In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlights several areas where Democrat and Republican lawmakers should be able to agree when it comes to revamping the No Child Left Behind Act: Getting rid of arbitrary, one-size-fits-all progress mandates and implementing more flexible measures of student growth; replacing multiple choice “bubble” tests with a more expansive (though unspecified) alternative that measures skills such as critical thinking; and overhauling the infamous highly-qualified teacher language to provide “a real definition of teacher effectiveness based on multiple measures, including student growth, principal observation and peer review.”
Duncan argues that this agenda reflects reform initiatives already under way in many states and districts, spurred by the Race to the Top competition.