or rural.

These data, I believe, reinforce the position of Mary Kusler of the American Association of School Administrators and Marty Strange of the Rural School and Community Trust. They're happy that the formula is more targeted than before 2001. But they don't believe changes have gone far enough.

They say there's a good reason to have a formula fight during NCLB reauthorization. Will there be? I'll be watching for it.

P.S. AFT's John cites a quote from early in the National Assessment report. Later on the report provides evidence of targeting. It says that the districts with the highest poverty (i.e. those in the top quartile in terms of percentages) receive 52 percent of Title I money even though they serve 49 percent of the nation's children. By contrast, the report says districts with the lowest poverty rates (i.e. those in the lowest quartile) get 6 percent of Title I's money.

For the purposes of this post, this section is missing two relevant pieces of data. What is the percentage of the nation's students attending schools in the lowest quartile? And how do all of these numbers compare to before NCLB's passage?

If anyone has these figures, send them here.

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Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., took a field trip to New York City yesterday. His visit to a Brooklyn school didn't generate much news coverage. The only reports I've found are from a cable television news station and the city's largest public radio station (see here and here). Also, Alexander Russo blogged about the school visit here.

Both news reports mention that the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee is interested in the city's new school grading system and its forthcoming experiment with performance pay. The first issue must be addressed in NCLB reauthorization because most people believe the law's accountability measures are flawed. The performance-pay issue is one that Rep. Miller would like to add to NCLB. So far, the National Education Association and its California affiliate have put up roadblocks to Rep. Miller's first teacher-pay plan.

But New York's policies may not be the answer to Rep. Miller's NCLB problems.

The grades it gave schools last month include "some counterintuitive results," according to The New York Times. Schools with high-achieving students received lower grades than low-achieving schools with high rates of academic growth.

The performance pay program is the product of the city bargaining with the United Federation of Teachers. As I've written before, Republicans would object to union approval being a condition for districts using federal money for performance pay.

While these policies may be working in New York, perhaps they wouldn't be the solution for the rest of the country.

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NCLB doesn't dominate the front page of Education Week, as it has done in recent months. But its presence is still felt throughout the current issue of the newspaper.

On Page 1, Mary Ann Zehr reports that all states and the District of Columbia are complying with NCLB's requirement to assess English-language learners for reading proficiency in their new language (States Clear Initial Hurdle on ELL Tests). "But we don't know how they actually translate into performance of English-language learners," said Jamal Abedi, the professor who conducted the study.

In the Washington section, I explain why Title I's funding formula hasn't been the subject of debate this year (Usually Contentious Title I Formula Is No NCLB Barrier). Despite changes in 2001 that have reduced some districts' share of the program's $12.8 billion, House members don't appear to ready to change the formula. Even though the changes benefit districts with large percentages or numbers of disadvantaged children, the beneficiaries aren't always the neediest districts, some say.

The public wanted Republican presidential candidates to answer questions about NCLB in last week's debate, Alyson Klein and Michele McNeil write in the Federal File. Instead, editors at CNN chose to focus on giving undocumented college students access to student aid in the only education question asked at the Nov. 28 debate (YouTube Debate for GOP Avoids Most Ed. Queries).

U.S. students' showing on international tests has stagnated, according to stories by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo and Sean Cavanagh (America Idles on International Reading Test and Against Other Nations, U.S. Below Par in Science). For an update, see yesterday's online story on results from the Program for International Student Assessment (U.S. Students Fall Short in Math and Science). Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and other NCLB advocates point to upward trends in national assessments as evidence of NCLB's effectiveness. Will critics use these results against the law?

On the back page, PBS journalist John Merrow offers the latest argument for national standards (Learning Without Loopholes). While NCLB is on hold in Congress, states should work toward setting common standards, Merrow says. If a bunch of states adopt voluntary standards, he predicts, "the rest will follow."

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With NCLB off the congressional radar this month, civil rights groups want to make sure the reauthorization reappears next year.

On Thursday, a coalition of groups will hold a seminar on high school policies to be considered in NCLB reauthorization. The discussion will be entitled: "A Stronger NCLB in 2008: Critical for High Schools and Students of Color.” Clearly, the organizers want reauthorization to be done next year.

Thursday's seminar in the Senate Dirksen building will be the first of several events addressing accountability under NCLB, the Campaign for High School Equity promises. The campaign includes the Leadership Council on Civil Rights Education Fund, the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, and several other civil rights groups.

They have a significant ally in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate's education committee. Sen. Kennedy will be the first speaker at Thursday's event.

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Last week, I asked: Will Congress take four years to reauthorize NCLB? After all, it took lawmakers that long to come to an agreement on changes to Head Start. And they still haven't settled on a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, also four years late. BoardBuzz read that as an ominous warning that NCLB might be in place until 2011.

I didn't mean to scare school board members or predict the NCLB will go unchanged until this year's kindergarten class enters 4th grade. But I did want to point out that Congress has been postponing reauthorizations of education bills. The delay on NCLB reauthorization is routine.

Take a look at the past three reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Act. In 1988 and 1994, Congress was one year late. In 1999, several bills to reauthorize ESEA programs cleared the House, but they died in the Senate when the presidential campaign was in full gear. When President Bush signed the NCLB bill, it was two years and three months behind schedule.

Back in January, Washington insiders predicted that NCLB would be reauthorized after President Bush leaves office. (See this Education Week story.) So far, their prediction looks to be on target. Beyond that, nobody knows for sure.

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