The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted Tuesday to request a waiver from No Child Left Behind guidelines, as officials said that they were not reasonable.
Former President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in 2002, which focuses on students in public schools from kindergarten through high school, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website. Former U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, from Massachusetts, co-sponsored the act.
The government supports schools through federal grants, and has the right to intervene if school do not achieve adequate standardized test scores. Parents and guardians may have the right to transfer their children out of schools that do not meet adequate yearly progress, or AYP, according to the site.
The State Education Board voted 8-0 in support of the bid for an appeal.
“The federal system demands perfection. It expects every school and district to get 100 percent of its students proficient,” said education commissioner Mitchell Chester, in an interview with The Boston Globe. “Perfection is just not reasonable.”
The Bay State joins about 40 other states looking to apply for a waiver from the law.
If accepted, Mass. would not have to achieve 100 percent proficiency, as set by the federal education act. The Mass. Comprehensive Assessment System or MCAS, is the standardized test used throughout the state to help determine proficiency.
State education officials reported that 82 percent of Mass. schools and 91 percent of Mass. school districts failed to meet standards in the 2010 – 11 school year, but Chester said that results were “absolutely misleading,” according to the article in The Globe.
“It’s been shown that adequate yearly progress is a flawed measure,” said Gov. Deval Patrick in an interview with The Globe. “We need to have measures that actually capture what it is we are doing so that we can make adjustments in accordance with that reality and that part of No Child Left Behind is just not working.”
Last week, a Senate committee voted to forward a bill to the Senate, which would revise No Child Left Behind’s current academic achievement requirements.
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