The Ongoing Struggle with NCLB
The New York Times has a great story this week about the plight of public schools fighting to meet the ever-more stringent standards of the No Child Left Behind act. They lead with some schools in East Los Angeles.
From Diana Jean Schemo's story:
"For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance.
But more than 1,000 of California’s 9,500 schools are branded chronic failures, and the numbers are growing. Barring revisions in the law, state officials predict that all 6,063 public schools serving poor students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014, when the law requires universal proficiency in math and reading.
“What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Paramo asked. “Shut down every school?”
Read the whole thing here