'No Child' Target Is Called Out of Reach

Foes and supporters alike praise the law for drawing attention to student achievement gaps. The law requires testing for all students in reading and math from grades 3 through 8 and once in high school; it also requires reporting of scores for groups of students including racial and ethnic minorities, those from low-income families, those with limited English skills and those with disabilities who receive special education.

But testing experts say there are vast academic differences among children of the same racial or socioeconomic background. Countries with far less racial diversity than the United States still find wide variations in student performance. Even in relatively homogenous Singapore, for example, a world leader in science and math tests, a quarter of the students tested are not proficient in math, and 49 percent fall short in science.

"Most people are afraid that once you acknowledge this variation, then you have to tolerate major inequities between black and white students," said Daniel Koretz, a Harvard University education professor. "That's not necessarily true, but that's why the political world does not really address the issue."

Although no major school system is known to have reached 100 percent proficiency, Education Department officials pointed to individual schools across the country that have reached the standard as evidence that it is possible. In Virginia, schools have achieved universal proficiency on reading and math tests 45 times since 2002, officials said.

The only school they cited in the Washington region as having met that mark was the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, a regional school with selective admissions. Principal Evan M. Glazer said his school, which has an elite reputation, was hardly a representative example. On whether the nation can replicate that success, Glazer said: "I don't think it's very realistic."

Fairfax County School Superintendent Jack D. Dale said it was "absurd" to expect total proficiency, especially when federal officials require immigrant children who have been in U.S. schools for little more than a year to meet the standard. His 164,000-student system, the largest in the Washington region, is sparring with the Education Department over the immigrant testing rule.

Dale and other critics of the law have called for No Child Left Behind to measure the growth of students from year to year instead of expecting them to meet fixed benchmarks. But Dale said he understood why federal officials and lawmakers take a different view.

"How can you publicly state it's okay to have some children not meet standards?" Dale said. "Politically, you're committing suicide if you say it."

Some experts predict that states will weaken their definition of proficiency to make it appear that all students are on track. The law requires students to meet "challenging academic standards" but allows each state to define proficiency on its own terms and design its own tests.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who voted against the law in 2001 and remains a leading critic, derided the universal proficiency standard. "It's just like a communist country saying that they used to have 100 percent participation in elections," Hoekstra said. "You knew it wasn't true, but a bureaucrat could come up with that answer. And that's what will happen here."

Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House education committee, said the 2014 deadline forces educators to pay attention to each student. He said he is open to slight changes in the law to exempt certain students with disabilities from the proficiency requirement. But he said he won't back down from the law's core ideal, citing his own six children and 28 grandchildren. "Which one of them would I like to leave behind?" McKeon asked.