Putting the Brakes on NCLB in Minnesota

By Michael Diedrich, Policy Associate, February 9, 2012 at 4:00 pm

On Thursday, we got the word that Minnesota is one of ten states to be officially granted a waiver from the federal government with regard to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). As the impossible 2014 deadline for universal mastery of math and reading tests gets closer, it's nice to be out from under that particular sword of Damocles.

As we've covered before, Minnesota is fortunate to have a state education commissioner who gets it. Commissioner Brenda Cassellius balances concern about the achievement gap with an understanding that simplistic, test-based approaches to closing it aren't the answer.

The waiver came with conditions to ensure that states maintain a focus on transparency and accountability. While not ideal, these conditions are still better than the deep flaws of the original law. They do, however, represent a dangerous precedent.

If federal education policy continues to be set by administration-determined waivers of bad law, it's only a matter of time before a more conservative education secretary sets conditions we can't honor in good faith. (When the waiver plan first came out, Rick Hess raised the terrifying specter of what the waiver conditions of Education Secretary Michele Bachmann would look like.)

Part of the problem is that, while everyone agrees NCLB is a bad law, the argument over what will replace it looks insoluble given our current congress. Conservative intransigence in the House of Representatives means that we're unlikely to see any legislation acceptable to progressives coming out of that body. At the same time, anything bipartisan coming out of the Senate (much less anything coming from the Obama administration) will almost certainly die a bitter death when it enters the House.

And so we're stuck in limbo. Let's just hope we haven't moved away from the sword of Damocles only to pick up the rock of Sisyphus.

Posted in Education | Related Topics: NCLB