I confess I have not followed all the twists and turns of the proposals to reauthorize the failed No Child Left Behind law. Almost everyone except its original sponsors agrees that it failed, yet Congress is locked into the same stale assumption that the federal government is supposed to find a magical formula to measure test scores and punish teachers, principals, and schools. Congress, in its wisdom, has forgotten that this school-level “accountability” didn’t exist until January 2002, when NCLB was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Having learned nothing from the failure of NCLB, they can’t now agree on what comes next.

In this story on Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits notes the irony that even Texas–yes, Texas–has asked for a waiver from the disastrous law that was foisted on the nation’s school by not only George W. Bush, and not only his advisers Margaret Spellings and Dandy Kress, but also Democrats George Miller of California and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Now, everyone laughs at the idea that 100% of students were going to be proficient by 2014. What a dumb idea to set an impossible goal. And how cruel to fire teachers and close schools that could not reach an impossible goal.

But look at this:

“Under the waiver, Texas will no longer subscribe to the much-derided “Adequate Yearly Progress” system that measures school performance and requires all students to demonstrate proficiency in reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year. Instead, it will use a new accountability system that expects 100 percent of students to be proficient in reading and math by the 2019-2020 school year.”

What’s this? The Obama administration expects “100 percent of students to be proficient in reading and math by the 2019-2020 year”?

Here we go again.

No nation in the world has 100% proficiency. Doesn’t anyone in DC have a fresh idea? Like one that has some connection to common sense.