Superintendent: Freedom from NCLB 'Liberating'

Hopatcong Superintendent Dr. Charles Maranzano lauded President Barack Obama's announcement Thursday that 10 states, including New Jersey, would be freed from the No Child Left Behind education law.

"I think there's about to be a tremendous sense of freedom and a new renaissance about to reveal itself in education," he said. "We can now apply best practices of what we know of student performance.

Obama said the move was a reaction to Congress failing to update the law, which required all students to be proficient in reading and match by 2014.

The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee, the White House said. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval.

"If we're serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren't going to come from Washington alone," Obama said in a statement. "Our job is to harness those ideas, and to hold states and schools accountable for making them work."

Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee were the first states to receive waivers, the White House said. New Mexico was the only state that applied for flexibility and was denied, though it's working on a second proposal, the White House said

According to the Huffington Post:

No Child Left Behind requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Obama's action strips away that fundamental requirement for those approved for flexibility, provided they offer a viable plan instead. Under the deal, the states must show they will prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, develop meaningful teacher and principal evaluation systems, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst.

Maranzano said standardized tests are a poor measure of student performance and that the law's goals were unrealistic.

"The federal law didn't take into account that everyone would be treated equally," Maranzano said. "But they are not. One of the more appealing things is that we get at the state level free from the federal grip on telling us what we should do or shouldn't do, what students should do or shouldn't do, what should be tested and what shouldn't.

"Standardized test are just a snapshot of the full picture," he continued.

Maranazno said measuring student growth provides a better view of achievement.

"We'll be able to look at students' progress over time, and not just in these core subjects," he said. "But how does a student progress in other areas on interest and roll that into a big picture."

"The push at this time needs to be toward college and workplace readiness," he continued.

Hopatcong Education Association President Jeff Ryder agreed. He said that while he didn't often feel No Child Left Behind's presence in the classroom, he hopes the state will gauge education on a student-growth model.

"Hopefully the pendulum has swung so far to the one side from that everything is being tested and hopefully we can start moving somewhat toward some evaluation tools that are not so driven to a test but, 'What do you have coming in and what is leaving you?' Ryder said.

About 25 percent of Hopatcong's students are special-education. Maranzano said standardized tests lump all students into the same group, dropping test scores across the population.

"We'll be able to look at these populations from a more holistic perspective," he said. "It's not a one-size-fits-all proposition. That was the flaw of No Child Left Behind. It assumed everybody had the same ability when, indeed, you have to look at a sampling of the population. There are too many variations to categorize the children into one-size-fits-all populations."

He also some states have lower test standards than others, which makes comparing scores between states almost impossible.

"[We have the] ability now to not worry about how our test scores stand up to (other states), I think, think is liberating," he said.