Where is the Reform?

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan has declared that we should rebrand No Child Left Behind. The idea is important because it disassociates education reform from the Bush Administration and No Child Left Behind, which received lots of negative attention.

But where is the reform? It seems that the federal government is creating reform in the idea that the states must reform in order to receive the money. An editorial from The New York Times states:

"The stimulus package, including a $54 billion “stabilization” fund to protect schools against layoffs and budget cuts, is rightly framed to encourage compliance. States will need to create data collection systems that should ideally show how children perform year to year as well as how teachers affect student performance over time. States will also be required to improve academic standards as well as the notoriously weak tests now used to measure achievement — replacing, for instance, the pervasive fill-in-the-bubble tests with advanced assessments that better measure writing and thinking."

But how will we improve academic standards and the measurement of achievement? As many states' budgets suffer from the recession, it seems that the improvemtn of our schools is left in the hands of the states.

Full NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22sun2.html