BOZEMAN — Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau says she is rejecting the latest federal requirements for school testing.
Juneau says she wrote a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying she would not raise the state’s target test scores to meet benchmarks for No Child Left Behind, the national education overhaul.
She told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that the current federal requirements are unrealistic for schools to meet while they also wait for new education standards from the Obama administration.
No Child Left Behind requires states to have 100 percent of their students testing at grade level in reading and math by 2014. Montana’s testing goals were set to rise closer to those standards this year.
President Barack Obama has suggested loosening the strict national education standards.