The Hoover Institution
2007-11-28 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Given all the conflicting opinions and data, many question whether No Child Left Behind is an ambitious and worthwhile plan that has the potential to increase overall student proficiency on a national level, or no more than a well-intentioned, but ultimately unattainable, goal. Should NCLB be scrapped altogether?

A recent well-publicized poll indicates that less than 60 percent of Americans are in favor of the act, but that nearly 75 percent are in favor of national accountability standards — the setting of which the current act assigns to individual states.

Few Americans and educators believe that No Child Left Behind, in its current form, will produce anything close to 100 percent proficiency by 2014. Given widening skepticism, sweeping changes to NCLB are in order if it is to survive.

Exactly what changes should be implemented are unclear; with such profound differences of opinion over what exactly students should be learning and how to measure their progress, it remains, at least at the moment, impossible to determine No Child Left Behind’s future.

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