Get Congress out of the classroom

  In this New York Times opinion piece, Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University and the assistant secretary of education for research from 1991 to 1993, says that the main goal of NCLB—that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014—is simply unattainable. She argues that the federal government “should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.”