A downgrade for "No Child Left Behind"?
State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.
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Critics say the benchmarks are unrealistic and brands schools as failures even if they make progress. Schools and districts where too few kids pass the tests for several years are subject to sanctions that can include firing teachers or closing the school entirely.
Through the waivers, schools will get some relief from looming deadlines to meet testing goals as long as they agree to embrace other kinds of education reforms such as raising standards, helping teachers and principals improve, and focusing on fixing the lowest performing schools.
No, the problem is not just that "the benchmarks are unrealistic." The whole concept of NCLB is Utopian nonsense, one of the very worst products of George W. Bush's fevered "compassionate conservatism" fantasy. The very idea that no one will be left behind runs counter to all of human history. Life sorts -- always has, always will. It's fine to have universal success as a goal, to be gotten as close to as possible. But to have it as official policy, and therefore eligible for billions of dollars to be wasted on it, is lunacy.
But waivers aren't the real answer, any more than they are to that other lunacy, P
