Dean Christopher Edley was named today (Friday, March 3) to a national nonpartisan commission created to conduct an independent review of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The 12-member Commission on No Child Left Behind plans to issue recommendations for reforming and improving the legislation as Congress considers reauthorizing the sweeping federal education act in 2007.
Co-chaired by former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and former Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes, the new commission is funded by several leading educational foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The commission’s goal is to ensure that NCLB spurs academic achievement among the nation’s school children and closes an achievement gap. In coming months, commissioners will hold five hearings throughout the country to gather input on NCLB’s performance. Passed in 2001, the act was intended to raise the academic skills of public school children while holding schools, teachers and others accountable for performance.
Edley is a noted civil rights and administrative law expert who co-founded The Civil Rights Project at Harvard, a renowned research and policy think tank. At Boalt, in addition to serving as dean, he is the faculty chair of the recently launched Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity. Edley joins other prominent education and policy experts named to the commission. It is housed at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Read the press release.