No Child Left Behind’s successor, smartly written, can make impact - by Marshall (Mike) Smith
If you had $23 billion a year dedicated to improving low-income children’s education and addressing a wide variety of other congressionally negotiated purposes, what would you do?
This is the question Congress should be asking when its members finally sit down to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Instead, however, it’s more likely that Congress will simply tinker around the edges in hopes of “fixing” the ESEA — also known today as the No Child Left Behind Act — rather than transforming it.
The basic provisions of Title I, the ESEA’s largest program — providing more than $14 billion a year to more than 54,000 schools and 23 million students — have barely changed in almost a half-century. The program has been an untouchable symbol of the nation’s [...]
‘Qualities of mind and heart’ - by Kathryn Baron
For nearly two-and-a-half centuries Americans have fought and died to protect the nation’s fragile democracy. From the earliest days of the Union, the founding fathers recognized that maintaining freedom came with a cost and with a responsibility to ensure an educated citizenry. President John F. Kennedy reaffirmed that conviction on June 6, 1963, in his commencement [...]