Posted by JM Ashby
The number of schools labeled as "failing" under the nation's No Child Left Behind Act could skyrocket dramatically this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday.
The Department of Education estimates the percentage of schools not meeting yearly targets for their students' proficiency in math and reading could jump from 37 to 82 percent as states raise standards in attempts to satisfy the law's mandates.
The 2002 law requires states to set targets aimed at having all students proficient in math and reading by 2014, a standard now viewed as wildly unrealistic.
"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," Duncan said in a statement. "This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed."
Of course most people who have experience in education have been saying the law is broken from the time it was implemented under former President Bush. And given the newly expected rate of failure, perhaps we shouldn't be having a firesale in cuts to education across the country?
Education, like infrastructure, should be an area where we can find bipartisan agreement, but I will be very impressed if improvements to the law can be made without certain freshman congressmen adding amendments to it that require teaching creationism alongside evolution, or teaching children the risks of getting an abortion.