Can Obama’s budget rescue No Child Left Behind?
The controversial No Child Left Behind law is stuck in detention. States and teachers unions shake their fingers at it, complaining of impossible-to-meet standards, overreliance on student testing, and lack of funding. Eight years into the law, Congress has yet to reauthorize it. President Obama hopes to change that. His education budget calls for Congress to renew NCLB this year, and if it does, he will then propose $1 billion in added education spending for the states. It’s indicative of his overall approach to education reform – dangling carrots to encourage frozen bunnies to hop. To push lawmakers along, he’s also suggesting significant alterations to the law that the administration hopes will satisfy critics without sacrificing accountability for learning students. But is Mr. Obama trying to square a circle – an impossible task in Euclidean geometry? Can the critics be mollified and standards upheld? In the president’s favor, education reform is one area where Democrats and Republ
