United Liberty

So, it seems that 10 states, including my own Georgia, are being given “flexibility” by the White House regarding No Child Left Behind.  That’s just super.  The run down via Fox News:

The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval, according to an official.

Meanwhile, 28 other states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, “have indicated their intent to seek flexibility,” the official said.

No Child Left Behind requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Obama’s action strips away that fundamental requirement for those approved for flexibility, provided they offer a viable plan instead.

NCLB sounded like a good idea to a lot of folks, but there have been a ton of problems.  For one, it set up unrealistic goals and then punished schools that failed to meet them.  Sure, a few met them, but not all of them.  In addition, a result we’ve seen here in Georgia were cheating on tests designed to measure that performance in at least two school districts.  In Atlanta, the cheating was apparently part of a coordinated effort within the system.

However, in my own Dougherty County, we had something much different.  Priniples at many schools allegedly pressured teachers to cheat, thereby making the school’s overall test scores satisfactory.  This was found after apparently going on for years, meaning it’s entirely possible the problem is more widespread.

Education has a lot of problems, but there are a pile of possible solutions out there.  I’m not going to say all of them since there are a lot, but I do know that the top down approach hasn’t worked in this country yet.  While we have tried it for years, we have seen nothing but a less than stellar performance out of this model.

Ten states have needed to bail from NCLB.  More are expected to ask for that same “flexibility”.  However, Congress and the president could do all 50 states a big old favor and just say, “Forget it.  It wasn’t working anyways,” and then look at some real reform that will actually work.  Beleive it or not, there really are some free market principles that would probably do all that NCLB was supposed to do and more.

Of course, those reforms would require the federal government to give up power.  Figure the odds on that happening.