Obama Administration Begins No Child Left Behind Reform

Ariela Fleisig — August 8, 2011 – 5:48 pm | Barack Obama | Education Comments (0) Add a comment

The Obama Administration announced today that it will provide waivers for individual states to bypass certain parts of the No Child Left Behind Act, provided that they agree to the Obama Administration’s reforms.

White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes said:

America’s future competitiveness is being decided today, in classrooms across the nation. With no clear path to a bipartisan bill in Congress, the President has directed us to move forward with an administrative process to provide flexibility within the law for states and districts that are willing to embrace reform… [this process is] Not a pass on accountability. There will be a high bar for states seeking flexibility within the law. We’ll encourage all states to apply and each one should have a chance to succeed. But those that don’t will have to comply with No Child Left Behind’s requirements, until Congress enacts a law that will deliver change to all 50 states.

According to The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he is taking action because of ‘universal clamoring’ from officials in nearly every state, who say they cannot meet the unrealistic requirements of the nine-year-old federal education law.

‘The states are desperately asking for us to respond,’ Duncan said in a conference call with reporters Friday.

Layton wrote:

Administration officials said they will grant waivers to states that adopt standards designed to prepare high school graduates for college and careers, use a ‘flexible and targeted’ accountability system for educators based on student growth and make ‘robust use of data,’ among other things.

Any state can apply for a waiver, and its application will be reviewed by a panel of peers. The final decision falls to Duncan, who said he expects that successful states will receive waivers in the coming school year.

She also reported:

Most states are concerned about the law’s sharply escalating demands, culminating in the goal that 100 percent of students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014 or their schools will face serious sanctions, including the loss of federal aid.

Educators say that the pressure of trying to reach 100 percent proficiency has created an unhealthy focus on standardized tests, with continual drilling in the classroom and a narrowing of curriculum that excludes anything beyond math and reading. Some also blame the law for creating a warped atmosphere that led educators to allegedly rig test results in Atlanta, Baltimore and the District of Columbia.

The law’s weaknesses have undermined education reform, Duncan said. Since the law allows states to create their own standards and measures of proficiency, some have ‘dummied down’ standards to inflate test scores, Duncan said.

Click here for more information from the Department of Education.

Click here to read Layton’s full article in The Washington Post.

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