For people who have wondered about the references to the insidious nature of No Child Left Behind and what it all means, this year may be D-Day for more than a quarter of Philadelphia's public schools under NCLB guidelines.

More than 70 schools in Philadelphia are in Corrective Action 2 (CA2) status, which means they failed to meet federal standards of progress 5 years in a row (I listed the schools below, according to the www.paayp.com website). Some of these schools have been in CA2 status for five years, making it a decade of disappointment for those students and families. Under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines, any school in CA2 status for more than one year must be restructured, and this year, the feds are putting pressure on districts to act.

NCLB generally offers three options:

• Complete management restructuring of schools;
• Privatization;
• Turning CA2 schools over to charters