Last week President Obama announced plans to require all states to certify that their standards were “college- and career-ready” in order to obtain their portion of $14.5 billion in federal education funds. This is the single largest pot of education money in the federal budget–it’s previously been called Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)–and it is the promise of this money that led to states following the rules in the ESEA, including those in the latest version, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Theoretically any state could choose to opt out of these funds and their attached restrictions. Many states have threatened to pull out, but none have done so.
Would the college- and career-ready standards requirement be the last straw to push states over the limit? No, it wouldn’t, and the reason is because nothing will stop states from asserting their standards are preparing students for colleges and careers, even if they really are not. That’s federalism, and Obama is not likely to actually try to, nor could he, change it.
Others have pointed out that college- and career-ready is actually a higher standard than what exists now. Under current law, states just have to define a set of standards in math, reading, and science, have a set of assessments to measure student success, and then evaluate schools on whether students are “proficient” on those standards. States have set their standards at a rather low level; forcing those state standards to prepare students to be “college- and career-ready” would be a significantly higher benchmark.
The political opposition to No Child Left Behind has not really been about standards–most people believe it’s a good thing for teachers to have some
