Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Dec. 10, 2015, Los Angeles Times.

Is anyone mourning the No Child Left Behind Act? Its clumsy regulations and harshly punitive measures against low-performing schools left many, many students behind and worsened education in multiple communities around the nation.

But the Every Student Succeeds Act, which President Obama signed into law this month to replace it, is even more of a lie. This measure doesn’t even pretend to create situations in which large numbers of academically struggling students will succeed, let alone all or even most of them.

As satisfying as it is to see No Child Left Behind go away at long last — and even more to be rid of the Obama administration’s clumsy waiver program for states seeking a way out of the law’s requirements — this new act is a compromise that benefits pretty much everyone but the students most in need of improved schools.

Read the whole story