Can “No Child Left Behind” be Improved?
The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to reshape divisive provisions that encouraged instructors to teach to tests, narrowed the curriculum, and labeled one in three American schools as failing.
My view of how to improve the U.S. educational system is fundamentally different than President Obama’s. Rather than trying to fix NCLB, I would repeal it, along with every other federal intervention in education.
I cannot imagine that accountability, innovation, variety, experimentation, or cost-saving will ever flourish under a top-down approach run by the federal government. But all these things occur readily if customers – parents and their children – can choose which school they want to attend. Competition, not centralized control, is the answer.
Categories: My Blog
