JULIANNE HING
Obama’s No Child Left Behind: New Name, Same Sketchy Policies
This past Saturday the Obama administration released its plan for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which is hereafter to be referred to by its new—well, make that old—name as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. ESEA was originally passed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and has had several face lifts over the years till it became what we know it as today.
But the Obama administration is giving up the No Child Left Behind moniker, ostensibly to distance itself from the Bush version of the law. If only education reform were as simple as giving up a tainted name.
This is what we know right now: the new ESEA proposal is a 41-page blueprint. Much of it is remarkably uncontroversial: Obama wants new academic standards that are more comprehensive. The goal is to have all high school students college-ready by 2020. The new plan would take students’ rate of academic growth and improvement into consideration when measuring school achievement, regardless of the level the student started at. The state will stop offering vouchers to parents to send their children to private schools if their local public school is failing. Hard to argue over, no?
While the new ESEA is still just a proposal, education advocates are voicing concern over already-implemented initiatives that really show Obama’s ideological stance on ed policy and how ESEA will shake out for communities of color. Race to The Top, a national competition for $4.35 billion worth of federal money dangles up to $700 million in front of states that adopt Secretary of Eduation Arne Duncan’s dramatic