No Child Left Behind waivers: five ways education will change

President Obama announced the first 10 states to receive waivers from certain aspects of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education law on Thursday. Here’s a look at some ways they are pushing for progress through the flexibility granted by the waivers.

5. Improvements for English-language learners and students with disabilities

NCLB critics say that these groups of students have gotten short shrift. Under the waiver granted for Oklahoma, the state will require that each English learner, in schools identified as needing improvement, have a Language Instruction Educational Plan. This plan will be developed by content-area teachers and an English-as-a-second-language specialist, and the students’ progress will be evaluated quarterly. The state is also boosting the types of professional development required of teachers who work with English learners.

Colorado, Indiana, and several other of the 10 waiver states also have put forward plans to ensure that English learners and students with disabilities have access to high-level standards and curriculum to prepare them for colleges and careers.

5 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.