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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Trib: Ending wasteful experiment

In his morning editorial in the Lewiston Tribune, Opinion Editor Marty Trillhaase bids good riddance to No Child Left Behind:

When No Child Left Behind was being launched, it wasn't all that hard to find teachers who viewed it as a not-too-subtle plot to destroy public schools. Over the top? Hysterical? Paranoid? Sure. But educators felt shut out of former President George W. Bush's 2002 response to faltering inner-city schools, which imposed:

  • An impossible goal - 100 percent of students be proficient in reading, math and English language arts by 2014.
  • An overly punitive system - Schools that failed to attain adequate yearly progress toward the proficiency goal would be labeled failures and face steadily escalating punishment, from bad publicity to a wholesale replacement of the teaching and administrative staff.
  • A testing minefield - Students would be subjected to testing in grades 3 though 8 and then again once in high school. It pressured schools to "teach to the test." It also tempted some to game the system. More here.


D.F. Oliveria
D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

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