George Will on the NCLB

George Will writes about proposals from Reps. Pete Hoekstra and Scott Garrett that “would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out.” Both Hoekstra and Garrett (pdf) have spoken at recent Cato forums on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Will offers a pithy if depressing prediction:

No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does.

Cato scholars have been pointing to the problems with NCLB for a long time. Back in 2001 Sheldon Richman and Darcy Olsen warned that getting the federal government involved wasn’t the way to improve accountability in schools. Larry Uzzell pointed out that the law not only intruded the federal government into matters best left to the states, but its actual effect would be to lower educational standards, just the opposite of what President Bush and his allies promised. Neal McCluskey and Andrew Coulson “find that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective in achieving its intended goals, has had negative unintended consequences, is incompatible with policies that do work, is at the mercy of a political process that can only worsen its prospects, and is based on premises that are fundamentally flawed.”