Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Local Newscast
Hear the latest from the WRKF/WWNO Newsroom.

“No Child Left Behind” May Be Left Behind

Congress is now talking about repealing “No Child Left Behind”, the federal education policy requiring states to administer standardized tests annually. Louisiana House education Committee chairman Steve Carter is taking the possibility in stride.

“Senator Appel (chair of the Louisiana Senate Education Committee) and I visited with Lamar Alexander’s staff, so we sorta knew this was coming,” Carter said.

Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, chairs the U.S. Senate Education Committee. One of his goals is reducing the federal requirements that have morphed into near-constant standardized testing in Louisiana and many other states. Carter isn’t sure that’s the problem—or the solution.

“Do we test too much? That’s a good question. Possibly we do. But in order to determine where we are and how we’re doing, we have to have some measuring device,” Carter observed.

“No Child Left Behind”, was made federal law in 2002. In addition to the testing requirements, it mandates that schools must show steady upward progress in math and English scores for each grade level. In Louisiana, students’ scores have become the basis for how teachers, schools and districts are all ranked—and ultimately paid. Think about a second grader. That’s a lot riding on a 7-year-old’s little shoulders.

Still, Carter believes in the way the system is working now.

“Kids are the most important thing—in my opinion—that we have going for us. We have to ensure that they have a chance to progress,” Carter explains.

But Louisiana Federation of Teachers president Steve Monaghan says he’s glad to see some officials finally coming to their senses about all this testing.

“Before we had assessments, we had assumptions that there were children being ‘left behind’,” Monaghan reflects. “Over the course of the past 13 years or so, it’s been about ‘test, baby, test.’ Parents, teachers, politicians are all starting to align in recognizing that we’ve gone too far.”

In Washington, D.C., Congress is considering limiting required testing to certain “benchmark” grade levels, and no longer tying federal education funding to rankings resulting from the tests. Monaghan finds that encouraging.

“I’m hearing people talk about ‘educating the whole child’ again,” Monaghan observes. “Isn’t that what we were supposed to be doing all along?”