Your Turn: Mass. Gets Waiver From No Child Left Behind—Good or Bad?

The Associated Press reported yesterday that President Barack Obama granted a waiver to Massachusetts and nine other states from the No Child Left Behind law, and in exchange, the states promise higher standards and more creative ways to measure what students are learning.

Massachusetts previously asked in October to opt-out of the requirement that all students test as proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The presidential waiver grants that, while requiring each state to submit plans showing how they will prepare students for college and careers; set new targets for improving achievement; reward the best performing schools and focus on schools performing poorly, the AP reported.

The states excused from following the law no longer have to meet that deadline. Instead, they had to put forward plans showing they will prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which uses standardized test scores to measure students' progress towards meeting the federal goal of having all students test as proficient in reading and math by 2014.

A U.S. Senate panel also proposed last fall eliminating Adequate Yearly Progress from the No Child Left Behind Act, according to an article by the Christian Science Monitor. 

Most —as did the vast majority of schools across Massachusetts, with 82 percent of the state’s schools and 91 percent of school districts missing performance targets, according to the Boston Globe.

Two Melrose schools—the Hoover and Horace Mann Elementary Schools—have made AYP for all students in the aggregate and all student subgroups, in both English-Language Arts and in math, every year since 2004, only to fall short this past year.

Here are the school-by-school results for meeting AYP in 2011; click on each school name to view its AYP results back to 2004 and a breakdown of performance by subgroup:

Do you agree with the waiver? Is the 'proficient by 2014' unreasonable? Or is it a firm goal that Massachusetts should stick to in order to keep standards high? Tell us in the comments below.