Education

Democratic Candidates Want Better Tests for NCLB

February 25, 2008 1 min read
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How would NCLB change if a Democrat were in the Oval Office next year?

The Democratic candidates say they would continue holding schools accountable, but they would radically change the types of tests used to measure schools’ success, according to the rhetoric of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Sen. Obama wants tests that “track student progress for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner,” his campaign Web site says. Sen. Clinton believes that tests should provide “individualized accountability based on how [individual] students do,” she said at a New Hampshire campaign event. She also promises to “end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind,” her campaign Web site says.

But neither one says whether they would maintain the law’s requirement that all students be assessed in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

You can read about it in Democrats’ K-12 Views Differ, Subtly. In the YouTube videos below, you can watch each candidate answer an NCLB question.

A version of this news article first appeared in the NCLB: Act II blog.

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