No Child Left Behind stalled, But Still Armed and Dangerous

[Francis Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

NCLB Stalled, But Still Armed and Dangerous
by Stan Karp
 November 17, 2007

Rethinking Schools
George Miller is not making adequate yearly progress. Neither is Ted Kennedy.

As a result, reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law
has been left behind, at least for now. Last month, Rep. Miller
(D-Calif.) and Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the two main Democratic
co-sponsors of the original legislation and the key congressional
committee chairs pushing for its renewal, conceded that the prospects
of passing a reauthorization bill in 2007 had faded. Prospects for
2008 are not looking good either. But while the bipartisan consensus
that passed NCLB in 2001 has fragmented, the old, unimproved version
of the law is not going away anytime soon, and a better one is nowhere
on the horizon. This means NCLB's "test and punish" approach to
education reform will continue to abuse schools across the country and
its impact will worsen as increasingly unreachable test score targets
and more drastic penalties kick in.

The law technically expired on Sept. 30, but was automatically renewed
for one year. Congressional committee work on House and Senate bills
will continue and efforts may still be made to move a reauthorization
bill next year. But election year politics makes passage unlikely.
This means the existing law is likely to be in place for at least
several more years. Based on NCLB's track record so far, the
consequences will be uniformly negative:

Full story:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=101&ItemID=14314



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