Q&A with Sandy Kress, key architect of No Child Left Behind
Sandy Kress
It’s that time of the year again when Congress considers reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known since 2001 as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Reauthorization has been stalled for years.
NCLB has been widely praised for its requirement that states and schools break down their test results by subgroups—across racial, socioeconomic and other lines—to highlight achievement gaps. But it’s also garnered lots of criticism for its focus on standardized test-scores and its system of rating schools according to whether they make “adequate yearly progress.”
Sandy Kress—who, as senior advisor to President George W. Bush, was one of the key architects of NCLB—recently wrote in a New York Daily News op-ed that the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the law
