midco. ♪ >> ♪ no one can do it like we do ♪ announcer: midco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ announcer: coming up tonight, frederick hess of the american enterprise institute and cameron hieratic, a professor at peabody college, discuss the 2002 no child left behind law. the executive branch officials testified before the senate health committee about the continued rise of overdose deaths linked to fentanyl. after that, nasa officials hold a news conference on the status of tomorrow's launch of the artemis one mission to the moon. slative series joining us this morning for this

last hour, we are joined by carolyn heinrich who is a professor of leadership and policy at vanderbilt university's peabody college and frederick hess who is studies director at the american enterprise institute. both of you, how does this legislation, the no child left behind law fit into the category of landmark legislation? carolyn heinrich, we will start with you. ms. heinrich: it really shaped educational practice at many levels. it was a law that came out of work that was already being done in the state to try to reckon with the fact that when we looked at our students performance, we were not measuring up to our peers in other countries and there was concern about some groups falling further behind. not only at the federal level but states had already been

looking at things we could do to change the circumstances. as we know, george w. bush was president and much of what came to be part of no child left behind reflected things that were being done in texas as well as other places and it really did, for more than a decade, shaped what was happening at the local level. host: rick, as part of his platform, george w. bush ran on passing a law like this. changes happened with the law. we will get into that. tell us how it was received at the time in terms of the policy changes it made. mr. hess: it was modeled on what they did in texas. it was a bipartisan effort over 10 or 12 years. no child left behind, think of it as the high point of this school reform coalition that took shape in the early

1980's. it really came to fruition in the clinton, bush, and obama years and has largely unraveled. no child left behind did a lot of different stuff. it is one of those big fat laws with 100 pages but it did three main things. back in the late 1960's after that initial clip of them talking about it, at the time they referenced lyndon b. johnson's great society. back in the late 1960's, robert kennedy, a senator from new york, asked the commissioner of education how will we know if this stuff is doing any good. he shrugged and said, we do not have any way to know. the big thing that no child left behind did was it said that if states wanted their title i dollars, they had to have

standards and test kids regularly from gates -- grades three to eight in reading and math and once in middle school and high school in science and report this information. this is why today we know some of the consequences that the school closures during cold had -- during covid had. it also did two other big things that were more problematic. it required states to say whether schools were making adequate yearly progress, whether they were doing ok. if they failed to make adequate yearly progress, the third thing it did was it came up with a federal string of intervention that states had to do. there was little evidence that we knew whether any of this would actually work and it created a bunch of problems. that transparency that it created was hugely significant

and still is 20 years on. host: carolyn heinrich, what do you think of the no child left behind act? where do you think it went wrong? ms. heinrich: rick made a really important point in that the test-based accountability as we describe it was a central part of the law. requiring us to test students from three to eight grade and once in high school did give us really important information on how kids were doing. another important part was to also look at how subgroups of children who we were most concerned with were being left behind, part of the name of the law, were doing relative to their peers and to ensure that we were working hard to put the best resources in helping those students who were most behind and meet the standards being set.

that is an important part that continues on into educational practice and policy today. however, and rick alluded to the fact that there were things that did not go well and he pointed out that this system created essentially specific measures for us to judge whether or not students were making adequate yearly progress. this was defined by proficiency rates. the federal government had set targets for achieving proficiency that moved each year. the other kind of complicated part of it was that states started in different places with their own benchmarking of where they were relative to the progress and how that actually turned into standards within each state for schools and students to meet. the remedies, for example, rick mentioned that if a school for at least three years in a row

failed to make adequate yearly progress, then these consequences, the federal interventions that were required, had to be implemented. there were two main things that the schools required -- that the schools were required to do. the students in the schools that were identified as not making adequate progress, those students could either choose to go to another school within the district, so they may have to be bused to another school, or they could receive supplemental educational services. those services were essentially very much like tutoring but they had to be outside of school and were required with the exception of some waivers to be provided by providers that could be nonprofit, for-profit providers outside of the school system itself. if schools are failing students during the day, why would they do better in providing

supplemental education services? schools and states were expected to manage this market for how services would be delivered and ended up being far more complicated and requiring a lot more capacity than schools and states had time or resources to invest in. there was a lot of practices that were ineffective and also for some of the biggest school districts, i was studying this in the field with some of the biggest school districts in the nation when it was happening, some of the school districts were overwhelmed each year. more and more of their schools came under these consequences and they had title i fund budgets that did not have enough to spread those resources out so people got enough -- so kids got enough of those tutoring hours . the market would have wide-ranging providers. it was not well monitored. it was supposed to be monitored by states.

states were supposed to be identifying which providers with the schools, which providers were effective and which were not but there really was not capacity or a system set up to do this. we did some of that work funded by the education sciences. it really reflected what we see often in our markets. there are some providers doing well. some are doing poorly. school districts without additional support were having a long time making the system work well for kids. host: here on "washington journal," we are doing the last of our landmark legislation series on this sunday morning. we are talking about the no child left behind act which was signed into law in 2002. our guests are carolyn heinrich, a professor at vanderbilt university's peabody college and rick hess who is the education policies director at the american enterprise institute.

we want to remind viewers the process of this law in terms of it came into effect, signed by president bush in 2002. it was approved by the house and senate in december of 2001. it is legislation that established standardized testing requirements for federally funded schools. it defined ways schools could improve the educational experience, it established mechanisms to improve low performing schools and students at low performing schools were allowed to transfer to other schools. it also establishes new standards for teachers. rick, what do you think the legacy of the nclb is? mr. hess: i think it is big. it really is a landmark law in a couple of ways. it really launched a shift in the republican party. part of the debate is playing

out today between the trump wing and the mitt romney wing of the problem -- of the party. no child left behind is a law that bill clinton wanted to pass. in 1994 clinton proposed having states test kids once an elementary, once in middle, once in high school and reading and math and he got so much blowback from the education establishment in the union, that they wound up doing something called the improving america's schools act which was voluntary money. by the time you get to 2001, you actually had huge frustration on the left in the form of ted kennedy and george miller who were saying we are not sure that these federal dollars are actually making a difference and they really wanted washington to step up. on the right, george bush on

this program of compassionate conservatism, one of the things that republicans needed to do by the end of the 1990's was reposition the party by trying to convince americans that they were sincere about opportunities and that it was not lipservice. what you have was real meetings. on the left it was ted kennedy standing up to the educational establishment and the unions. on the right, it was inviting washington into education policy. it was explicitly race-based in the way it would break down subgroups, in the way it was tracking whether or not schools were performing. it really set expectations that washington was going to tell states you have to have standards, you have to support schools. as this played out, because the

law was spasmodically designed, it is good to take a snapshot but the loss of 100% of kids will be proficient by 2014. that is like saying we will eliminate 100% of crime by 2028. it is not a serious goal. it is an aspiration. the closer you got to 2014, the more and more schools were identified as failing. by 2010 and 2011, well over half the nation's schools were labeled feeling under no child left behind. they were identified for remedies with all the problems that ensued. one of the things that happened was the moment a partisan group -- agreement gave us no child left behind, 89 votes in the senate almost 400 votes in the house wound up giving rise to a bipartisan backlash against federal leadership of education.

to the legacy of nclb, it shows the ways in which we have set a new platform for federal involvement with transparency around achievement, testing, the notion that there is a significant federal loan but also set the table for so much of the blowback we saw against common core, frustration about federal intervention in education, what became the feedback for 2015 as we scale back nclb. when we talk about education policy in america today, we are still living in a world that nclb created. host: we will talk about the follow-up legislation, the every student succeeds act. let's hear from our callers. (202) 748-8000 is the line for east and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 for mountain and specific. -- mountain and pacific. let's listen to the words of president george w. bush on the

day of the signing of the legislation in january 2002 talking about transparency in education. here is what he said. [video clip] >> we want to make sure no child left behind. every child must learn to read and add and subtract. [applause] in return for federal dollars, we are asking states to design accountability systems to show parents and teachers whether or not children can read and write and add and subtract in grades three through eight. the fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning. [applause]

host: carolyn heinrich, how did states do in responding to the president's call in return for federal dollars, you have to do all of these things? ms. heinrich: states did take on the responsibilities for determining how it would be implemented, determining what the standards within states would be, how were they going to help schools move toward the proficiency standards that were set at the federal level. as rick mentioned, there were impossible standards where everyone was supposed to be proficient by 2014. research points to the fact that there was additional state and local spending by the law and there were more investments in trying to retain quality

teachers. there was the whole investment in the infrastructure needed for the systematic testing of students. it has also been well-documented that in some respects it was interpreted as an underfunded mandate. the money that had to be used for implementation came from title i. title i money might be taken for other purposes. as rick mentioned, as more schools come as the standards ratcheted up, became subject to the consequences of the interventions. it became unsustainable. that is when we saw school districts requesting waivers from the provisions as more and more schools came under the responsibility for providing supplemental services or transfers. it was not working. the other thing that is well-documented is that this is

something that is not specific to education, but when you set a target, people do everything possible to reach it regardless of whether it is bringing about the kind of change we want. something that is called hitting the target but missing the point. this starts to happen under the test-based accountability system. we saw systematic cheating to achieve standards. we saw perversions in the provision of interventions. i was in texas for part of the time and working with the legislature because they were provided with services that were going around signing up parents to give their students these services and never delivering the services and there were not provisions to hold those providers accountable. they were not actually -- there weren't any resources to fully monitor this expansive market. there were a number of ways in which it started to unravel and it was not doing what we had hoped it would do.

it is also important to point out, test-based accountability has been somewhat controversial as rick pointed out. part of it relates to how we use that information. when students are being tested in two particular subjects, math and reading, which we were held accountable, schools were held accountable under no child left behind, they start to do every thing they can to make sure they are achieving those harder to reach standards. that is where people feel like it is out of their control to reach it, that is when we see that breakdown. host: 13 years after the law -- after the bill was signed into law, the every student succeeds act was passed. we will talk about that and i want to talk about what the education scene was like and the politics behind that.

we have calls for our guests on the no child left behind act, the law that was signed into law in 2002. it is part of our landmark legislative series. we will go to anthony in detroit, michigan. good morning. >> good morning. it seemed like it was way too many standardized tests. they did extracurriculars and tried to push this science, technology, and math. for english, they tried to teach everyone how to write a five paragraph essay. not everything you write will be a five paragraph essay. i understand they were trying to establish measurable objectives for achievement but we had limited english proficiency.

our president, i do not know how he could improve english proficiency for students. host: rick, would you like to respond? mr. hess: it is a great point. when you set targets in complex areas, you tend to distort behavior. if utility school district -- if you tell a school district that you will be judged on whether you are making adequate progress are not, we saw school districts shifting time away from other activities, away from physics, the arts, and giving kids more reading and more math. today, we still see this play out. because the focus was on getting kids to proficiency, you saw them shifting away from the focus on gifted programs or advanced instruction and moving into making sure they are getting kids over the bar. one big problem when the x-ray

that we talked about with nclb -- i think it was important and essential. it sounds like caroline is saying something similar. but when you lifted up, you create real problems. part of the distressed that you see in the public -- part of the distrust that you see in the public is what the color identifies -- what the caller identifies. no child left behind on the required kids take one test per year in the spring. -- only required kids to take one test per year in the spring. whether your school will be identified as a good school or school, schools really ramped up all the other testing to make sure that kids were ready for that test, to identify which kids were not over the bar yet. what happened and we saw this by

2013, 2014, even the obama white house was sharing data from the council of city school districts pointing out the extraordinary amount of testing that had grown up around what was supposed to be a once per year assessment. host: let's go to carl in virginia. good morning. caller: hello. i was born in 1998. i graduated in 2017. this was my life in pennsylvania. you make a great point. i did not know it was supposed to be one test because when it came to the npa, they were developed and written by pearson . then we had the keystones given to us in high school. it is this runaway testing. we felt like there was a revolutionary year. what are we going to have this year? what tests will we have to take this year?

it really got crazy. you made a good point about gifted education. i was gifted. i went through that program. that fizzled out in high school. from a student perspective, this was an incredibly confusing, stressful because we knew we would have to take all these tests and they took a while. my question is, because i have been out of the system for five years, where does it stand today? our students taking as many tests or have they abated whether through purpose for because they do not have the money? host: great question. ms. heinrich: you are pointing out this focus on benchmark testing. you needed to get over the bar to be proficient. you may have been subjected to even more testing than your peers. i mentioned i was in texas.

there has been some pulling back on the excessive additional testing. at the time my kids were in high school and they had 14 to 15 different tests they take each year in addition to that and the benchmark testing. there was legislation that happened that rick perry signed to ratchet that back down to five tests. at the time of no child left behind, there was some pulling back of the extensive testing. part of the reason it has been necessary to do so is teachers also. right now we are looking at a serious teacher shortage and teachers were also posing back -- pushing back. this was affecting what would be taught in the classroom, how much time would be spent inmy se of teaching them how -- if they

didn't know the answer, what would be the best approach of guessing that answer on the standardized test. that's not really how they want to spend their time practicing. host: those kind of stories, those set the scene for the repeal of some of nclb? >> i think that's exactly right. some of the viewers may recall huge fights around the common courts. the common core was actually the stepchild of no child left behind. what no child left behind is it said we are knocking to tell you what standards to adopt, we are knocking to tell you what tests, you just have to have standards. so if you are a governor, there was a big incentive to choose easier standards and to set a

low bar and kick the can because you didn't have to be at 100% of 2014. what happened was you saw a lot of states opted for the politically more attractive course setting the bar where they could say kids are doing well. there were skepticism among folks like ted kennedy who said this was not what we attend -- intended. the push for the common core was the idea the states should adopt the same standards in reading and math and then that way schools will be on 11 playing field. once you get there the whole genius of the no child left behind design was every state was allowed to go its own way. once you get into common core you have to choose what's the right waited to this, what's cannot go and those recommended. this all blew up into a national fight. folks on the left who are worried about too much testing

and being too intrusive with teachers. on the right you had people lashing out, big foundations and politicians and d.c. trying to dictate to their schools and interfere, so that really let a firestorm of pushback against testing and standards and that's what gave rise to the push. host: the act in 2015 made annual standardized testing -- continued it -- continued annualized standardized testing. under that law, it required an indicator of accountability. english proficiency, high school graduation rates and a choice of the state to set new standards for students with disabilities. let's hear from albany, georgia

who is a teacher and trainer. caller: good morning. this is such a timely topic especially because another couple of weeks begins the new school year for teachers and students. the impact of courses the reckoning we are having right now of the 2002 law no child left behind. as you stated, president obama came in and then created the emphasis of trying to i think bridge the gap of a movement to try and abate to the decline in proficiencies. i think the larger point for this is a society for right now having 30% to 40% of teachers

first to five year teachers who are knocking to be coming back. we are in a bind with regard to teacher education and retainment of teachers. and in do part due to the fact i think we have lost the value and the foundational construct of this is a profession. most of our teachers right now are paid 39,000 for entry-level positions who must be board certified and have a masters. they are not able to come to the classroom with just ba degrees. that's not the profession we have. we have a highly educated profession. talking about the charger and choice, that really was part of this no child left behind. we are really talking about an ideology whereby we were using

the word reform and standards and common core that actually was about changing the public schools fundamental investment. where those funds were initially , you cannot sustain taking money from title i programs but to get to the larger point, we are right now facing a situation where in 1991, i think it was minnesota the became the first state that legalized the so-called reform which was the word charter school that came about the l.a. board, the largest second district in the nation. host: what is your question for our guests? caller: how do you see that the new construct where parents now most of our children, a 90 percent of children are in the public school system, we have 6%

to 10% in something that's charter or voucher or opportunity scholarship and these things still do not create the closure that we are talking about. host: if you would like to respond. ms. heinrich: there was a lot in there. many points made about where we are today and i think one thing i heard come through in multiple ways is the concern about resources for really serving our public school students well. in tennessee we are having a pretty big debate about the governor's plan to push more charter schools and having vouchers. it is a complicated debate, but the big concern is whether or not in the way that it's

implemented does that take resources away from the public schools where you pointed out 90% of kids are educated. that's the big fear. so one thing, every since that try to broaden how we thought about accountability, taking the focus off of reading and math test scores. we are still in a situation where, and i've worked with a number of the school district where the school district relies heavily on this title i funds to serve their students. and i see school district working very hard to do the very best for their students be continuously constrained. we might work with them and identify them as effective and want to keep implementing them but find they are short in their budget and cannot continue the program. the one thing i heard is we

don't have adequate resources. we are not paying teachers well enough to commit to a profession where they feel all these pressures and the pressures increased tremendously with the pandemic and all the challenges we faced about students, more students having fallen behind in their education. i don't know if i exactly got to what your question was but that's one of things i hear. without more resources for implementing effectively reforms of various types or ensuring public schools have adequate resources to serve many students who have greater needs now, we are not going to achieve or would like to achieve. host: it's our landmark legislation series here on washington journal. we are focusing on the no child left behind law signed into law in 2002. caller: good morning.

in the teaching field we referred to this program. as already mentioned with the increase in testing, the sad part is it wasn't used as a learning tool or opportunity, instead it was used as a punishment. teacher salary depended on the tests, schools were graded on the test. so teachers taught to the test. the irony is the thinking that was begin to emerge at the time was student directed learning with teacher guidance and not teaching by fear. the testing was beneficial, financially beneficial. two more observations, the program was supposed to increase science teacher salaries, it did not. it also promoted bringing in foreign teachers to supplement the teaching population in the united states.

what the standards changes that occurred every year by the florida republican legislature gave me a summer job every summer rewriting curriculum for the school district. thanks for listening. mr. hess: it's really interesting. the listener has some good points. tinkering with curricula always happens. before there was ever no child left behind, my first book was called spinning wheels because there's is endless churn around the school reform curriculum. some of what the viewer just shared was absolutely deeply believed by a lot of people in education. there was nothing in no child left behind that messed with teacher salary. it tested kids, those results

were used to identify schools and school systems. if you didn't make ayp, there was a cascade of remedies after the fifth identification your school was supposed to be restructured. when you talk with the people at the time, one of them was changing the principal of the school. the easiest trick they used was if you assigned the school and in number in the data system it counted as a reset. because they were so overwhelmed after certain point by the number of schools that were identified as failing, the department of education couldn't handle anymore. the teacher pay was not affected directly. districts adopted some kind of

bonus related test scores, but there was nothing in the law that did this. there was nothing in the law that paid science teachers differently than others, there was nothing about hiring. but if you go back and you read from the american federation of teachers of the time, you will see some of the stuff got shared. one of the complications that mark to this, nclb did some things that are good and valuable, a window into how kids were doing. back in the late 80's, a west virginia psychologist noted that every state in the nation reported their average student was above average nationally. because they were using these tests that tended --

there were a lot of problems involved. but when we tried to debate what was working and what wasn't working among teachers, among parents, among folks out there, there was an interesting mix of confusion and fake news and the rest of it that it became fairly difficult. sometimes they would get so frustrated that stuff there were responding to was inaccurate that it was really hard to have debates. people retreated to their corners. if you were against it you thought it was a conspiracy to make the bush family rich. and you still see a lot of that same divide very evident in education debate. host: did the whole focus on the

stem curriculum, out of nclb? mr. hess: it didn't. it's interesting the viewer has mentioned student centered learning, going back forever. there's been a debate about how directed should be and you see the same thing with stem going back. and the national defense education act of 58. science, technology engineering and math program. it's understood it's important for the national interest. so we have engineers and students who are accomplished in math. again the viewer is fair to point out there been several efforts to promote stem learning. but that was not in any way significant part in particular. host: let's go to paul in new

york city. go ahead. caller: good morning. host: just make sure you mute your volume. go ahead with your comment. caller: here's my question. we spend more in the u.s. than most countries per student, the results is that we do very poorly. in new york, eric adams and his school chancellor of called out a massive increase for students in new york city entrusted for a flechette -- inflation. the results are very poor. when we talk about stem, it

provides better opportunities. which is the whole purpose of education is supposed to be. it's was to give people better lives. it's not supposed to be a steppingstone to go to college at all bunch of trouble so you can get a college degree and work as a paris step. i guess my question is what do you think the answer is. why are we spending so much more. i heard when your speakers say there is an issue with resources. in many northeastern districts, their spending can be quite high and the results can be quite poor. what is going on. it'll most like health care where we spend more per capita and get less. it seems to be a trend in this country. ms. heinrich: it is a

complicated question because as we know, just having a certain number of dollars per student isn't going to necessarily -- depending on how that spend. there's research showing spending on infrastructure which is what many people think about building schools more up to date technology, resources, adding on infrastructure spending isn't well correlated with -- in terms of student achievement. my experience with some districts where there constantly short of what they need to do. for example pension commission mints -- commitments made. anything of the actual cost of the teacher, it's not just the salary, if the benefits. those are eating up more and more school budget each year.

in particular on things we think would increase student learning or like we said, if there are places where teacher salaries are still pretty low, how can we keep the great science teacher, the high school science teacher from going to the private sector because he can make so much more money there. it's a complicated question. research is not overwhelmingly consistent on whether or not school spending leads to proven student achievement. i don't have the specific answer for what's happening in new york, but i do know these days we are asking schools to bring students to teach them. we have a range of services we are providing that they don't

necessarily get in their communities. we have all kinds of things we are dealing with to help students learn, breakfast programs, lunch programs. afterschool programming. i would say that might be part of the explanation for why even if we still find her so short, really from district to district many more of those types of extra services host: next up is mike in ohio. caller: i think we did not mention on the teacher side how -- absolutely destroyed teachers. the scores were attached to teacher evaluation. so if you're a teacher and did not meet a certain standard now you are a poor teacher. and after so many years they would fire you.

i've seen teachers absolutely destroyed by test scores and they gave it their all. you cannot make students learn, you cannot legislate learning and it was a mass exit is of teachers. from the teacher's point of view and as far as charter schools are concerned, a lot of people believe students go to a charter school it will fix everything. the charter school mirrors the local school. if the local school is a certain standard and they are not performing, a nine times out of 10 the charter school will reflect that. host: we have more charter schools in the country here 20 years past the signing of no child left behind? mr. hess: the previous caller mentioned minnesota past the first charter law in 91. usually in the country, the local school board runs that.

what a charter said was the state legislature passed a law saying other people would be able to open. in some states giving the authority to universities, others to a particular charter board. we have 7000 charter schools today serving about 3 million kids. it is fascinating. the interesting thing, was a no child left behind? we talk to the beginning of the show about this era of -- that emerged from the clinton years to the bush and obama years. in 2009 as part of the recovery and reinvestment, there was a

program called race to the top that congress enacted. it gave about $5 billion for two programs. the race to the top rewarded states were doing things including teacher evaluations. so what happened was the tests that had been created in response to no child left behind , you could use those scores for teachers to look at how much of again these teachers kids had relative to other teachers. the obama administration did was then through those waivers was push states to adopt programs in which teachers were rated in part on the test scores. and as the caller mentioned there's all kinds of issues that can arise when teachers start getting graded narrowly.

there was a very complicated debate, but in the teaching ranks it very much felt like this was being done as an attack on teachers. when you talk to the people who were most excited about it, they sought is a chance to more objectively and fairly evaluate. all of the stuff we are talking about was really what contributed. host: let's hear from rachel in washington state, good morning. caller: this may seem like a detour, but ultimately it's all connected. what do you think of what bernie sanders had to say about college for all and canceling student debt. those parents are the ones taking care of those kids. those parents in order to be

able to afford to live somewhere decent and have their kids in a decent school, they have to have a profession, they have to do some and besides working at the store. host: either of you want to respond to that. i'll move onto the next call part we will go to judy in winston-salem, north carolina. caller: good morning. i have a comment more so than a question. it's in reference to the george bush junior slogan about education and no child left behind law. that was setting people up for failure and now we are dealing with those students. this came in, it filtered into obama after he left george bush and after that time.

i think he has two children, himself, one college -- one may have finished by now. one of the toys active middle schools there. leave no child behind. my question and concern and i was listening to this. that was a good message -- method of leave no child behind for what we call leadership in education. i worked in guilford county there in north carolina, now i'm traveling. students leave no child behind failure, you say why is it doing

that. children learn on the same level. i was working with high school students, some were 18 years old in 10th, 11th and 12th grade and they could not read, they could not do math. swim looking kindergarten through middle school. host: thank you for the fall think you for the call. you really start to notice there were issues with the law that needed to be worked out. ms. heinrich: it did take a few years. states had to figure out they were going to establish their minimum standard in relation to proficiency requirement. it did not take long. a couple years into it, you had to have under the law the system in place and before the

consequences started coming and there had to be three years we were school did not make adequate yearly progress, so i would say as we look around 2006 and 2007, that's where we see more and more schools start, that's where the crisis is really hitting where there were some of the students not making those -- not making adequate progress under those challenging standards and that's also where we talked about already where again school systems within them. we heard from callers talking about how they repeatedly tested. in this last point that was made , were we doing better in not leaving some children behind, we

are not measuring where students were but the results and some of the research where the focus really ended up being windows students were close, getting them over the bar and less attention to kids who were really far behind and was also mentioned the kids who were well over the bar. we recognize that i think that's where it became -- many more children became affected did host: -- affected. host: an opinion piece, of the movement and homework is wrong, the debates over education obviously continue. let me give you less than a minute or so to wrap this up on where you would like to see federal education policy go next. mr. hess: i think washington has an important role. we have 50 states, if every

state is doing different tests and there's no framework for comparability, it's hard for voters or parents to really hold their leaders in their states accountable. the kind of framework no child left behind created around regular assessment and regular subjects made a ton of sense. i thought it did terrific job of keeping parts of that, the testing framework when walking away from this effort from washington to dictate school improvements for the school districts for 100,000 schools. i think there's an enormous federal role for investing in the kind of research that was alluded to. it doesn't make sense to do the exact same state-by-state. i also think there's a role in protecting civil rights. what i think washington is not

at its best and often gets in the way is when it starts trying for states and school leaders about the right way to improve. at the that depend so much on contact that it's just a normal sleep difficult for federal bureaucracy. ms. heinrich: i agree with all of what rick just said that i would add the importance of the regular assessment, this is mentioned buyer viewer, let's look at how we constructively use that information. when it's used to label schools, it's not really effective. it really does set up for polarizing groups who all i think all agree that we care about whether students are learning. we now have more responsibility

at the state level for the implementation. we have that with the information we are getting, understanding working and how we can move towards the goal we share and to learn more and succeed. host: landmark legislation, talking about it with carolyn heinrich, professor at vanderbilt peabody college and rick hass -- hess >> expands washington journal, everyday day we are taking your call live on the news of the day and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. saturday morning, with the bloomberg school of health on the latest round of new covid-19 easter shots authorized to the fda earlier this week -- booster

shots authorized by the ea earlier this week -- fda earlier this week. we talk about the u.s. military legacy involvement in afghanistan and his podcast on defense and foreign affairs. watch washington journal come alive at 7:00 eastern on c-span or on c-span now our free mobile video app. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweet. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, we are funded by these television companies and more including charter communication. >> broadband is a force for empowerment that is why charter has invested billions in infrastructure of grading -- upgrading technology, in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications

supports c-span as a public service along with these other television fighters, giving a front row seat to democracy. >> in 2019, reporter ben raines discovered the remains of the slave ship in a swamp outside of alabama. sunday night, as we showcase some of the best of q&a, mr. raines talks about his book, the last slave ship which details the history, and how and why entrance did 110 slaves to alabama more than 50 years after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed. >> we have the whole story. it serves as a proxy for everyone in the u.s. and the world whose families arrived in whatever country they are in and the whole of ship. most of those people, millions upon millions we know nothing about because of their stories

-- because their stories are not recorded. that is really what is so unique about it. it is the whole story of slavery all encapsulated in one. we know everything about these people. >> ben raines, with his book, the last slave ship, sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. can listen to q&a and all of the podcast on our new c-span now at. -- app. >> spend is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington, live and on-demand. keep up with the days biggest events with hearings from the u.s. congress white house events, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal

and find scheduling information for c-span tv network and c-span radio, plus a variety of a podcast. c-span is available on the apple store, google like, downloaded for free. c-span now your front row seat to washington, anytime, anywhere. >> next executive branch officials testifying on the continued rise of overdose deaths linked to fentanyl. questions battling the illegal drug trade, and the disproportionate impact on underserved populations. the senate hearing is two hours. >> at this point, we will leave this program. watch the rest on c-span dot org. drug policy experts are getting ready to give an update on the rise of fentanyl overdose deaths, especially among minorities. they are testifying before members of the senate health committee. a