Nelson takes a leaf out of Bush's education reform plan

A suite of school reforms released by a conservative government have prompted substantial debate among educators and parents. The mantra of the package is testing, accountability and choice.

Teacher unions are critical, while the Left seems to be split on whether to bury or praise the reforms.

The story of federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson's school reform package over the past six months? Yes, but also the tale of another controversial education reform package: President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation of 2002.
The two reforms are so uncannily similar that the Nelson proposals might be better described as NCLB II.

At the core of both packages is regular student testing.

NCLB mandates annual student testing of US children from years 3 to 8, while Mr Nelson has persuaded state and territory education ministers to agree to test all Australian children in years 3, 5 and 7.

Testing underlies accountability, and test score measures can be used to create smarter incentive structures for schools and teachers.

Accountability is another key aspect of NCLB and Mr Nelson's reforms – requiring that all parents be informed of how well their children and their child's school are performing.

Many US states publish detailed information on their websites about the academic performance and socio-economic composition of every school in the state, and NCLB will require this to become universal across the US.

In Australia, the changes are happening more slowly but, with a modicum of resistance, state and territory governments seem to have agreed that parents have a basic right to information about their children's schools.

Research by Harvard University's Caroline Hoxby has demonstrated clear benefits from greater accountability: those US states that gave parents detailed information about the performance of their schools experienced larger test score gains than those states that did not.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of both countries' plans is their emphasis on choice.

NCLB requires that students in underperforming schools be given free tutoring and assistance in transferring to another school in their neighbourhood.

Likewise, under the Nelson proposals, struggling students would be provided with a $700 voucher to spend on private tutoring (oddly, the voucher will not be means-tested).

Moreover, the Howard government's reforms to the private-school funding formula over recent years appear to have been aimed at making the system as close to a de facto school voucher system as possible. How has the Left responded to testing, accountability and choice?

In the US, NCLB was co-sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy, an icon of the left-wing of the Democratic Party. And while the package has come under fire from some Democrats (such as Governor Howard Dean), the party is aware that it needs to tread carefully.

NCLB commands significant support among inner-city African-Americans, who have long been frustrated at the state of their children's schools. In a curious parallel, Nelson claims that Aboriginal parents have been among the strongest supporters of his proposed reforms.

The Australian Labor Party is right to support Nelson's proposals, creating a bipartisan consensus for schools policy that is driven by research and results, not stymied by inertia and ideology.

Labor should also remember that the reforms represent a shift in the thinking of their political opponents. Just as US Republicans argued in 1994 that the federal government had no place in schools policy, so the Coalition's 1993 Fightback! manifesto contained little of the activist educational policymaking now evident in Nelson's reforms.

This is not to say that either NCLB or the Nelson reforms represents more than a starting point for reforming education.
Testing, accountability and choice are all important but other reforms should be on the agenda too: improving teacher incentives through a carefully designed system of performance pay; raising the school leaving age (as Queensland has done); exploring options for a longer school day; and targeting resources to the neediest schools.