Tag: No Child Left Behind

On the heels of news that the Obama administration has granted Colorado and 10 other states a waiver from the controversial requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind education law, Colorado Democratic Congressman Jared Polis introduced a House version of the Growth to Excellence Act (H.R. 3845) written by Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall. The bill would rework No Child Left Behind by granting greater authority to the states to develop student achievement and school accountability policies.

Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet today applauded the Obama administration decision to grant Colorado schools a waiver from the regulatory requirements of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. A former superintendent of the Denver Public School system, Bennet has long railed against the law as well-intended but comically flawed, the "biggest federal overreach ever in domestic policy," he said in a Senate floor speech last year.

Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate who edged out an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, has a long track record on education that includes standardized testing and accountability, charter schools and school vouchers.

Arguing the current standard for student assessment is a “perversity” that leads to a “race to the middle,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) successfully introduced an amendment that would better gauge student learning and knowledge. The proposal is part of the ongoing Senate debate over how to move the nation’s major education law of the land beyond No Child Left Behind.

Wednesday during the markup process to overhaul the main education law of the land, No Child Left Behind, senators on the HELP committee managed to discuss a little-known but crucial tweak to how poor and rich school districts share education funding.

Colorado US Senator Michael Bennet seems to love his job as much as he hates the senate. That is, he seems to relish the opportunity to make change that matters as much as he reviles the fact that senate rules and procedures and politics work against anyone making any kind of change at all. On Wednesday he said something just like that but more eloquently in a speech on the Senate floor, when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, invoked one of the chamber's myriad arcane rules to stall debate on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, legislation Bennet has helped write and that would remake the controversial "No Child Left Behind" act.

Writing on the opinion page of today's Washington Post, U.S. Senator from Colorado Michael Bennet tells a scary story about education in America.

A recent New York Times editorial points out that Race to the Top—U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s $4.3 billion tool for reform—has failed...

Colorado’s school districts—the place where state and local control have long reigned supreme—could soon become a lot more standardized. Monday, the Common Core Standards Initiative,...

Different assessment tests given to Colorado students by the state and federal governments disagree on how much students are learning. Many state tests are...