By Daarel Burnette II
Mandan, N.D. — Kay Cavanaugh, who helps run the only schoolhouse in Trenton, a speck of a town on North Dakota’s sprawling western plains, used to appreciate the accountability movement ushered in by the No Child Behind Act. Just half of the one-school district’s 200 students meet the state’s academic reading and math benchmarks and, she said, “I’m convinced we could do better.”
But, over the years, the federal law got old. It stifled innovation and relied too heavily on one annual exam, in Cavanaugh’s view. And the state never received a federal waiver of the law’s mandates.
So Cavanaugh was cautiously optimistic …