Hallelujah! Kinda... NCLB Whittled Down Again.

Well, now. Good news for a change. The horribly structured and absolutely Draconian NCLB (No Child Left Behind, or as I like too call it, Never Create Legislation Backwards) Law, GW's educational legacy, has lost a few more teeth. According to New York Times today, two more states are receiving waivers exempting them from the guts of the Law. This brings the total number of states exempt from this fiasco too 26! Now, my math ain't that good, but isn't that more than half the country?

Quote from the article:

“The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?” said Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

While I applaud the waivers as a signal that the Administration is finally waking up to the Dr Seussian world depicted by NCLB, it is sort of looking at things like a band-aid is all you need after being trampled by a herd of rabid buffalo. Another quote:

“It is another example to me of how we’re not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today,” Mr. Starr [Joshua Starr, superintendent of the Montgomery County schools in Maryland] said. “I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan,” he added, referring to the secretary of education, “but it’s just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic.”