"A 'NONNUANCED APPROACH'
Under the current federal requirements, a school “has met or hasn’t met the standards, and there are no shades of gray,’’ said Mitchell Chester, commissioner, state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education."
Massachusetts school officials and education advocates welcomed yesterday President Obama’s proposal for sweeping changes in the way schools are judged on meeting federal standards, hopeful that it will focus attention on schools that need the most help while decreasing the likelihood of labeling good schools as bad.
Under the current system, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, 54 percent of schools in the state have missed annual benchmarks for increases in test scores for at least two years, as schools pursue a federal mandate of having all students score in the proficient range by 2014.
But yesterday, as Obama presented his budget plan to Congress, he proposed replacing that accountability system with a more nuanced way of judging school performance in an effort to identify more clearly those schools that are truly failing their students. Obama also called for a fundamental change in the way the federal government awards education grants, moving away from a formula-based system to one that rewards districts making big strides against poor achievement.