「沒有孩子落後」之後：NCLB豁免計畫的角色定位、法理基礎與實施爭議之探討

Abstract

The performance of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has decreased gradually as the concerns of its opponents have been realized. Although NCLB’s advocates have painstakingly collected data for its defense, they are highly frustrated by the fact that NCLB’s ultimate goal of all students reaching 100% proficiency in reading and math in 2014 has failed. To address the problems of NCLB, President Obama proposed the NCLB Waiver in response to congressional partisanship, which has prevented the Elementary and Secondary Education Act from being reauthorized. Because the NCLB Waiver provides states the flexibility for circumventing the flawed provisions of NCLB, nearly all states would apply for the waiver for evading NCLB’s sanctions. The results of this study revealed that the dual purpose of the NCLB Waiver is releasing states from the mandates of NCLB and matching NCLB with Race to the Top; NCLB’s legal foundation is Section 9401 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and NCLB’s implementation controversy is multidimensional. Finally, this paper proposes five recommendations: (1) precisely citing and interpreting the legal foundation for education change policy; (2) comprehensively considering the integration of enactment and region of education change policy; (3) cautiously coping with the political intervention with and confrontation over education change policy; (4) systematically planning the strategic matching and transition in education change policy; and (5) addressing the quality and social justice of education change policy.