What can NCLB do for teens?
No Child Left Behind can be expanded to include high schools. NCLB is largely about grades three through eight, and we are seeing the biggest increases in those grades. But high schools still aren’t terribly accountable, and we don’t have a lot of information about what is wrong and what to do. But with more assessment information with disaggregated data, we can fix that. And we can get more minority students completing high school in four years. Do you think there is too much emphasis on sports in high school instead of academics or even the arts? Sometimes I think we glorify sports. There is nothing wrong with that, but we ought to at least give equal treatment to academic achievement. Why do you think art and music programs are the first to be cut during a budget crisis when many believe that these are important learning experiences that clearly affect other disciplines? Well, again, these are not decisions made at the federal level. But I reject the assumption that we cannot teac
