U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan Says 80 Percent of Schools in Country Fail to Meet Provisions of No Child Left Behind Act

08/18/11

The law, passed in 2001 under the Bush administration, requires schools which receive federal funding to give students a standardized test annually. A key provision of the Act requires students achieve a certain level of ''AYP'', or Adequate Yearly Progress. In other words, this year's students must score higher on the standardized test than the previous year's students. Failure to meet established AYP can result in loss of funding.


The AYP provision of NCLB has been harshly criticized over the years by many teachers, administrators and parents. The AYP yardstick is considered by many to be ill conceived at best, as it actually seems to result in tying the hands of the teachers and administrators trying to help students succeed by pigeonholing children's' potential, and holding them accountable to an illogical, and frankly, meaningless standard. Further, teachers and administrators are forced to invest time and resources into the implementation of NCLB, which robs the child in the end. In essence, the AYP yardstick does not give due allowance for students' individuality.

And failing to meet AYP packs a wallop. According to the law, some schools may be closed if a certain AYP isn't reached by 2014.

As a result, according to the August 15th greenbaypressgazette.com article, ''State schools looking into No Child Left Behind waivers'', Wisconsin, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia have, or plan to, contact the Obama administration about getting a waiver from certain NCLB provisions, per Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, an organization representing state education officials.

According to his August 8th ed.gov blog, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said: ''Our job is to support reform that is good for students at the state and local level. We need to get out of the way wherever we can. We need to be tight on the goals but loose on the means of achieving them - providing as much flexibility as possible, while maintaining meaningful accountability for improving student outcomes and closing achievement gaps.''

''The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) got it backwards - it was loose on the goals but tight on the means - and today it's forcing states into one-size-fits-all solutions that just don't work.''

However, that doesn't mean schools won't have to meet high standards. In an August 8^th press release at ed.gov, Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, was quoted as saying: ''With no clear path to a bipartisan bill in Congress, the President has directed us to move forward with an administrative process to provide flexibility within the law for states and districts that are willing to embrace reform.''

Changes to NCLB are expected to be announced in September, and, according to the same press release, will focus on, among other things, a ''targeted accountability system based on measuring annual student growth.''

David Zadnik, assistant school superintendent for the Green Bay School District was quoted as saying in the greenbaypressgazette.com article regarding the current AYP yardstick: ''It's difficult for me to see many schools meeting 100 percent proficiency. My impression is most schools wouldn't meet AYP. If almost every school doesn't make it, we have to evaluate whether it's valid.''

Under the current NCLB provisions, over 80 percent of the schools in the country will not meet AYP by the end of the upcoming school year, according to Duncan in the greenbaypressgazette.com article.

Wilhoit was also quoted as saying in the greenbaypressgazette.com article: ''It's getting extreme. It's getting to the point where the law really has limited credibility. People are looking around and making judgments, looking at schools that are now being identified as not making AYP. And they're saying, 'What's this school doing on the list?'''

Bang forehead here.

When the U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is quoting statistics of 80 percent of schools being unable to meet NCLB standards, the time has come to reform a law that has not only been seriously flawed since its inception, but is becoming debilitating to the nation's educational system. However, there is one huge caveat regarding the proposed reform. Congress has had the Obama administration's proposal to fix NCLB for 16 months. Is it perhaps unrealistic to think that great change, and great reform can come, in just one month, to a law that is clearly as far reaching, ingrained and convoluted as NCLB? The law deserves more than a fast, cursory fix, lest the nation's educational system gets 'left behind' yet again - in more ways than one.