NCLB’s 10th Anniversary No Cause For Celebration

By Sara Robertson No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law by former President George W. Bush 10 years ago this Sunday. NCLB changed the focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from emphasizing equal access and closing achievement gaps in education, to focusing on high stakes testing, labeling, and sanctions. NEA [...]

NEA State Leaders Lobby Senators on NCLB Changes

By Alain Jehlen With letters and phone calls pouring in from educators around the country and visits from 15 NEA state affiliate leaders, a key Senate committee this week began consideration of a bipartisan bill to change No Child Left Behind (NCLB). However, the debate stalled after less than two hours on Tuesday when Sen. Rand [...]

Congress Makes Progress on NCLB Overhaul

By Tim Walker After countless delays, the effort to revise the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) is gaining traction on Capitol Hill this week as a key Senate committee begins markup of a bipartisan bill. The bill, introduced last week by Senators Tom Harkin  (D-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) of the Senate Health, Education, [...]

NCLB Gets Curiouser and Curiouser

By Alain Jehlen Eighty-nine percent of Florida’s schools are subpar according to No Child Left Behind. But there’s a way thousands of Florida students can quickly become “proficient”: move to another state. These are just a few of the recent signs that Alice in Wonderland has come to America’s public schools as the 2014 deadline [...]

National Research Council Gives High-Stakes Testing an F

By Alain Jehlen The long experiment with incentives and test-based accountability has so far failed to boost student achievement. That’s the conclusion of a comprehensive examination of education research by the National Research Council , an arm of the National Academies of Science. “The available evidence does not give strong support for the use of test-based [...]

Education Groups Call for Relief from NCLB Mandates

By Alain Jehlen Three national education organizations, including the National Education Association (NEA), petitioned the Department of Education this week to use its regulatory powers to stop further harm to the nation’s public schools due to the so-called “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law. The law is overdue for revision and there is a growing [...]

Public Schools and Charter Schools: Who’s Leaving Kids Behind?

By Alain Jehlen Many political leaders and foundations are pushing charter schools as the key to closing achievement gaps. The U.S. Congress is preparing to take up changes in the so-called “No Child Left Behind” law, and turning more schools over to charter operators may be a feature of the overhaul. So let’s take a [...]

Report Calls For More Experienced Teachers in Low-Performing Schools

By Mary Ellen Flannery When school boards don’t create incentives for experienced, highly qualified teachers to teach in their poorest schools, the kids in those schools are denied the same resources and opportunities to learn that middle-class kids get every day, says a newly report from Appleseed, a national network of public interest justice centers. [...]

Kids on the Move

By Mary Ellen Flannery About 13 percent of American children, most of them poor, Black, or learning English, will switch schools four or more times by eighth grade – a record of disruption that almost certainly limits their opportunities to achieve, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The report, commissioned [...]

After-School Programs Prove Key to Closing Gaps

By Mary Ellen Flannery When the last bell rings at Van Buren Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the real “work” begins – that is, the after-school apprenticeships in fields as far-ranging as Mexican dance and community action. This is not school, plus two hours. It’s not the same books, desks and assignments but more [...]

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