February 25th, 2015 by WCBC Radio

The eight-year effort to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, the controversial bill that sets federal education policy, has come down to a battle over testing and accountability among some odd bedfellows. All sides agree that an updated law is an urgent necessity. But the question of what role standardized tests should play and how to hold underperforming schools to account divides deeply. To teachers’ unions, the No Child Left Behind's aggressive testing regimes, combined with ambitious targets for annual progress, have straitjacketed education. Actual classroom learning has suffered as teachers narrow the curriculum to simply “teach to the test,” they say.  Allegany County Superintendent of Schools Dr. David Cox says it’s a situation that local and state education officials are monitoring closely: