Thursday, December 22, 2011

2011 Education Front review: A look back at No Child's revision | The Education Front Blog | dallasnews.com

2011 Education Front review: A look back at No Child's revision | The Education Front Blog | dallasnews.com:

2011 Education Front review: A look back at No Child's revision

The second goal for the Education Front this year was tracking the rewriting of No Child Left Behind. Here's a brief look-back at that priority:

The Obama administration proposed some reforms, but Congress never could settle on a revision. As this year ended, everyone was still wrangling.

That was a good outcome. The ideas being proposed were not that helpful.

As I blogged back in September, it's fine to reconsider some parts of No Child. For example, "differentiated consequences" would show that schools did well with some students, but not with others. Better that kind of ranking than slapping the school with a poor grade if only some of the school's students failed their state exam.

But the proposals from the White House, which some were echoing in Congress, would not have helped schools. For example, the White House wanted the federal government to focus on the lowest performing campuses but