The Dysfunctional Linking of Achievement and Race - Higher Education: For all its inadequacies, No Child Left Behind is based on a solemn premise — the belief that all children can learn. Children of color. Poor children. Children with disabilities. All of them. This powerful notion is embedded in the manner in which the law requires schools to report achievement data disaggregated among various demographic groups that have historically been left behind. No longer could schools hide yawning achievement gaps behind rosy overall stats that only told part of the story. And NCLB’s end-goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 represents the most powerful policy statement the federal government has ever made about the ability of schools to close these gaps.
Many states, however, have determined that universal proficiency is an unrealistic goal — at least based on the NCLB timeframe. In response, the Obama Administration has allowed states to apply for NCLB waivers if they set other “ambitious” goals for raising student achievement. So far, 34 states have been granted NCLB waivers, and the new goals set by many of them raise troubling questions.
