Facing a federal
requirement that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014, the member-states in the U.S. rushed to apply for waivers in 2011 and 2012. In 2010, 38
percent of the schools had failed to meet their goals for annual progress toward
the 2014 goal. The U.S. Secretary of Education thought that figure could soar
to 80 percent. When a school fails to meet such goals, the No Child Left Behind
law requires “a series of interventions by the district and the state that can
culminate in a state takeover. With so many schools failing, “that threatened
to create an impossible burden on states and districts,” according to Chester
Finn, director of an institute that studies education.[1] The waivers did not come
without strings, however. The Obama administration pushed the governments to
measure teacher performance, and put increased emphasis on low-performing
groups as well as on the lowest-performing schools.
The full essay is at "No State Left Behind."
1. Richard
Perez-Pena, “Waivers for 8 More States from ‘No Child Left Behind,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.
