Knoxville News Sentinel Capitol correspondent Tom Humphrey is reporting that Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam is considering asking the federal government for a waiver for Tennessee from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. The reason for Haslam's desire is that the Governor believes that at the present time, most Tennessee schools would fail the requirements of the law. Governor Haslam doesn't appear to be alone in his desire, because Senator Lamar Alexander-who has made education the signature issue of his entire political career in this State-seems to be hinting that he may push for an exception as he currently serves on the working group examining No Child Left Behind. Bill Haslam's education reform agenda hasn't even had time to make a dent, and he is surely aware of the state of Tennessee schools, especially many of our rural schools.
On the one hand, asking to be exempted from No Child Left Behind could be a great thing for our education system. Of all of the laws passed as part of the Bush Administration's legislative packages, No Child Left Behind was by far this writer's least favorite. The law has been a case of smething that is well-intentioned, but which takes entirely too much control away from local school boards who understand the educational needs of their communities and the things their students need to concentrate on. By standardizing so much of the curriculum through testing measurements and standards, current federal law fails to take into account the unique educational situations in different parts of the country.
Not all of the "No Child Left Behind" national standards are bad measurements or poor indicators of how students in a given local school system should measure up, however. What does it say about how previous governments allowed our education sytem to be run that the Governor believes so few of Tennessee's primary and secondary schools could meet the current national standards?
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