Inquirer Editorial: Camden schools show need for NCLB overhaul

The failure of the federal No Child Left Behind education law can be easily seen in the Camden public schools, where 76 percent of the students scored below proficient in language arts, and 69 percent did so in math.

In a strongly worded letter, New Jersey's acting education commissioner, Christopher D. Cerf, notified the district last week that it was "not serving children at the consistently high levels that they deserve."

For the 2009-10 school year, the district reported a graduation rate of only 56 percent, and even that abysmal number is overstated, Cerf said.

School districts like Camden's show Congress needs to get past its propensity to fall into partisan bickering over every issue before it and do a stem-to-stern overhaul of No Child Left Behind.

But until it does, other states should follow the lead of New Jersey and the nine other states that have successfully applied for waivers from the federal law.

It's a shame that the Obama administration had to issue waivers. But with a rewrite of the education reform law five years overdue, and the 2014 deadline for states to comply with its test-score mandates looming, the waivers make sense.

The program will allow each state more flexibility to determine how it will measure its schools' performance. In New Jersey, Gov. Christie is instituting a plan that will measure more than just how many students pass reading and math tests.

Pennsylvania should make sure it is among the next group of states to apply for waivers to avoid losing federal funds for noncompliance with NCLB.

The waivers shouldn't become an excuse for schools to return to their bad old ways. Nor should Congress decide that the waivers mean it no longer needs to do the hard work of upgrading or replacing NCLB with a federal system of education funding and accountability that actually works.