Major Education Reforms Part of Obama's Budget Proposal

Administration officials are not stating specifics yet, but expected changes include new ways to judge whether a school is succeeding or failing, and the elimination of the law's 2014 deadline to make every child academically proficient.

Schools struggle with definition of progress

	President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act withholds federal funding from districts that wont comply with its educational standards.

Enacted in 2001-2002 by President George W. Bush with strong Democratic support, NCLB -- as "No Child Left Behind" is often called -- aimed to identify failing schools, and close the achievement gap between rich, white students and poor and minority students.

NCLB mandated all schools set standards in math and reading and test yearly for progress toward those goals. The law requires scores of specific groups such as English language learners, special needs students and minorities to be broken out separately to monitor the achievement gap. By 2014, all schools are supposed to have all students performing at or above the standards.

Each year, students in grades 3 through 8 are tested and report cards, known as adequate yearly progress, or AYP, are publicized. Schools that do not make their annual achievement goals four years in a row must take "serious corrective action." This can include staff replacement, a new curriculum, school restructuring and eventually state takeovers or school shutdowns.

Complaints that NCLB puts too much emphasis on tests

	Critics of NCLB say testing takes time away from other subjects.

More than 30,000 schools have been branded as failing and many more are expected to be so by 2014.

But many teachers and parents complained that the high-stakes testing forced teachers to exchange creative lessons for test practice and teaching strategies for taking tests.

Many school administrators complained that the tests scores did not tell a complete story and argued for a more nuanced definition of progress.

Should there be a deadline for reform?

	Early in his first year, President Obama announced that he would make education one of his top priorities.

Under President Obama's proposal, a new accountability system would divide schools into more categories, offering recognition to those that are succeeding and providing new money to help improve or close failing schools. It would also do away with the 2014 deadline.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the current time line "a utopian goal," but not realistic.  
 
Not everyone agrees. Margaret Spellings, Bush's education secretary and an architect of NCLB, said, "I used to ask parents in the audience, 'How many of you want to wait until 2014 before your kids read on grade level?' Of course parents want their children on grade level right now, today. They don't want until 2014, and they certainly don't want to wait beyond that." 

Race to the Top

	Education Secretary Arne Duncan hopes to reform the nation's struggling public school system.

This is not the Obama administration's first steps toward educational reform. The "Race to the Top" program announced last year has states compete for more than $4 billion in stimulus money.

The Department of Education defines the project as a way to "reward states that have raised student performance in the past and have the capacity to accelerate achievement gains with innovative reforms."

However, some educators complained about the focus on competitive grants. Rural districts and children in the poorest parts of the country "do not have the capacity to compete for grants — unless you want to shift money from teachers to grant writers," Anne Bryant, the executive director of the National School Boards Association, said in a statement.

Race to the Top also encourages states to link teachers' salaries to student achievement and to replace state standards with nationwide core standards.

“What we’ve seen in far too many places under No Child Left Behind is that, due to political pressure, … states have dummied down standards [in] what we call a Race to the Bottom,” Mr. Duncan said in a conference call with reporters following the Feb. 1 release of the budget plan.