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NYC schools chancellor: pro-NCLB?!

Maybe it’s just us, but we expect Joel Klein to get taken out behind the NEA woodshed any minute now:

City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein gave an impassioned defense of the federal No Child Left Behind law yesterday, saying schools need more testing and accountability – not less – to bolster performance and close the achievement gap.

And Klein stressed that the city’s own promotion policies and school measures go well beyond what the NCLB requires.

The NCLB – approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2001 – requires standardized testing in schools and a breakdown in scores of students by race, ethnicity and disability.

"It is incredibly valuable because it recognizes that the achievement gap – the gap that separates our African-American and Latino students from their white and Asian peers – is the chief problem in American schooling," Klein said during a speech before the Aspen Institute’s Commission on NCLB in West Hartford, Conn.

Klein testified right after Connecticut officials, who filed suit against the U.S. Education Department, claiming the federal law is too intrusive and requires too many tests. Klein disagreed.

"When they passed NCLB, our national leaders finally took responsibility for the fact that white and Asian students are performing four years ahead of African-American and Latino students in high school. Four years. And this law finally put muscle behind the attempt to close that gap," Klein said. 

Our boss is publicly skeptical ("agnostic", more specifically) on NCLB.  But it’s almost astonishing to find a school administrator a) admitting some good has arisen out of accountability and b) welcoming consequences for poor performance. 

(Of course, some might ask whether this is best resolved on the federal level…)