What is a failing school?Local districts struggle to figure out court rulings, federal edicts

July 3, 2002
Definition of a "failing school" is unclear.

Nobody--including the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court--really knows how to identify failing schools. Policy makers have been so eager to punish school failure that they have worried too little about defining what failure is. (New York Times)

School districts are trying to decipher the latest directive regarding the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which states that students at struggling schools must have the choice to attend another campus by this fall. Educators in the Sacramento area say the directive is fraught with questions, potential loopholes and looming disagreements. (Sacramento Bee)

Educators in Kentucky are swinging between confusion and anger over a new federal edict that says 107 Kentucky schools are failing and their students can transfer somewhere else this fall. (Lexington Herald Leader)

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