Education Trust Offers NCLB Renewal Plan

Group has advocated keeping accountability strong under the law.

Congress should provide incentives for states to ratchet up their education standards and should focus federal resources on disadvantaged students in underperforming schools when it renews the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, the Education Trust said last week.

Those principles set the recommendations of the Washington-based research and advocacy group, which seeks to improve the education of low-income and minority students, apart from other reauthorization proposals put forth in recent weeks that would soften the federal school law, the Education Trust contends. Such proposals include a bill sponsored by a group of Republicans in Congress that would allow states to opt out of the NCLB law’s accountability system.

“Most of [the recommendations submitted for the reauthorization] say they are about fixing problems, but are essentially about weakening the law, arguing that it asks too much from schools. Our response to that is that’s exactly wrong,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust. “Instead of asking less from schools, Congress needs to ask for more, but this time it’s very important that Congress provide more and better supports,...