Wonkitorial: Setting The Goal Post Back Yet Again

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has begun the push for the reauthorization of The No Child Left Behind Act:

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings kicked off a national dialogue today in Chicago with top business leaders, students, teachers, and school officials to promote Building on Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act. The Secretary's visit to Chicago comes on the heels of President Bush's call in his State of the Union Address for Congress to reauthorize the law.

"Higher standards and greater accountability, more rigorous coursework for high school students, and innovative, new options and choices for families are the core components to ensuring that all students are able to learn and achieve,"

Read the whole press release.

As is usual with the Secretary's utterances, there were plenty of remarks about the need for schools to be held to ever-higher standards of perfomance, but not one word about the need for students to also work harder in order to acheive their own academic success.

And that's the problem with NCLB.

There's plenty of "accountability" for teachers and lower-level school administrators, but none whatsoever for students or parents. -----------------------------See our latest EduPosts.