Here is an online copy of the letter requesting flexibility in meeting NCLB goals.
Here is an
explanatory article
published in the New York Times.
I'm sorry, but you'll have to subscribe and pay to view this article online.
Larger public libraries should have this issue in their archives.
NATIONAL DESK | March 25, 2004, Thursday
14 States Ask U.S. to Revise Some Education Law Rules
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO (NYT) words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 16 , Column 5
New Hampshire is one of the fourteen states. This is one of the things driving the request for unique student identifiers -- the DOE wants to be able to track the progress that individual students make from year to year, and use that to measure school performance, rather than absolute achievement standards.
I think this is an excellent idea, but I will argue that you don't need to create a central database or unique student ID to do this. This data can be tracked at the local level, where name and date of birth are sufficient.