Labeled a big government president from Day 1, President
Obama has taken steps to unleash states from the “burdensome mandates” of No
Child Left Behind (NCLB), a George W. Bush policy that has largely been deemed
a failure countrywide.[1]
Now Virginia will join a host of other
states that “have been granted relief” from some of the principle requirements
of NCLB.[2]
24 U.S. states have now been given waivers to NCLB.
The law, among other requirements, required all students to
be skillful in reading and math in 2014.[3]
The result of NCLB turned out to be a burdensome host of federal requirements
that teachers and students alike found difficult to put into practice and
achieve.
It should have made sense to a Bush-administration that
rhetorically paid homage to the idea of local government as the best means of building and carrying out
policy that federal mandates would fall flat.
Critics of NCLB lamented the fact
that teachers were encouraged to “teach the test”, leading schools to narrow
the materials being taught.[4]
Thus, what was a laudable goal, to bring America’s schools
and our children up to world-class levels of education, in many cases had an
opposite and stifling effect.
NCLB constituted a swing from a largely state-based to a
largely-federal based standard of education that defied reasonable lessons of
history: the best policy is usually found somewhere in the middle of two
extremes.
The irony shouldn’t be lost that a supposedly “socialist”
president, that is President Obama, has moved to give states back their ability
to teach students as long as each state sets tangible methods for achieving
student academic progress.[5]
NCLB should serve as
another illustration that in order for America to move forward, it must be
willing to work with each of its diverse parts to strive for local solutions
that achieve national ends.
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