America the great? The following report from WSFA, "82 Percent of US Schools May Be Labeled 'Failing,'" suggests otherwise.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan estimates a staggering 82 percent of U.S. schools could be labeled as "failing" under the nation's No Child Left Behind Act this year, and he's urging lawmakers to rewrite the Bush-era act.
"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," said Duncan during testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The Education Department's calculations, released Wednesday, indicate that the number of schools not meeting targets will explode from 37 to 82 percent in 2011. Those schools will subsequently face sanctions up to closure.
"This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed," Duncan said. "We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk," Duncan continued.
No Child Left Behind requires all U.S. public schools to meet annual targets, called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), with the goal of making every student proficient in reading or language arts and math by 2014.
The Obama administration wants to reform NCLB so that it recognizes and rewards high-poverty schools and districts that show improvement based on progress and growth.
Some might find it ironic -- or sad, perhaps -- that authorities are seeking to undermine a program that assesses school quality using the same approach that helped to undermine the educational system in the first place.
"82% of schools may be failing" hmm. . . I wonder it there's any correlation with the fact that about 82% of American parents really don't give a sh!t about education. These same 82% blame lack of interest in learning and student behavioral problems on poor performance by teachers and school administrators.
Posted by: kwark | March 10, 2011 at 10:34 PM
In all endeavors, excellence is the product of
discipline and strong motivation,consumerism and
speculation has deleted that from the American culture.
Posted by: roger | March 12, 2011 at 02:49 PM