NCLB 10 years on

As we have just passed the 10 year mark of the existence of NCLB, there have been a number of articles written about the law and its affects.
Diane Ravitch shares her thoughts about the "wreckage" the law has left in it's wake, including this nugget:

"In Massachusetts, the nation's highest-performing state by far on NAEP, 81 percent of the schools failed to make AYP. But in lower-performing Louisiana, only 22 percent of the schools did not make AYP. Yet, when you compare the same two states on NAEP, 51 percent of 4th graders in Massachusetts are rated proficient, compared with 23 percent in Louisiana. In 8th grade, again, twice as many students in Massachusetts are proficient compared with Louisiana, yet Massachusetts has nearly four times as many allegedly "failing" schools! This is crazy."

There is also news on the NCLB waiver front. States are starting to become more skeptical of the scheme as there is still concerns about the strings that are attached to the waivers and questions about what a new NCLB law may look like. We tackled those issues here and here. How will swapping one bad policy for another bad policy help our students and educators achieve greater success in the classroom? This law may be haunting us for years to come.