How to Go Forward With 'No Child Left Behind'

As much as educators have a huge role, we don't have the only role. That's why I've talked about community schools. What's happened in the past few years is it has been so out of whack that it has become more of a testing and a blame game than about how we help kids.

We have to have a way that we not only recruit the best and the brightest into teaching, but we keep them.

Jeanne Allen

Center for Education

Reform president

The tests should be bench-marked against NAEP (a test known as "the nation's report card"). If you say that in fourth grade you expect kids to know quadratic equations, you need to show in your state plan that that's what you're measuring in fourth grade.

I think principals and teachers are really smart people. We need to be firm on the outcome and allow the flexibility locally to figure out how to get there.

We should measure how well schools do from year to year on top of how well we want the ideal fifth-grader to achieve. We need to reward progress in the interim while we work to hit the proficiency standards. I think we should give people a pat on the back for making progress toward the goals.

Before it was No Child Left Behind, the federal education law was known

as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Should the next version

be renamed? What do you suggest?

Ahmadi: The name "No Child Left Behind" is great; it sounds promising. But after everything that we've seen and all the complaining with standardized tests, students sort of cringe now when they hear No Child Left Behind. I think it could use a new name.

Ritchie: The concept of NCLB is sort of Making Every Child's Potential a Reality, which is the tag line for the Maryland PTA. I don't know what kind of acronym that would be, but I think that's what the intent is.

Allen: I don't see any other reasons besides political reasons not to leave it No Child Left Behind. We have a generation of people who are going to think it's all brand new if we change the name. I think we should resist the temptation to flatter our egos in favor of continuity. We have to get the public to understand this is now a fact of life.

Weingarten: I think it should have a name that's aspirational. Whether it's Opportunity for All Children, there has to be a can-do name for our federal law.

Hatrick: If you think where the feds have really gotten involved in education nationwide, it has been to help children who are most at risk, whether they are in special education or children in poverty. There is probably something that can be done with that hope notion. It doesn't have much sex appeal.