Confused About No Child Left Behind? A History of K-12 Education Regulation
By Calvin Wolf | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 2 hrs 54 mins ago
According to Time, President Barack Obama has exempted 10 states from the strictest requirements of No Child Left Behind, which many critics claim are impossible for schools to meet and place undue burdens on educators. NCLB became law in 2002 under President George W. Bush and has since become a thicket of controversy. Under NCLB, school districts are required to meet certainperformance standards. Proponents claim these performance standards help children by forcing districts to focus on teaching and curricula quality, while critics claim that the standards are too difficult to meet and harm educators' reputations and job security while creating a "kill-and-drill," "teach-to-the-test" mentality.
While NCLB has always been controversial, what is the background of education regulation in public schools? Here's a history provided by PBS.
1892: The National Education Association appoints a committee of 10 people to study school curriculum.
Early 1900s: Indiana, Massachusetts and Louisiana begin to track the progress of high school students.
1912: IQ tests are created, allowing objective measurements of student intelligence. Some 250,000 students will take the tests over the next 20 years.
1917: The federal government passes the Smith-Hughes Act, which provides funding for agriculture, trade, industrial and home economics education. It creates a foundation for vocational educational.
1918: The NEA publishes the "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," which argues schools
