No matter their political stripe, no one I know likes NCLB. Educators hate it because they have to teach to the test and schools can be flagged (and later punished) for matters out of their control- like how many students decide to skip the day of the test. And if you happen to have a bunch of kids new to the country who are still learning English and they fail the test, it fails the whole school. That doesn't make sense.

The tests don't seem to measure progress of individual students; instead they just seem to take snapshots of a particular group at a particular time. The federal government has had to contantly fix the program to try to make it work. Why would Minnesota let itself be kept hostage to a program no one believes is actually helping children?? (And if you think it is helping, please speak up, because I haven't heard an argument for the program).

The only argument I've heard for keeping NCLB is that Minnesota would lose federal dollars. Crazy how the federal government can bribe a state to actually do harm to its students.

If Minnesota is really about improving the education of our students, dumping NCLB should be worth the financial penalty (which some argue would be neglible because of the dollars wasted on implementing NCLB). If enough states say NO, maybe the federal government will finally scrap NCLB.

An even bigger question is why we let the federal gov. dictate at all how Minnesota educates its children. The state seems to do a much better job at this than other states. The federal programs (remember Outcome Based Education) only end up being scrapped later b/c they prove to be ineffective and too much of a one size fits all solution.

Wouldn't it be better to experiment with such concepts on a per state basis before mandating the whole nation follow them? I'm no educator, but that seems like a pretty common sense approach.

Well said Shannon. You will see no tears of regret from school leaders around the state.