Monthly blog by senior staff on public policy + updates.
Enter your email address.
Since No Child Left Behind took effect in 2001, tens of thousands of our country’s schools have been tagged “persistently low performing” and “in need of improvement.” Here in NYS, those names are poised to change to the less punitive “priority” and “focus” schools, if the waiver applied for last month is approved by the US Department of Education. Do the names matter?
The cynical point of view is that some of the fundamental critiques of NCLB—that it points a finger instead of lending a hand, and that it sets an impossible target of 100% student proficiency by 2014—were not taken seriously until they began adversely affecting high-performing schools in more affluent districts. But there is a bit more going on behind this waiver story—and it raises difficult questions about the role of the feds in education. Read more »
Congress is edging closer to passing legislation that restructures health insurance. The Senate and the House are debating compromise bills within their houses, after which a conference committee will seek to reconcile differences between them. With these details still under debate, we conclude our six part series on health reform with a few observations.