As it prepares to reauthorize the federal education act, No Child Left Behind, Congress shouldn’t confuse a recent poll showing the public generally in favor of the act’s goals with their own duty to improve some clear shortcomings in NCLB. Instead, it has a test of its own to take: After five years of increased federal intervention in schools, it should be able to sort out what helps students improve their academic performance and what merely makes adults feel as if someone is being held accountable.

The goals of NCLB, as described in a poll by Educational Testing Service, are to have states set standards for children to close academic gaps; require annual testing to see if the standards are being met; help teachers become highly qualified; and provide additional funding and prescribe consequences for schools that fail to achieve academic targets. Fifty-six percent of the public approves of this plan – and perhaps only the chronic negativity about underfunding states keeps the approval rating from being higher.

But the poll doesn’t point out that NCLB judges student progress by comparing different students over different years rather than following sets of students over several years. Or that the state-derived measures for determining what a student knows and can do are single tests that students may or may not take seriously. Or that states have widely different expectations so those with low standards have an easier time showing progress than those with higher standards.

These flaws were known at the time NCLB was passed and have been frustrating school departments nationwide ever since. Some of these issues can be addressed at the state level – there is more flexibility in the act than is generally recognized. After all, if Maine can proceed with using the SAT to meet NCLB assessment rules, just about anything is possible.

Ten states have pilot programs of so-called growth models, which follow student performance year to year. This promises to be an improvement over the current system, though it was raised at the time of NCLB’s first authorization and should be settled by now. A complementary project that looks at how learning outside of schools affects performance on these tests would likely yield even more information to help students learn.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has shown a much greater willingness than her predecessor to change the act to emphasize student achievement over form completion. As the act evolves and the federal government catches up with best practices nationwide, NCLB should help states leverage more resources and attract more highly qualified teachers to continue to make progress.