Arne Duncan on NCLB: “We are lying to parents and children”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is laying the groundwork for a reauthorized don’t-call-it-No Child Left Behind law right. This. Moment. He wants to keep a lot of the principles but change some of the on-the-ground details.

Ed Week’s Politics K12 has the latest on his priorities:

Duncan didn’t say anything he hasn’t said before, but he used the high-profile forum to stress some priorities, including extended learning time, using data to track student and teacher effectiveness, and systems to better measure individual student progress. (That’s code for growth models, which are expected to be a given in this reauthorization.)

He also said about the current law:

“But the biggest problem with NCLB is that it doesn’t encourage high learning standards,” Duncan said. “In fact, it inadvertently encourages states to lower them. The net effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids they are succeeding when they are not.”

Next step: a bunch of “stakeholder meetings” to take the temperature of the field. The U.S. Department of Education web site has the dates.