States Have More Schools Falling Behind
By Paul Basken, Bloomberg News
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
More than a quarter of U.S. schools are failing under terms of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, according to preliminary state-by-state statistics reported to the U.S. Department of Education. At least 24,470 U.S. public schools, or 27 percent of the national total, did not meet the federal requirement for "adequate yearly progress" in 2004-2005...
Bush achieved rare bipartisan support to get the No Child Left Behind law passed as part of his first-term agenda. Since then, the law has become a subject of dispute, with Democrats accusing Republicans of providing insufficient money for it. At the same time, there is evidence that states may be manipulating the numbers, Petrilli said. He cited Oklahoma, where the percentage of failing schools dropped to 3 percent from 25 percent a year earlier...
Among individual states, Florida placed last with 72 percent of its schools failing to show enough improvement, while Oklahoma led, according to the Education Department statistics provided to Bloomberg News. Rhode Island ranked second behind Oklahoma with 5 percent failing, with Iowa at 6 percent, Montana at 7 percent and New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wisconsin at 8 percent. At the other end, Hawaii ranked second-worst with 66 percent of its schools failing to improve. Washington, D.C., came in third-worst with 60 percent, followed by Nevada at 56 percent and New Mexico at 53 percent...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801794.html