Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now

Senate votes to revise No Child Left Behind

Amy Scott Jul 17, 2015
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Senate votes to revise No Child Left Behind

Amy Scott Jul 17, 2015
HTML EMBED:
COPY

The Senate passed an overhaul of the federal No Child Left Behind act on Thursday. Annual testing will still be required in most grades, but the federal government will have less of a role in how those tests are used to hold schools accountable.

Unlike the version passed in the House earlier this month, the bill passed in the Senate had strong bipartisan support. Now negotiators will try to reconcile the two.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says part of the focus of reform should be eliminating redundancies in test taking for students.

Says Duncan, “I always remind people that when I led the Chicago public schools, we were taking the Illinois state test — which made sense — but for some reason, our students were also taking the Iowa tests, which didn’t make sense to me.”

He says flaws in No Child Left Behind had to do with where it placed its priorities: “What it got fundamentally wrong is it was very, very loose on goals — so you had 50 different states, 50 different standards — but very prescriptive on how you get there.”

Click the media player above to hear Marketplace’s Amy Scott in conversation with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

 

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.