President Obama covered a lot of ground in his education speech on Tuesday. He made a brief mention of NCLB, providing a glimpse of his thinking on the law’s future. After outlining the need for common standards, Obama said:
That is what we'll help them do later this year—that what we're going to help them do later this year when we finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results.
Then, today, Arne Duncan told the House Budget Committee that he wants to make a fundamental shift in NCLB. On Politics K-12, my colleague Michele McNeil reports:
He said that NCLB got what's 'loose' and 'tight' backwards...that the law is very loose on the education goals but very tight on how schools should get there. He wants to flip that, he said, and be very clear that schools and districts and states need college-ready, internationally benchmarked academic standards.