A Quiz on No Child Left Behind – Who Said What?

Recently, two highly recognizable, Washington DC-based education policymakers offered suggestions for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  One of these individuals is a well-known Republican; the other is a well-known Democrat.

Here’s a quiz. For each statement below, identify if it was suggested by the Democrat or the Republican.

Proficiency

a. Eliminate 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

b. Eliminate the unrealistic goal of 100% of students scoring at the proficient level by 2014

Standards

a.  Change state standards to make them more rigorous and consistent across states.

b.  Get rid of wildly discrepant state standards and cut scores that lead to non-comparable results and mean that a school’s fate depends more than anything else on what state it’s in.

Remedies

a.  Eliminate federally prescribed sanctions for schools that don’t meet AYP targets, and federal requirements for school choice and supplemental tutoring.

b.  Quit being far too prescriptive about what states/districts are supposed to do with/about/to their low performing schools (and districts), little of which then actually happens; the choice provisions aren’t working.

Student Assessment

a.  Stop disallowing use of “multiple measures” to determine AYP, leading to inordinate emphasis on reading and math skills; achievement “growth” should count, too—for all kids, not just those nearing proficiency.

b.  Change state assessments and improvement measures to align them with common standards, and cover a broader range of subjects, skills, and outcomes.

Low Performing Schools

a.  Stop identifying far too many schools as “needing improvement” rather than focusing on the most troubled.

b.  Add approaches for supporting and intervening in low performing schools

Highly Qualified Teachers

a.  Eliminate the current federal criteria for determining which teachers are highly qualified.

b.  Eliminate the highly qualified teachers section

Again, for each of the six sets of statements, decide which one, “a” or “b” was suggested by the Democrat and which one by the Republican. Come back in a couple of days to check your answers.

Who said bipartisanship in Washington was dead?

Bill Bushaw