ALSO VISIT

The New York Times reports the New York City public school system will limit the number of transfers allowed next year, under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The Act targets failing schools with high-stakes testing requirements and short-term improvement requirements. New York City had adopted the policy of permitting any studen who wishes to transfer out of schools classified as "failing".

The more than 7,000 students who transferred to better schools last year placed a heavy strain on the system, creating new costs in busing and other areas. They also placed a strain on those better schools, leading to overcrowding and potentially threatening the quality of education available there. As a result, the City plans to allow fewer than 1,000 such transfers next year, and will limit access to the poorest students with lower test scores, essentially the most needy who could not improve their chances any other way.

The Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has said the new policy will tackle the NCLB transfer provisions by requiring more assistance to those students who stay in struggling schools. More than 40 percent of the city's schools (497) have already been classified as failing, demonstrating the severity of the problem facing the City is facing. NCLB's provisions appear to show short-term thinking for the overall problem of erratic funding and unequal teacher distribution among the student population.

The strange result of the universal transfer policy was that it was potentially degrading the quality of better schools while failing to fund or address the systemic problems harming the struggling schools. Major provisions of the NCLB Act have been called into question by cities and states which view the Act as a massive unfunded federal mandate. [For more: NYT]