McCaskill: No Child Left Behind is squeezing the creativity out of the classroom

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, hit the nail right on the head with her comment on No Child Left Behind during her appearance today on Meet the Press:

Asked by moderator Tom Brokaw if the presidential candidate she supports, Sen. Barack Obama, supports accountability for schools, Ms. McCaskill responded as follows:

Absolutely, but we can do accountability in different ways. What we have done with No Child Left Behind is squeeze the creativity out of the classroom because teachers have begun to just teaching to the test. We need to measure progress and reward progress, not hit some one number that one size fits all, but as long as we keep accountability in there, by forcing people to measure progress and judging them, and saying, "If you do better, good for you. If you do worse, you've got a problem." But that's not what we're doing with No Child Left Behind. What we have done is we have said one size fits all, so we need to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, but we need to change it so that we get accountability through progress rather than one standard number for everybody.

Unfortunately, Brokaw dropped the ball and did not direct any questions on education to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who was representing Sen. John McCain.

A complete transcript of Sen. McCaskill's Meet the Press appearance can be found at this link.