U.S. to grant waivers for No Child Left Behind

Source: The Washington Post

With a growing number of states rebelling against the No Child Left Behind law and stalled efforts in Congress to reform it, the Obama administration says it will grant waivers to liberate states from a law that it considers dysfunctional.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he is taking action because of “universal clamoring” from officials in nearly every state, who say they cannot meet the unrealistic requirements of the nine-year-old federal education law.

“The states are desperately asking for us to respond,” Duncan said in a conference call with reporters Friday.

Duncan and Melody Barnes, President Obama’s domestic policy adviser, were short on specifics but said they would release details in September, when they will begin weighing applications from any state that wants to be exempted from No Child Left Behind.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-to-grant-waivers-for-no-child-left-behind/2011/08/05/gIQA52ra1I_story.html

NCLB = Yet another Bush policy the Obama administration seemed to love.

Just in case you haven't tired of keeping count.

Why is it still there? Is this a case of "when we get in power we are going to change that"?
People, we got there in '08. We're still there. Am I missing something?

I have a sister in education. She related to me she had hopes this NCLB thing was going to pass, it needed to pass for the betterment of all the kids. Well intended but wow, so what, like a game in play let's keep going here with something positive.

The so-called MBA president has been a fraud all of his life. He lied and used Daddy's power to get out of Vietnam. He then went to Midland, Texas started three small oil companies, they all failed. All were saved with investments from Daddy's friends. He then went to Arlington, Texas with the profits and became managing director of the Texas Rangers for $150K. A few years later the citizens were talked into paying for a new stadium; corporate welfare; which made him a rich man. By the way the surrounding area was supposed to be heavily developed to make the taxpayers whole. Never happened.

It's one reason Ted Kennedy backed it. It seemed reasonable. It was completely in line with what academics and humanists agreed were reasonable assumptions about how kids learn and how to get kids to learn.

It's not the first time that the assumptions were wrong. Thing is, the assumptions stay the same, the solutions keep changing. (Strikes me that this is iteration #4 or 5, and you'd think after the 2nd time somebody would say, "Hmmm ... our hypothesis makes bad predictions, perhaps our hypothesis is wrong."

It's only a matter of time before pretty much all schools fail to make AYP. That 100% target is a tough nut to crack--it means that in a school of 3000 kids, if 16 fail to pass the standardized test that the school fails. There will *always* be a handful of kids who just don't care.