"No Child" Law Relaxed for Some States

Requirements under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Law will be relaxed for certain states, allowing them to differentiate between schools with chronic underperformance problems and those that are only lagging slightly, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced this week. The Department of Education states that the new "differentiated accountability" model "will allow states to target resources and interventions to those schools most in need of intensive interventions and significant reform." The New York Times reports that many states inflate their high school graduation rates when reporting to the federal government under NCLB, masking the fact that nationwide each year, only around 70 percent of students who begin high school will graduate in four years. The NCLB law, enacted in 2002, was designed to bring all students in the U.S. to math and reading proficiency by 2014.

• U.S. Department of Education Press Release
• No Child Left Behind (U.S. Dept. of Ed.)
• States to Get Leeway on School Sanctions (Associated Press)
• States' Data Obscure How Few Finish High School (N.Y. Times)
• Education and the Law (FindLaw)