An independent assessment of how public schools are performing under the No Child Left Behind law has found nearly half of them are failing to perform as required—a number that’s significantly lower than the total claimed by the Obama administration, which wanted to make changes to the Bush-era legislation.
Last spring, President Barack Obama and Education Secretary
Arne Duncan asserted that 82% of public schools were flunking under No Child Left Behind.
Schools are deemed as failing if they fail to raise student reading and math scores enough to match testing targets set by their states.
Democrat Jack Jennings, president of the CEP, told The New York Times that he didn’t know why the administration’s estimate “was so far off.” He added: “Obviously they didn’t use the right methodology.”
Margaret Spellings, Bush’s education secretary, said in March that Obama and Duncan deliberately exaggerated projections of failing schools in order to build support for rewriting the law. “They’re overstating the numbers to make a political point for reauthorization,” Spellings said.
In response to questions about the discrepancy between his department’s numbers and those of the CEP, Duncan said. “Whether it’s 50%, 80% or 100% of schools being incorrectly labeled as failing, one thing is clear: No Child Left Behind is broken.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
No More “No Child Left Behind” (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)