The Department of Education estimates the percentage of schools not meeting yearly targets for their students’ proficiency in in math and reading could jump from 37 to 82 percent as states raise standards in attempts to satisfy the law’s mandates.
The 2002 law requires states to set targets aimed at having all students proficient in math and reading by 2014, a standard now viewed as wildly unrealistic.
Someone remind me why the federal government has oversight of a national education system again? Where is that in the Constitution?
I think the idea of uniformity in education is an interesting one but I am not so sure I support it in the context of a national set of standards. For one thing, the federal government seems to be successful in getting teachers to cheat on test scores but less successful in breeding a culture that encourages students to excel.
Parents should be the primary decision makers when it comes to educating their children. After parents, local communities should have a say. States, and not the federal government should make the final decisions about public education. Every state should allow for an ‘opt-out’ for parents that want to educate their children privately. If this system was in place education would cost a lot less and those who actually valued learning would have a lot more options.
When 82 percent of students are failing to meet the standards either the standards are completely broken or the culture is. Clearly, something is broken in American education. How do we fix it? I would rather have 50 grand experiments going on so that parents have 50 opportunities to vote with their feet and allow for some healthy competition for kids’ minds. Let the states that want to wallow in ignorance do so – they will reap the consequences down the road.