It’s that time of year again: back to school. Just as children across the country head back to the classroom, federal lawmakers return to Washington to get back to work. While the list of congressional “assignments” for the fall is quite long, a measure affecting all students should be at the top of their list: reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

 

The House and Senate passed separate bills to reauthorize ESEA – known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for the past 15 years – before they left for the August recess. (The bills are H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, and S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act.) Both measures get passing grades for progress toward ensuring all students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college or the workplace. Where the bills don’t make the grade is on ensuring schools are held accountable for student achievement.

 

As a nation, we spend an extraordinary amount on K-12 education. This money is well intentioned. We are, after all, educating America’s future leaders. For the business community, today’s students are tomorrow’s technicians, executives and sales team – the women and men who make our companies hum.

 

But that does not mean it is always money well spent. As part of overall efforts to make sure it is, we want to ensure that where students are not meeting state-defined achievement goals, schools are required to implement support strategies that will really help students get back on track. 

 

States must set meaningful achievement goals that are driven by academic indicators, such as objective, state-developed assessments and graduation rates -- not based on non-academic factors, such as the subjective results of student and teacher surveys. 

 

And given the important role assessments have in making sure students are receiving the education they deserve and federal dollars are being put to good use, states should not be allowed to opt out. States that allow parents to opt their children out of annual testing should not be eligible to receive federal funding if by doing so, they fail to meet the requirement that they test 95 percent of their students annually. 

 

In the business community, we are held up for measure every day. Meeting delivery deadlines, exceeding production quotas and improving the bottom line are at the heart of our job. Making sure schools are delivering for students should be at the heart of state leaders’ jobs.