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U.S. Education Department Announces Proposed Regulations to Strengthen No Child Left Behind |
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From Education Newsfeed: U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today announced proposed new regulations to strengthen and clarify No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The proposed regulations focus on improved accountability and transparency, uniform and disaggregated graduation rates and improved parental notification for Supplemental Education Services and public school choice. "I'm proposing new policy tools that will give families lifelines---and empower educators to create dramatic improvement," said Secretary Spellings. Several of the proposed regulations seek to clarify elements of the law that demand school systems be accountable for results and transparent in their reporting to parents and the public, including requiring that states publish data from the Nation's Report Card alongside data from their own tests for students. The Secretary emphasized that measures of student academic achievement may include multiple types of questions and multiple assessments within a subject area. Building on the Department's growth model pilot program, the proposed regulations would outline the criteria that States must meet in order to incorporate individual student progress into the State's definition of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Schools in restructuring need the most significant intervention, and a recent study found that 40 percent of schools in restructuring did not implement any of the restructuring options under the law. Noting that, according to a recent study, 75 percent of high school students in Detroit public schools do not graduate on time, Secretary Spellings announced the Department would build on the work of the National Governor's Association to establish a uniform graduate rate that shows how many incoming freshman in a given high school graduate within four years.
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