Darling-Hammond Deplores Failure of No Child Left Behind and Test-and-Punish
This morning, December 26, Linda Darling-Hammond spoke with Steve Inskseep on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. You can listen or read the transcript here.
Darling-Hammond is the Stanford University professor who was considered seriously by President Barack Obama back in 2008 to be his Secretary of Education, although Obama eventually went with his Chicago buddy, Arne Duncan.
Here Darling-Hammond looks at the failure—evident after ten years—of President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act that set the bar for test score passage so high that, without the waivers now being offered by Arne Duncan’s Department of Education, all schools in the United States would be rated a failure in 2014, the deadline the 2002 law established as the time all children across the United States would be proficient.
According to Darling-Hammond, No Child Left Behind has neither improved school achievement nor closed a