History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
No Child Left Behind on steroids
- 08-26-2011
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Guest blog by William J. Mathis/Washington Post
The Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) plan for replacing the No Child Left Behind accountability system, hinted to be the recipe for states to win a waiver from the Education Department from the worst provisions of the law, not only retains the most ineffective pieces of NCLB but magnifies them. Contrary to all we have learned, it suggests to additional mandates and testing. Americans are now well aware of at least four main drawbacks of NCLB, none of which are remedied in the CCSSO plan: (a) the huge inequities in funding and opportunities to learn (b) the neglect of out-of-school and environmental factors, (c) an inordinate and unbalanced emphasis on testing which leads to narrowed and dumb-downed curriculum, and (d) the ineffectiveness of turnaround strategies. As longtime educator Larry Cuban has noted, despite 20 years of state-based and federal top-down accountability mandates, there is not a single example of a successful urban district reform generated by this type of scheme. (more...)
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