A lot of this has to do with Obama allowing states to waiver out of the No Child Left Behind program, effectively repealing it, which is for the better.
No Child Left Behind pretty much forced teachers into focusing on the lowest common denominator, as the objective was to have 100% pass rating by 2014 or 2015 for all students, and federal monies were tied to that objective.
As we can pretty much all attest to, 100% metric on anything is effectively ridiculous as a required hurdle. While certainly not a bad ideal, 100% is practically impossible.
As a one-time "gifted student", who eventually grew bored of traditional education because there was nobody to challenge me, and it wasn't until I got into technology as a career that my desire to learn was rekindled.
As a parent, I routinely try to find things that my daughter is interested in, even if it seems nonsensical, and try to apply deeper-learning techniques to it, if only to stoke the thirst for knowledge that I hope she never loses.
Surprisingly my state (the supermajority leftist CA) has not waived NCLB [1]. I have no idea what "costs" it would entail, but I see no reason why organization would agree to ludicrously unachievable goals like 100% passage rates - unless folks in that organization wanted it to fail (for political purposes).
As I understand it, the only 'cost' to getting a waiver is requesting it (and perhaps assisting with the 'period of review').
That said, I know that there were 'windows' in which to request the waiver, and it's possible that for whatever reason, CA wasn't able to get the paperwork ready in time for the last window?
It's also possibly related to political objectives, but at the same time, Obama is trying to get states away from NCLB, and CA is super liberal, so you'd think they'd have been the first to sign up?
No Child Left Behind pretty much forced teachers into focusing on the lowest common denominator, as the objective was to have 100% pass rating by 2014 or 2015 for all students, and federal monies were tied to that objective.
As we can pretty much all attest to, 100% metric on anything is effectively ridiculous as a required hurdle. While certainly not a bad ideal, 100% is practically impossible.
As a one-time "gifted student", who eventually grew bored of traditional education because there was nobody to challenge me, and it wasn't until I got into technology as a career that my desire to learn was rekindled.
As a parent, I routinely try to find things that my daughter is interested in, even if it seems nonsensical, and try to apply deeper-learning techniques to it, if only to stoke the thirst for knowledge that I hope she never loses.