Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Support for increased expectations for schools is bipartisan and widespread

Anyone who thinks that increased expectations and more accountability for schools is just a fad that may go away, or is easily reversed in an election cycle, is most likely mistaken. A recent article by Alyson Klien posted in Education Week highlights this.

These are excerpts from the article:

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Education committee, is worried that the department isn't holding states' feet to the fire when it comes to monitoring graduation rates in states that have received waivers from parts of the No Child Left Behind Act.

In fact, Miller wrote Secretary of Education Arne Duncan a letter last Friday, saying, basically, that he's worried that states are trying to wiggle out of the graduation reporting regulations that former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings put in place just before she left office in 2008. Those rules required states to use a uniform metric for calculating grad rates.
...
Some members of Congress, including Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, see the entire waiver plan as the administration trampling on congressional authority, since Congress is ultimately supposed to make changes to the NCLB law.
...
A bunch of groups, ranging from the Alliance for the Excellent Education to the National Council of La Raza to the National PTA to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are also worried. They too sent Duncan a letter, on exactly the same day, echoing many of Miller's concerns. Read it here.

Click here to see full article

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