"State lawmakers want Washington policymakers to back off when it comes to public schools.
Five years after the National Conference of State Legislatures assailed the federal No Child Left Behind Act as a major encroachment on the states’ authority over K-12 education, members of the Denver-based group say that new policies unveiled by the Obama administration are shaping up to be just as prescriptive and intrusive.
The requirements of the No Child Left Behind law on states—such as expanding standardized testing and meting out rewards and penalties for schools based on student performance—have simply been replaced by other, mostly unproven approaches in the programs put forth so far by President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the lawmakers argue in a new, 35-page report released here Monday."
