Keep changing No Child Left Behind and it might become a sensible law.

The following editorial appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on Wednesday, March 31:

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For the fourth time in weeks, the federal Department of Education has budged on onerous demands of No Child Left Behind. Throw in a few more changes, and the education law may make sense.

The compromise du jour: tweaking the requirement that 95 percent of students in every major ethnic, racial and socioeconomic group in a school take standardized tests, or the school fails.

There was a rationale for it: Some districts were suspected of encouraging minority students to skip testing in order to inflate results. But the rule also resulted in ...