The profound question that anyone concerned virtually our children's future – and the nation's – is whether the Every Pupil Succeeds Human activity that President Barack Obama just signed volition be any more successful than the law information technology replaced in realizing its lofty vision.

Almost xiv years agone to the day, on Jan. 2, 2002, one-time President George West. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law that is now widely maligned, and in many quarters reviled.

"Today begins a new era, a new fourth dimension in public educational activity in our country," Bush alleged in the sweeping rhetoric that typically accompanies presidential signings of this kind. "As of this hour, America'due south schools will be on a new path of reform, and a new path of results."

His rhetoric was matched by the Democratic authors of the pecker, who too trumpeted the transformational promise of NCLB. "This is a defining event almost the hereafter of our nation and most the future of democracy, the hereafter of liberty, and the future of the United States in leading the gratuitous world," the late Sen. Edward Kennedy proclaimed. "No slice of legislation will have a greater impact or influence on that."

Obama's legslation was similarly launched with thousand expectations.  Calling it a "Christmas phenomenon," Obama declared, "I'm proud to sign a police that's going to make sure that every pupil is prepared to succeed in the 21st century."

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the principal Republican author of the bill, said the law would "inaugurate a new era of innovation and excellence in student achievement by restoring responsibility to states and classroom teachers."

Whether it volition or won't is, at this stage, unknown.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten recalled a few years agone that she had "high hopes for NCLB when information technology was enacted in 2002."

"I was non lone in being optimistic and heartened by the renewed federal commitment to supporting public education," she said. "In detail, those of u.s.a. committed to seeing all our students succeed, no thing their ZIP code, applauded the focused attention on eradicating the accomplishment gap."

Just, she noted, "hope, no matter its wellspring, can falter nether the weight of reality."

"Organized religion in the power of education has had both positive and negative consequences," wrote David Tyack and Larry Cuban in "Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform." "It has helped persuade citizens to create the most comprehensive system of public schooling in the earth. But overpromising has often led to disillusionment and to blaming schools for not solving problems across their achieve."

The trouble with both NCLB and the Every Educatee Succeeds Human activity is that both laws are not made upward of a set up of  reforms that have been carefully tested and are known to piece of work. Rather, they are shaped by viewpoints of elected officials who are typically not educators – and more importantly, perhaps, on huge compromises that were necessary to go both bills passed in a divided Congress.

A  better way to legislate instruction reforms would exist to implement them later they have been tried out in a select number of school districts. The law could then exist informed by actual practice and results. But it is probably not practical for students to wait for researchers to spend years studying whether something works or not. Instead, disparate strategies and approaches are cobbled together into a law that both sides tin concord on – in this case, i spanning ane,061 pages – after weeks and months of behind-the-scenes arm twisting, bargaining and concessions.

If there is a driving principle in the new law, it is to reverse the top-down federal mandates prescribed by NCLB, and to return controlling to states. It is now up to states to make this reform work, including making more of a paring in closing the achievement gap than NCLB did.

Fortunately, California already has a spring outset on the basic thrust of the new law, including devolving more than power to local schoolhouse districts and devising an accountability system based non just on test scores but on "multiple measures," such as high school graduation rates, levels of student date, and parent interest.

Yet, federal authority has not been relinquished birthday. States will still be required to file reports demonstrating progress. The law crave states to identify their lowest-performing schools, those falling in the bottom 5 percent. Even so, it leaves it to states to decide how to ascertain that and how to intervene if necessary.

The law contains some innovative ideas and approaches. More than than any other previous version of the Simple and Secondary Pedagogy Act, it places an emphasis on preparing students for college and careers. It promotes the notion of schools offer a broad range of what the law calls "pipeline services," defined as "a continuum of coordinated supports, services, and opportunities for children from birth through entry into and success in postsecondary education, and career attainment."

It also includes a provision that volition target funds based on a weighted student formula, similar to what is in place in California, but with funds directed at schools rather than districts. This is one instance in which the idea will be tried out on a pilot footing in 50 districts beyond the nation.

But the new constabulary notwithstanding contains elements of the one it is replacing. Instead of identifying schools "in need of improvement" – the NCLB equivalent of a failing school – the new law says states volition have to identify schools needing "comprehensive support and improvement." Schools with subgroups of students who are not performing equally expected will have to develop a "targeted support and improvement plan."

As for its requirement that schools be held accountable on "multiple measures" of pupil and school performance, not merely test scores, the research is inconclusive that this volition make a difference.

A recent Rand Corporation review of states that have used "multiple measures" in their accountability systems establish that at that place is no audio inquiry indicating that they actually improved school operation.

The Rand researchers noted the following: "Although we identified considerable descriptive information virtually types of measures and their uses, we constitute, with a few notable exceptions, almost no published inquiry about the technical quality of the measures, the theories of action that instigated their adoption, the utility of the measures for promoting improved decision making, or the effects of the measures on schoolhouse practice or student outcomes."

So what will be required to ensure that this latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act volition be any more successful than the one that preceded it?

In Obama'south signing voice communication, Obama pointed in the right direction.  He cautioned that "laws are only every bit good every bit their implementation," which means "that nosotros're going to have to be engaging with the schools and communities all beyond the country – educators, schoolhouse leaders, families, students, elected officials, community leaders, philanthropies – all to make the promise of this law reality."

The contempo history of reform doesn't generate much optimism that this will actually occur. Lawmakers stuck with the NCLB constabulary long afterwards in that location was a consensus that it was not working. In fact, it took Congress eight years after the law was upward for reauthorization to pass a new ane.

While the responsibleness to implement the law at present moves to the states, there will need to exist a willingness to adjust or alter the law if there is evidence that information technology is not achieving its goals.  That includes making significant progress towards closing the achievement gap and ensuring that "every child succeeds," every bit the law'southward title promises.  The concluding thing the nation needs is another generation of children who lag backside their peers, and whose life prospects are radically express before they even go out high school.

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