Presidential candidates may not have spent much time discussing education this year, but that doesn't mean it isn't important to Grinnell students.

Grinnell will host a Rosenfield symposium over three days next week on school reform and the concept of accountability, centered around an analysis of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. The participants range from a representative of the Department of Education to an advocate of small schools from New York to Grinnell alumni who teach in urban areas.

In selecting the participants, the Rosenfield Committee focused on bringing different perspectives on NCLB rather than ideological balance. "There aren't a lot of people who want to get up and say this is a really super good program," said Wayne Moyer, Political Science, director of the Rosenfield Public Affairs Program. "I guess the only person I've heard on television who was fully a defender of it was Margaret Spelling [the head of the Department of Education]."

School accountability has been a neglected issue in both this year's primary cycle or in George W. Bush's second term. NCLB is up for reauthorization by Congress this year, but even Mary Cohen, the regional representative for the Department of Education who will be attending the conference, isn't sure what will happen although she will nonetheless give her view on the current changes.

Much of the lack of support for NCLB could simply be placed on the relative novelty of the concept of school accountability. "We've primarily had a liberal system of education in the United States, and really only very recently a state system," said Kevin Carey by who works for Education Sector, a non-partisan, empiricism-based think tank in Washington and will be speaking on Feb. 19. "So moving to a federal system remains a long term issue," he said.

Even those who see merit in the NCLB legislation, such as Carey, have been critical of some aspects. "One of the biggest criticisms of NCLB is that it does not give schools proper credit for improving," said Carey. "It's a fair criticism, and one of the weakest parts of the law."

Deborah Meier, the only other speaker who currently works outside the school system, disagrees with the law more drastically than Carey. A co-writer of "Many Children Left Behind," Meier focuses on democracy in education in her work. "Deborah Meier will say ... our whole democracy depends on a great education system," said Jean Ketter, Education chair at Grinnell and a major contributor to the speakers that the Rosenfield program brought.

The symposium will not just focus on broader issues of school accountability. Douglas Christensen and Judy Jeffrey, the heads of education in Nebraska and Iowa, respectively, will bring their specific knowledge and ways of implementing the law to the symposium. "Iowa and Nebraska are examples of states that have managed to resist, but not in a totally self-destructive way," said Ketter. "They haven't just sort of capitulated."