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By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/09/education-secretary-82-of-us-public-schools-may-fail-this-year/
In testimony to Congress Wednesday, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82 percent of public schools could "fail" the government's "No Child Left Behind" standards.
"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," he said, according to a transcript provided by the Department of Education.
"This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed," Duncan added. "We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk."
Last year, just 32 percent of schools were failing the government's rigorous testing standards.
Duncan was speaking to the House Education and Work Force Committee.
The education policies, passed by the Bush administration in 2002, set a number of highly unrealistic deadlines and requirements, and tied school funding to achieving those goals.
Critics have argued the reforms changed schools from centers of learning to testing factories, increasingly irrelevant to students and communities. Increasingly, even Republicans have come to agree that the policies are largely broken.
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