The Beginning of the End for No Child Left Behind

[babylonsister]

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/10/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-no-child-left-behind/

The Beginning of the End for No Child Left Behind
By Kayla Webley | @kaylawebley | February 10, 2012 | 87


President Obama granted 10 states relief from the strictest requirements of No Child Left Behind on Thursday, in a move he said combines “greater freedom with greater responsibility.” That freedom is provided in the form of a waiver that releases the states from having to meet targets education officials have long complained are too rigid and impossible to meet, including one key provision that required all students at public schools to be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

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The fact that all but one of the states that applied for waivers were successful suggests the Obama Administration is serious about ending many of the federal education standards ushered into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. The applications states submitted varied greatly in what they set out to do. Obama said that was the point: let states decide for themselves what is best, as long as they are setting the bar high. “The best ideas aren’t going to just come from here in Washington,” he said. “They’re going to come from cities and towns from all across America.”

Obama highlighted some of the goals and plans states outlined in their waiver applications. Massachusetts is aiming to cut the number of under-performing students in half over the next six years. Florida has set a goal to have its test scores rank among the top five states in the country. New Jersey is developing an early warning system to help reduce the number of dropouts. Colorado launched a website to allow teachers and parents to track student progress. Tennessee is creating a statewide school district.

These divergent plans signal an important shift in U.S. education policy. Before No Child Left Behind, education was essentially a state issue. As a result, some states did very well, while others fell behind. NCLB was designed to hold every state to the same standards, and in doing so, the law inserted the federal government into education in an unprecedented way.

Ten years later, the chorus of those who say it didn’t work—that the law is broken—has grown to a cacophony. The waivers are essentially the Obama Administration’s way of giving states another crack at it. If the feds couldn’t fix education, maybe the states can. Now that 10 of them have waivers — and with another 28 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico) set to apply on Feb. 21 — we’ll soon find out if they are up to the challenge.

[jody]

1. Given the findings in “Head Start Impact Study Final Report” should it also be killed?

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/reports/impact_study/executive_summary_final.pdf

Key Findings
The key findings are presented below. First, we present findings related to the primary questions about the average effect of Head Start as a whole. Next we present findings about subgroups of children. As described later in this summary, the subgroup findings should be viewed as secondary and exploratory as compared to the main impact findings that are considered primary as well as confirmatory.

Confirmatory Impact Findings

* * * * * * * * * * * *

However, the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole. Impacts at the end of kindergarten were scattered and are mentioned below only when they appear to be related to the 1st grade impacts.

o Cognitive Outcomes. By the end of 1st grade, only a single cognitive impact was found for each cohort. Head Start group children did significantly better on the PPVT (a vocabulary measure) for 4-year-olds and on the Woodcock-Johnson III test of Oral Comprehension for the 3-year-olds.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. headstart has been a dirty little secret for years.

Leave no childs' behind has done years of damage. Teaching to a test, and worse. But what would you expect from a Bush program?