Can Obama, Congress meet minds to revamp No Child Left Behind?

[Dulcinea]

President Obama campaigned on bringing common-sense changes to the federal role in K-12 education. But even with a Democratic-controlled Congress, efforts toward a long-overdue revision of No Child Left Behind made little headway.

NCLB's goals are widely praised: improve education and close the gaps in opportunity and achievement faced by low-income and minority students.

But the law's methods have proven unpopular. Nine years after complex testing and accountability systems became the new normal in American schools, the question looms: Can the Obama administration rally a bipartisan group of lawmakers to agree on key changes to the law before election cycle gridlock threatens to set in?

School administrators hope so. They call the current goal – 100 percent of students reaching math and reading targets by 2014 – unrealistic. They hope a new law would roll back the strict requirements and timelines that characterize NCLB. And state and local school leaders need more choices about how best to improve achievement, say groups such as the National School Boards Association.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0120/Can-Obama-Congress-meet-minds-to-revamp-No-Child-Left-Behind