Duncan: No Child Left Behind is unworkable and must be changed

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has finally come to the same conclusion that teachers around the nation reached years ago: the No Child Left Behind Act is a recipe for disaster. It is set up to guarantee that schools appear to be failing and that teachers are at fault.

As reported here by the Washington Post's Nick Anderson, Duncan told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that the flawed law will soon stigmatize three quarters of American schools as failures.

Said Duncan, "This law is fundamentally broken, and we need to fix it, and fix it this year. The law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible and focused on the schools and students most at risk."

The act, passed in 2002 as former President George W. Bush's signature education initiative, has been heavily criticized for overemphasizing standardized tests and for its unreachable goal requiring all children to become proficient in math and reading.