States Struggle To Overhaul Schools After No Child Left Behind
Posted: 01/06/2014 3:46 pm EST
Some states are having trouble keeping the promises they made to get out from under the cumbersome No Child Left Behind Act, according to the Education Department.
The department on Monday released results from audits of the way six states -- New York, Delaware, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi and Connecticut -- are replacing No Child Left Behind. The technical reports found that some states, particularly Mississippi and Idaho, are running into trouble when it comes to putting into place federally mandated school overhauls. As a result, some schools might have to spend another year working to come into compliance.
In 2002, George W. Bush signed NCLB, a law that dramatically expanded the federal government's footprint in schools by mandating regular standardized testing and punishing schools based on those results. Teachers and politicians have criticized the law for using too blunt a measure to evaluate student learning. Under NCLB, nearly 100 percent of schools were supposed to be proficient in reading and math by 2014 -- a goal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called utopian.
NCLB expired in 2007, but states still have to abide by its requirements until another law replaces it. When Congress failed to rewrite the law by 2011, President Barack Obama and Duncan told states they had another option: If they agreed to certain reforms favored by the Obama administration, such as teacher evaluations that