Cross-posted at Education Week. The April 1st Washington Post carried an op-ed by Arne Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education titled, "People are saying education reform hasn't worked. Don't believe them." On April 10, Education Week announced the most recent results from the National Assessment of...
Cross-posted at Education Week The age of federally driven school accountability is now dead. Only traces of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind legislation, the Obama administration's signature education program Race to the Top and the waivers from No Child Left Behind that came with...
Cross-posted at Education Week The days have gotten shorter, the nights colder and longer and we once again find ourselves looking ahead to a new year. Before the flame of 2015 is fully extinguished, I wanted to provide readers with a look back on some of...
Cross-posted at Education Week Congress has contracted a rare case of bipartisanship in recent weeks and it now appears that the long-overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is imminent. In last week's blog, I argued that states should take advantage of the new...
Cross-posted at Education Week It looks now as though the Congress will reauthorize its latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. If it passes in the form that has been approved by the Congressional conference committee, it will provide a lot of latitude to...
Cross-posted at Education Week I find myself reading the news regarding the ESEA reauthorization with a certain gnashing of teeth. Fed up with what they see—legitimately—as all-consuming federal overreach, the Congress seeks to move the center of gravity back to the states. But it seems to...
Cross-posted at Education Week In several blogs that preceded this one, I have made the case that mandated annual testing of all students in the United States, when coupled with an accountability regime in which the data produced by those tests is used to make important...
Cross-posted at Education Week Two weeks ago, I published a blog post suggesting that some leaders of the civil rights community might want to reassess their support for annual testing in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Since then Kati Haycock and Jonah...
Cross-posted at Education Week There has been a great deal of heated debate about how to fix our nation's flawed accountability system and the law that created it, No Child Left Behind. On the one side are the administration and a coalition of civil rights groups...
Cross-posted at Education Week Prior to No Child Left Behind, the federal government had conceived of its role as providing aid to the states for a variety of purposes and enforcing civil rights law in the schools. There was broad agreement that these roles did not...