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Once a self-proclaimed "true believer" in NCLB, Mike Petrilli has come to the conclusion that it’s "fundamentally flawed and probably beyond repair."  He recommends that the law be reauthorized to limit the federal government’s role to only two areas: redistributing funds more fairly, and developing a uniform system for evaluating the nation’s schools (through national standards and a national test). This, he says, would restore the federal government to its appropriate place in K-12 education (very limited) and return to states and districts the heavy lifting of improving schools.

But this heavy lifting was in the hands of states and districts from time immemorial. The federal government barged into elementary and secondary education precisely because states and districts had proved themselves wholly incapable of solving the nation’s most serious social justice and Civil Rights issue: the achievement gap. Unfortunately, nothing has taken place over the last five years to give us confidence that they’re better equipped today to solve this problem then they were before NCLB.

While I support both of Petrilli’s recommendations, neither–nor the two in combination-would materially help districts improve student learning. And that has to be our guiding star when considering NCLB’s reauthorization.

First, directing more funds to needy students is a just policy, but it’s also a well-worn path. Title I, state legislatures, and state courts have been increasing aid to low-income kids for the last 40 years, and yet the achievement gap remains. Absent some other fundamental changes in state and district policies, it’s hard to imagine how this new stream of money is going to solve the problem.

Second, while I agree that national standards and a national test would give us a reliable means of comparing schools across state lines and shine light on our educational problems, it’s extremely difficult to make the case that the achievement gap would go away if only it were better known. Coleman told us about it in 1966, NAEP’s been chronicling it since 1969, state tests confirmed it throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and NCLB has made it front page news since 2002.

In short, for the 40 years preceding NCLB, states and districts had an unblemished record of failure on the achievement gap; if we’re going to re-empower them to address this issue, we at least have to put them in position to succeed.

This is where I should offer my grand NCLB solution–the shining silver bullet that will solve the previously unsolvable problem. But that, I think, is exactly the trouble with the way we’ve handled education policy for years. As America’s best and brightest minds have been working on these issues, we’ve always convinced ourselves that we were an inch away from the grand solution, whether it was better teacher training, competition, accountability, small schools, or something else.

We’ve never been humble enough to recognize the unfortunate truth: that we don’t yet know how to create great schools, at scale, for disadvantaged kids. So we haven’t built school systems that make the proper allowances for our inevitable misses.

Other industries do this as a matter of course. Bad restaurants go out of business or declare bankruptcy. Lousy doctors get fired or lose their licenses. Bad politicians get voted out of office. But the void doesn’t remain because we have new restaurants opening, new residents and interns stepping up, new elected officials taking the oath.

It’s this constant churn that both replenishes an industry’s losses and keeps it fresh, dynamic, responsive, and self-improving. Public education, however, is unique in that it’s never developed mechanisms for getting rid of its troubled schools and building a pipeline for new ones: traditional public schools, even chronic low-performers, exist in perpetuity, and districts seldom create new schools.

While I don’t have a grand solution that will fix all of our troubled schools, two small changes to NCLB can help bring about the fluid, self-improving school systems we need. First, do away with all "restructuring" options available to failing schools. If a school misses AYP for five years it must be closed (or the district loses its Title I funds).

Second, turn the federal charter schools grant program into an engine of new school creation. Its budget should be expanded significantly and its funds should support the start-up of new schools in areas affected by these forced school closures.

In these new school systems, chronically low-performing schools will be regularly shuttered and replaced by new, highly accountable public schools. Students affected by closures will have the choice of attending a new school or a higher-performing existing school. Every year, the NCLB closure provision and charter contracts will close those schools continuously failing their students. The beefed-up charter schools program will ensure that new schools are always on deck, ready to enter the fray.

I can’t guarantee that every new school will succeed, but the same can be said about restaurants, doctors, lawyers, politicians, plumbers, and on and on.  Until we find that educational silver bullet, we should make use of the same formula that keeps other difficult industries humming: always keep the good, regularly get rid of the bad, and constantly prepare new entrants.

Andy Smarick is chief of staff at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.  This article previously appeared here.