Competent educators do not educate from the center

The nightmare that was No Child Left Behind, all it did in California was add more and more to the pension rolls.  The state school system was frigged for 10 years.  Here we see Obama clueless about education.

AEI: Ultimately, NCLB proved to be remarkably prescriptive about how states would measure school performance and what states would do to schools deemed “in need of improvement.” Absurdly, NCLB required that 100% of the nation’s children be “proficient” in reading and math by 2014, with mandated consequences for schools that missed the bar.

Washington proved to be fairly good at transparency — at requiring states to regularly test, disaggregate results, and report performance. By requiring states to test in the same subjects and grades, Congress created a framework for public transparency. When it came to judging performance and trying to make schools improve, however, Uncle Sam was ill-equipped for the job. Crafting a national law that can apply to 100,000 schools in 50 states makes for clumsy metrics and whimsical, pie-in-the-sky targets.

Indeed, NCLB’s unfortunate legacy included allowing the Obama administration to dictate K-12 policy via quid pro quo waivers granted to states desperate to escape NCLB’s 100% proficiency mandate — or else label most of their public schools as failures. The Secretary of Education released dozens of states from NCLB’s fantasy targets if — and only if — they promised to pursue Obama priorities. In this way, the Obama administration helped turn the Common Core into a divisive distraction and poisoned new teacher evaluation systems by forcing states to hurriedly implement not-ready-for-primetime schemes on a politically determined timetable.