Obama on No Child Left Behind (continued)

In 2006, the American Federation of Teacher’s (AFT) recommendations to improve NCLB focused on the following four areas:

• Assessment and Accountability
• School Improvement Interventions
• Staffing Schools
• Funding and Systemwide Accountability

How many of these recommended improvements will be made is unknown. “NCLB is mostly going to play out in Congress,” Thibault says. “People had hoped it would be at the top of the agenda, but obviously with the economic meltdown, it slid down the agenda.”

Necessary reforms aside, NCLB has had some positive outcomes. “It certainly raised the level of public awareness and opened the doors for a lot of healthy dialogue about what needs to happen in public education,” Reed says. “The recognition at the national level that there are inequities in the educational opportunities was incredibly important.”

It’s critical, Reed says, to recognize that all children can learn and to have some kind of accountability measure to require that we separate data pertaining to student learning. “With some major tweaking and shuffling of the procedures to support the priorities, NCLB could be a good foundation,” Reed says. “Especially in light of its bipartisan support.”

Chavez agrees that though NCLB has not been entirely successful, it represents progress in the right direction. “All you have to do is look at the data to see that there have already been a lot of improvements,” Chavez says.

And parents and educators across the country will no doubt be waiting anxiously to find out the future of this legislation.

What are Obama's other plans for education? Check out Obama on College Funding, Obama on Early Childhood Education, Obama on School Choice, Obama on Math, Science, and Tech Education, and Obama on Teacher Recruitment and Retention.