Margaret Spellings was US Secretary of Education under President George W Bush. As assistant to the president for domestic policy before that, she helped create the No Child Left Behind Act. The main objective of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was to close the achievement gap between middle-class and poor children. NCLB committed US schools to ensuring that all students reach grade level or better in reading and mathematics by the year 2014. In Spellings’ words, “We cannot prepare students for the global economy if we don’t get them to grade level first.”

In 2001, in an executive summary to the NCLB, President Bush noted that nearly 70% of US inner city fourth graders were unable to read at a basic level on national reading tests. US high school seniors trailed students in Cyprus and South Africa on international math tests, and almost one-third of its college freshmen had to take a remedial course before they were able to start regular college-level courses.

Signed into law in 2002, the Act was a landmark piece of legislation that started a national conversation about the US education system and, according to Spellings, “whet the appetite for change”. But it also drew criticism, among which was that there was too much testing and “teaching to the tests” or emphasising practice tests and test-taking strategies, rather than on learning. Under the NCLB, students had to sit for standardised tests for each grade.

In his book The Global Achievement Gap, Tony Wagner cites a 2006 Public Agenda Foundation poll which said that 70% of teachers in the US think there is too much testing in schools and that NCLB legislation is doing more harm than good.

However, NCLB is “one of the few policies that have been continued under Obama but with some changes”, points out Vincent Chin, partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Kuala Lumpur and a former columnist for The Edge.

“Whilst NCLB had its critics, the alternative (of doing nothing) is decidedly worse. For Malaysia, as I have also mentioned in the 42 column [which appeared monthly in Management@Work last year], we too have plans (GTP/ETP, 10MP). They too have their critics. These may not be 100% perfect but they point to a better future than today. Hence, we cannot allow critics to halt actions on these plans. We can always refine in execution as Arne Duncan (the present US Secretary of Education) has done as he continued to execute and improve NCLB,” says Chin.

Spellings, who is now a senior adviser in BCG, was in Malaysia in early January to meet with the who’s who in Malaysian education.

In an interview with Management@Work, she and Chin spoke about No Child Left Behind, addressed criticism of its shortcomings and what Malaysia can learn from the policy, the need for quality teachers and other issues in education. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Management@Work: You were instrumental in the No Child Left Behind policy. How successful has it been?
Spellings: With respect to student achievement results, it has been quite successful, particularly around the students that we aim to target — the minority, disadvantaged students. I am a big believer in the notion of what gets measured, gets done. We require school districts to focus much more intently on those who have been previously ‘left behind’. So we are seeing good progress. I’ve got some data on our national education report card. I would like to say that we are pleased but not satisfied because we still have a lot of work to do.

As we are in a global knowledge economy, we have to educate many more people to much higher levels and that’s our challenge. We have always done quite a decent job in educating elites but that is no longer sufficient in the global knowledge economy. So student achievements for minority and poor students are improving.

No Child Left Behind has been in existence now for about 10 years and we’ve learnt that some things can be improved. The genius of No Child Left Behind is about accountability — test every student every year, give ourselves a deadline to get them on grade level, that being 2014. When schools do not perform on behalf of students, give parents and students options to seek better alternatives — charter schools, tutoring, other supports that can facilitate and accelerate their education. It is all about transparency and accountability.

There has been some criticism though that it is focused too much on testing and teachers are teaching to the tests. What’s your response to that?
Spellings: When people say that, sometimes, I think are we advocating… that we go back to not finding out how we’re doing… [There are] other things we can do to improve assessment, to make it more broad, include other subjects, make it more timely, more discreet in terms of use and feedback for teachers and students. Yes, we can and we should. Measurement is key to running and improving any enterprise. That’s the first thing.

The second, I think is… [there is] nothing… educationally wrong with teaching to the test. If you want students to know long division, and long division is on the test, you’re going to have to teach them long division so they can perform on the test. That speaks to the quality of assessment.

So there is a place for testing.
Spellings: Of course. The alternative is not finding out.  The alternative is guessing. The other thing that is so important with NCLB is using this information to better manage and improve public education as a system. When the students in School A are of very similar profile… as students of School B but School A performs much better than School B, we have to find out why. The only way we know that is to use results. We get so hyped up about test anxiety that we want the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater.

Has it succeeded in closing the achievement gap?
Spellings: [The results] are encouraging especially in math. Math is easier to teach. Reading is complicated to teach people to do and [it’s] hard to move the needle on that but our math results are fairly encouraging.

What do you think are the lessons for Malaysia from the NCLB?
Spellings: What struck me as I did my research was how similar many of the issues are. From research all around the world, the most important indicator is the quality of the teacher. We don’t have brilliant kids without great teachers. Recruiting, retaining and developing highly effective, competent personnel is a universal challenge and we are a long way from doing it.

Secondly, the focus on basic skills of reading and literacy and numeracy… that is something very common between Malaysia and US.
Technology and focus on using better and more innovative ways, charter schools… [there are] many similarities.

The 10MP goal versus NCLB, goal-setting, continuous improvement — different terminology but policy-making is very similar.

Chin: There are a lot of similarities between the US policy and the Malaysian policy and 10th Malaysia Plan goal. There are a lot of lessons learnt from the US experience that could apply here. Firstly, are we trying to do too many things? Even if we do focus and do a few things right, do we conceptualise and put those activities or initiatives within the right context? One [example] is technology in education.

Spellings: We find ourselves doing this all the time. We’ll talk about technology and how we’re going to get wired, keep current and how to train the teachers to use the technology. When you think about technology, it is really just a piece of paper. This idea that we are focusing on the medium as opposed to the method, is a little bit ridiculous. It is necessary, it is foundational but it is absolutely not the end game.

Chin: … you can do a few things, do them well, make sure that you conceptualise them and understand the real reason why you’re doing those things. When you do technology in education, don’t just do technology for technology’s sake but to what end.

Do you think getting in the best teachers we possibly can is the single most important factor in improving the education system?
Spellings: I do.

How is the US doing in terms of being able to attract the best and the brightest?
Spellings: Interestingly, this is one of the silver linings about the economic downturn in the US. It has brought more capable people into the teaching profession for the security of the job which is very rewarding and engaging. There is a lot to recommend in teaching, a lot of fun, change the future, all the clichés.

The next step is to retain them. So from a human capital perspective, what would you do?
Spellings: I would reward people who performed, and this is not something I’m just saying in the abstract. This is something we’ve put in place as a pilot programme which the Obama Administration has embraced — that we pay people extra to get results for students.

We also pay people more who do the most challenging work. More often than not in the US, the more senior you are the more discretion or influence you have in selecting the teacher placement, where you work. Of course, most senior people choose the least challenging educational setting. New and inexperienced teachers are sent to the most challenged educational environment, and so they wash out.

NCLB focuses on elementary and secondary education. Do we have to fix elementary education first before we can fix tertiary education or is it something that can be done in tandem?
Spellings: In tandem. We have a lot of blame game between colleges of education and teachers’ prep [preparatory schools].  Teachers’ colleges are saying if you can send us better kids, we can bring you better teachers. And the [preparatory] schools say if you send us better teachers, we can do better. Sure, we need to do both.

Chin: On consequence management, just now in the roundtable you had a very good response. Someone said, ‘Teachers can’t be fired’. They have an iron rice bowl and you were saying whether we should make decisions for adult teachers or for the good of the children that we are educating.

Spellings: Exactly, they are often excluded. If we define that we are willing to tolerate under-performing teachers, who despite our best efforts to mediate, train, improve are not suitable for that profession, then we are putting their interests ahead of the students. I’ve said at BCG that there are people who are just not suited to be consultants. There are people who are just not suited to be journalists. But the idea that that is not the case in education, that everyone who shows up at the door has what it takes to be accepted and successful. It is ridiculous.

You are advocating that we ought not to give tenure to teachers.
Spellings: Absolutely. Eventually, this is where it is going to head. World-wide. If that is our priority, to put the needs of adults first, then we are deciding that we are willing to accept those people and putting students in front of those ineffective people and letting the kids suffer the consequences. I don’t think I’m willing to do that anymore.

That is very radical.
Spellings: It is pretty radical. In a lot of places, tenure has outlived some of its usefulness. It was created in a day and time that’s far different. Plus, the threat of competition and technology and globalisation would require more radical change.

Chin: In NCLB, good, performing teachers are rewarded… more money if your students show results. [Under new “breakthrough” contracts in some parts of the US, teachers have embraced higher performance standards in exchange for higher pay for the top performers.]

Spellings: It can’t be all sticks and no carrot. It strengthens the profession. When low performers are allowed to stay, it is a drag on the entire profession. There are certainly academically able people who are not effective teachers. They should not have a birthright to stay forever.

In the US, are teachers considered civil servants too?
Spellings: Yes and no. It is governed by state and local law but they operate under contracts with tenure, not as civil servants per se. They are public sector employees.

The future of education in the global marketplace. What is going to happen to the countries that fail to invest and improve the education system — elementary or higher education?
Spellings: What’s going to happen? Not much. They’ll fall behind. That is clear and we are seeing it. It is not an accident that China and India and US and Malaysia — we see wide variations in policy… If we do not develop human capital, it’s over, game over. There’s no manufacturing, no technology sector, no hospitality industry, no leadership in the market, no nothing without human capital.

Everything rests on human capital.
Spellings: Think about it.  Bush used to say the best social reform, welfare reform, the best criminal justice reform, is human capital development.

Chin: You were telling me the failure to develop human capital is like a permanent recession.

Spellings: A new study out in the US is that our lack of capacity in people, inability to invest and what we have left on the table in talent that is wasted because of our achievement gap, is the equivalent of a permanent national recession in US. If we can cure that, think of what we can do. And I’m sure it is probably similar here. Think of all the wasted human potential.

This article appeared in Management@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 848, Mar 7-13, 2011