Accountability puts kids first

The federal education policy that affects almost every family in the United States hasn’t been updated in nearly 15 years. But now, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), more commonly known as No Child Left Behind, has one of the greatest chances in years of being reauthorized after the House and Senate both passed versions this summer. 

For anyone following this debate, the sticking point between these two bills, and perhaps the biggest long-standing barrier to finding compromise, is accountability. This issue has gotten wrapped up in ideological discussions about the federal role and hijacked by special interest groups in Washington. There are challenges on the left from those who want to defend the status quo for the sake of defending the status quo, and those on the right who want to absolve all national responsibility for improving student success. 

{mosads}ESEA was first signed into law in 1965. The law was seen then, as it is today, as one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation in our nation’s history. At its signing ceremony, President Lyndon Johnson declared that the bill “bridges the gap between helplessness and hope” for the millions of students affected by it. ESEA offered the promise that every child – regardless of race, background, or zip code – has the right to a quality education. Today, this same principle drives our desire to reauthorize ESEA, and it underpins our belief in strong accountability provisions in the law. 

For each of us, our dedication to education started before our time in Congress. We have seen firsthand the power of strong policies that ensure states and districts are doing their part to help every child succeed. Reform efforts in Florida and Colorado have boosted achievement scores and created a model for national education policy. And national reporting requirements in No Child Left Behind have shone a light on achievement gaps that we never definitively knew existed before. 

A reauthorized ESEA needs to be a step forward for our nation’s students, not a step back.  That’s why we support the current policy of annual testing for students. Without annual testing, policymakers, researchers, and most importantly, teachers and leaders at the state and local level will never know how well students are achieving. Disaggregating that data provides further detail about which subgroups are performing well or need additional improvement. We also support policies that allow cross-tabulation of data so that, for example, the Miami-Dade County School Board could know the achievement data for a specific subset of students, such as Hispanic boys, and create policies to improve their success based on the data around best practices. 

For us, accountability also means demanding a level of fiscal responsibility from states. The federal government gives millions of dollars to states each year to serve students experiencing poverty. States ought to be held accountable for using those dollars wisely. That doesn’t mean the federal government should impose a poorly defined, overregulated set of requirements on states like what we saw in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) from No Child Left Behind. A state should be able to set up its own accountability system, but in doing so the state must seek to meet the needs of all students, especially the most vulnerable students. Flexibility doesn’t mean freedom from responsibility. States should do their part to use taxpayer dollars in a way that gets results, and the federal government should be able to ensure transparency, outcomes, and actions to support and improve persistently failing schools and districts. 

Finally, a new accountability system should prioritize the consolidation and elimination of unnecessary tests. One of the unfortunate consequences of No Child Left Behind is that it has led to a proliferation of testing well beyond the federal requirements. A reauthorized version of ESEA should empower states to reduce the time spent on testing and encourage them to use higher-quality and adaptive tests and ideally, meet site goals, district goals, state goals, and federal goals with the same tests instead of many different and often duplicative tests. 

Accountability has become a charged political term. For too many, accountability has come to mean over-testing, federal regulation, and anti-teacher policies. Not to us. Smart accountability means fiscal responsibility. It means making sure that the original spirit of ESEA is upheld. It means using precious taxpayer dollars to ensure every student gets the top-notch education they deserve. It means spreading best practices, and changing what doesn’t work in our public schools. We encourage leaders of the education committees to find common ground on an issue deeply important to both of us and many others on both sides of the aisle. ESEA is in serious need of reauthorization. Don’t let a politically charged term be the reason we don’t get the new law that the children of our country so desperately need.

Polis has represented Colorado’s 2^nd Congressional District since 2009. He sits on the Education and the Workforce; the Natural Resources; and the Rules committees. Curbelo has represented Florida’s 26^th Congressional District since 2015. He sits on the Education and the Workforce; the Small Business; and the Transportation committees.