Obama Budget Calls for Major Shifts on ESEA

The Obama administration is seeking to revamp the signature yardstick used to measure schools’ progress under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011 .

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Monday that the administration is still working out details on just how the new accountability system would work under a revamped ESEA, whose current version is the 8-year-old No Child Left Behind Act. He said that the Education Department has not yet determined whether it would keep in place the current law’s 2014 deadline for bringing all students to proficiency, or just how it wants to rework the current requirement that schools and districts make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, toward that proficiency target for all subgroups of students.

“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...