Try again, Secretary Duncan, it's not too late

03-23-2010

Column by Diane Ravitch/Education Week

Dear Deborah, The big event of early March was the release of President Obama's plan to revise No Child Left Behind. Although NCLB continues to have its defenders, the Obama administration rightly views it as a "toxic" brand. Perhaps if the Obama team had given more thought to why it became toxic, their own plan would be far better. While the administration has tried to distance itself from NCLB, the assumptions of its proposal continue to be firmly rooted in NCLB's philosophy of "measure and punish." NCLB's overemphasis on basic skills testing was harmful to schools across the nation, its results have been meager, and its utopian goal of 100 percent proficiency unleashed unrealistic expectations. No school district or state could hope to meet the law's utopian goal (except by dumbing down standards and tests). (more...)

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Try again, Secretary Duncan, it's not too late

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