Educators call for standardized testing

NEW YORK, May 31 (UPI) -- Educators across the United States are calling for standardized testing when it comes to the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" law.

CBS News Correspondent Kelly Wallace said that most states are using different tests and standards to gauge their progress under the law.

The main issue is that some states are allegedly accusing others of lowering the difficulty of their state tests to make it look like they have made more progress, CBS News reported Thursday.

Wallace said some schools might be partaking in this practice because if by 2014 a school hasn't met NCLB targets, which is 100 percent proficiency in reading and math, it could be shut down.

But, the use of different tests and standards could be blamed on the Bush administration for not setting uniform standards for state testing.

"If you are not going to mandate a common playing field and a common measuring stick, then you don't really have any teeth in this system, except that you are going to punish the ones, ironically, that were trying to do the right thing," Jim Ray, a school superintendent in Spartanburg, N.C., told CBS News.