No Child Left Behind a failure in need of overhaul | mycentraljersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com

No Child Left Behind a failure in need of overhaul | mycentraljersey.com | MyCentralJersey.com

No Child Left Behind a failure in need of overhaul

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

• Print this page
• E-mail this article
• Share
• Type Size A A A

Most people agreed, at the time it was enacted early in this century, that the federal No Child Left Behind Act was a good idea. After all, increasing accountability in the quality of public education was long overdue.

But the implementation of the law has been a nightmare, creating a blizzard of bureaucracy, a set of statistics and obscure formulas that only a graduate student can understand and ill-publicized labels that often mistakenly and unfairly characterize a school district's quality.

That again became clear recently when the state Department of Education released its annual list of schools that failed to show "Adequate Yearly Progress," a determination based on 41 factors.

The state's statistics showed a surge in the number of schools that failed to meet the federal standards from 815 to 1,124. But nobody is quite sure what that means.

"Like a 'check engine' light in a car, the AYP data indicates that something in a school district may not be