Dire prediction about NCLB was WAY off

Education Week reports (subscription?) that the Washington, DC based Center on Education Policy (CEP) claims US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s prediction that 82 percent of our schools would fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress last year was way off.

Per the CEP’s report, the real NCLB failure rate was much lower, only 48 percent for the 2010-11 school term. That is only two points higher than the CEP-reported rate for 2010.In Kentucky, the state's 2011 NCLB report shows that 42.6 percent of all our schools made their goals, so 57.4 percent did not make all of their targets under NCLB. That’s not terribly out of line with the CEP nationwide number.

In any event – claiming the NCLB education law is too stringent – Duncan pushed his very high 82 percent figure as justification for issuing an invitation to states to request waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Kentucky is one of the states trying to take advantage of that waiver process.

If the CEP comments bear out (Note: I’ve been critical of some of their work in the past), the serious discrepancy between Duncan’s number and reality might stimulate Congress to get more aggressive about blocking the proposed waivers until NCLB finally gets a rewrite.