Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recommended Wednesday an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law because of shortcomings. According to Duncan, more than 80,000 of 100,000 public schools in the U.S. could be classified as failing, based on the law.
Duncan gave the estimate based on analysis of testing trends and the impact of the law’s pass-fail school rating system. Duncan told Congress that some of the country’s best-run schools would likely fail the No Child Left Behind fast-rising standardized testing targets.
While some experts challenged Duncan’s projection, educators said the secretary’s statement confirms their conclusion that the average American public school will never reach the standards in the law, introduced by President George W. Bush and passed in 2002, that aimed math and reading proficiency for all students by 2014.
The law requires all public schools to hold yearly testing of reading and math skills from third to eighth grades and once in high school. Average results for all students and results by ethnic groups and other criteria must be published. States were mandated to outline their statistical paths for the next 12 years.
Duncan stressed the law is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed this year, otherwise he forecast 82 percent of the schools could miss testing targets. That would be up from 37 percent in 2010.
Many educators have complained that they are unfairly penalized even if only few of their students perform poorly. The law placed a school on probation if students from any ethnic groups miss the targets. Schools that miss targets for two straight years are classified as “needing improvement” and face sanctions such as staff changes or shutdowns.
President Barack Obama favored loosening accountability rules for most schools, but tightening regulations for the lowest performers. Although Obama made public his recommendation in 2010, Congress has not acted on the president’s proposal although a substantial number of key Republic and Democratic legislators agree the law is due for amendment.
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