In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on the promise that his administration would oversee the rewriting of the expired No Child Left Behind Act. But four years later, education experts and legislators don’t see any end to the negotiations with and within Congress, the Huffington Post reports.
“The administration needs to figure out what they want,” said Charles Barone, a drafter of the 2002 law who now serves as legislative director at Democrats for Education Reform. “They’ve been hedgy.”
The sweeping No Child Left Behind Act, a Texas-grown product of the George W. Bush presidency, was roundly criticized as being too onerous and unrealistic in its expectations for student achievement: One hundred percent of students were supposed to perform at “proficient” levels on standardized tests by 2014. Even its creators acknowledge that the law, which expired 1,877 days ago in 2007, was never supposed to exist unmodified for as long as it has…