BACKSLIDING ON SCHOOL REFORM: The latest effort in Congress to overhaul No Child Left Behind would only make things worse.
LA TIMES EDITORIAL | HTTP://LAT.MS/VMRPH2
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, flanked by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, and superintendent John Deasy, right, speaks at a news conference following a board meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School District, in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 11. (Reed Saxon / AP Photo)
5 Nov 2011 (Guy Fawkes Day) - When it comes to federal school reform, the overriding lesson is to be careful what you wish for. The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, ushered in an era of badly needed educational accountability, requiring schools to improve the lot of disadvantaged, black and Latino students who up to that point had been shorted academically in almost 
every way. But the law was so poorly written, so laden with rigid, arbitrary standards, that it had the effect of narrowing school