Bush administration to give up to 10 states flexibility on parts of No Child Left Behind

This week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced some changes in enforcement of the federal No Child Left Behind law, saying the Department of Education "would relax the law’s provisions for some states, allowing them to distinguish schools with a few problems from those that need major surgery," reports Sam Dillon of The New York Times.

The new pilot program would "give up to 10 states permission to focus reform efforts on schools that are drastically underperforming and intervene less forcefully in schools that are raising the test scores of most students but struggling with one group, like the disabled, for instance," Dillon writes. No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2002, aimed to make all students proficient in math and reading by 2014, but as of now, 9,000 of the nation's 90,000 schools are failing to make the grade. Under this pilot program, individual states would have the final say on how to deal with schools that miss NCLB targets. (Read more)

Sen. Hillary Clinton released a statement supporting the increased flexibility for schools but said more needs to be done to fix struggling schools. "No Child Left Behind is a failed policy that needs fundamental overhaul – not tinkering around the edges," she said. "As President, I will work with Congress to end the No Child Left Behind Act, and put in its place a more sensible law that stops micromanaging our schools from the federal level and provides real support to struggling schools." While Sen. Barack Obama has also voiced his opposition to NCLB, his campaign did not comment on the pilot program.