Changing No Child Left Behind

President Barack Obama’s administration has called for an overhaul of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, mitigating the ridiculous focus on standardized tests with an approach that takes into consideration student attendance and classrooms’ learning climates. –JCL

The New York Times:

The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to eliminate divisive provisions, including those that have encouraged instructors to teach to tests, crowded out subjects other than math and reading, and labeled one in every three American public schools as failing.

The proposals, if approved by Congress, would replace the current law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure schools not only with test scores but also with indicators like pupil attendance and the learning climate in classrooms.

And while the proposals call for vigorous interventions in failing schools, they would also reward top performers and lessen federal interference in tens of thousands of reasonably well-run schools in the middle.

President Obama’s plan would replace the No Child law’s requirement that every American child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that may be even harder to achieve: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

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