Revamp of No Child Left Behind fails to satisfy some critics
Congress may soon pass major overhaul of controversial federal education law, but some say changes don't go far enough
Congress is expected within weeks to approve a rewrite of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has roiled public school districts across the country since it was passed nearly 14 years ago.
The new bill, a bipartisan compromise between the House and Senate that was released to the public on Monday, fails to allay the concerns of some of the law’s staunchest critics. They say the changes fall short of undoing what many call the law’s “test-and-punish” regime, in which student test scores are used to judge teachers and schools, with possible severe consequences that can include the closing of a school.
“Our schools can’t afford new mandates for high-stakes testing and opportunities for the private sector to profit off kids,” the Network for Public Education, a group of progressive education activists, said in a message to its supporters.
The new bill, renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act, would seem to answer some of the chief concerns of parents and educators across the political spectrum, mainly by rolling back the federal government’s power to dictate education policy to states — a practice that grew under the Obama administration. That’s why both the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers’ union, and the education policy director for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, have endorsed it.
The rewrite also has the support of the Center for American Progress, an organization associated with President Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The bill is also backed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — both key players behind the Common Core academic standards that have been criticized as developmentally inappropriate for children and overly prescriptive for teachers.
The Every Student Succeeds Act would prohibit the federal education secretary from pushing a particular set of academic standards such as the Common Core. It would also end any requirement for states to use student test scores in evaluating teachers, and it would maintain federal funding for poor schools.
The rewrite additionally prevents the federal government from ordering states to take drastic action against schools with low test scores, such as closing the schools, firing the staff or turning the schools over to privately run charter school operators.
With these changes, many of the biggest battles over education policy would shift from Washington, D.C., to the Revamp of No Child Left Behind | Al Jazeera America: