Marcus Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argues in today's LA Times that since states continue to lower the academic bar for students, amendments should be made to No Child Left Behind. Changes allowing for uniform, stringent testing that would develop higher standards for public schools need to be created, Winters writes.
From the Op-ed:
A recent federal study noted that 15 states lowered at least one of their proficiency standards in math and reading between 2005 and 2007.
And there's more:
The law punishes a school when too few of its students meet math and reading proficiency targets each year. But the law has a gaping loophole: States get to define proficiency. A state can thus meet the law's targets by defining proficiency down; toughening its standards, by contrast, handicaps its ability to meet the federal requirements.
Of course, low standards have their own appeal. The lower the standard, the more students surpass it. State governments love to tell constituents that students are doing great on standardized exams; the public usually just assumes that the criteria used on those exams are meaningful.We could make better progress toward an effective testing regime if we changed our goal from uniform national standards to high state standards, which two simple amendments to No Child Left Behind could help bring about.
The Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank based in New York City.
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