Is NCLB an "unfunded mandate"?
Education and political circles are buzzing with talk of the unfair burdens that Congress has allegedly heaped upon states and districts via the No Child Left Behind Act.
Education and political circles are buzzing with talk of the unfair burdens that Congress has allegedly heaped upon states and districts via the No Child Left Behind Act.
This week, California Education Secretary Richard Riordan introduced a plan that would cede control over a school's administration and budget to its principal, taking it away from the central office administration. A hearty thumbs-up for this fine proposal, but now we learn that some principals would just as soon have the buck stop with someone else.
Last week, we reported that the Utah House Education Committee sent a bill to the floor barring state schools from "any further participation in the No Child Left Behind Act." (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=133#1656 for background info.) Now it seems that legislators have decided that, while they
Jack Jennings, Center on Education PolicyJanuary 2003
Brian Stecher and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, editorsRAND Education2004
Over the course of the past several years, education policy makers have increasingly looked to non-traditional education reforms as means both of correcting traditional public education inequities and of improving the state of education overall. In Florida, one of the first states to implement statewide accountability and reform measures, the results have been encouraging.
We're all for civics in our schools but this version is outrageous. Next week, schools in the two big districts in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., Montgomery and Prince George's counties, will close two hours early so their students and teachers can attend a rally in the state capital to protest planned cuts in the state education budget.
The Georgia Performance Standards, the new curriculum proposed by the Department of Education for the public schools of Georgia, is a giant step forward for students and teachers in the Peachtree State.
Two articles put us in mind of the old but trusty clich??, it's all about the kids. In the Washington Post, Bruce Fuller of UC-Berkeley offers a few suggestions for fixes to No Child Left Behind, some of which strike us as sensible.
Since the adoption of No Child Left Behind two years ago, several states have threatened to reject federal Title I money so they can sidestep the new law's accountability provisions.