School board members to lawmakers: ‘Facilitate, don’t dictate’
By Lawrence Hardy
Advocacy experts outline NCLB, other priorities at FRN meeting
03/09 -- The federal government must step away from its role as chief enforcer of No Child Left Behind and move to a more cooperative relationship with states and school districts, NSBA’s advocacy experts told hundreds of members of the Federal Relations Network.
“Facilitate, don’t dictate,” said Federal Relations Director Reginald Felton, repeating NSBA’s prescription for how federal lawmakers should fix a broken national education policy -- one that is long on sanctions and one-size-fits-all assessments but short on the kind of supports districts need.
Felton urged Congress to work on reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which includes NCLB) as expeditiously as possible. But he said the law would probably not be reauthorized until late this year or 2010.
In the meantime, he called for board members to urge members of Congress to offer districts regulatory relief from sanctions that unfairly target school districts.
He said cash-strapped districts shouldn’t have to spend money on costly interventions, like school restructuring, when there isn’t any research showing such approaches are effective and when NCLB is set to be revised soon.
NSBA has endorsed provisions of a bill (H.R.6239), sponsored by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), that would freeze sanctions until NCLB is fixed.
But while regulatory relief is necessary in the short term, it is no substitute for the kind of significant changes that must be made in the law itself, Felton said. These changes must come in three areas: assessment, measuring progress, and sanctions.
On assessments, NSBA supports “assessment tools that are valid and reliable, and reflect individual progress.”
“We still want to be held accountable,” Felton said, “but we’ve got to have a new framework.” NSBA would like to see NCLB’s system of punitive sanctions remade into a research-based system of “rewards and sanctions” that provides incentives for students, schools, and school districts.
In addition, measures of school and individual progress must be accurate and fairly reflect the progress of students, schools, and districts, Felton said. Rather than relying on a static scoring system, districts and states should be able to adopt growth models that measure student and school improvement over time.
Concerning high school completion rates, Felton said that improving four-year numbers is important but that schools should also be recognized for sticking with students who take five years, six years, or even longer to graduate, “because research says late graduation is better than no graduation.”
NSBA welcomes federal lawmakers’ support in outlining academic goals and outcomes, “but they must allow the states to develop their own academic standards,” Felton said.
NSBA opposes any attempt to mandate or coerce states to adopt specific standards or assessments or penalize states that do not adopt specific standards.
FRN members also heard from Marc Egan, NSBA’s director of federal affairs, who discussed the Obama administration’s plans to expand early childhood education and teacher training programs.
He said states should be given latitude to develop preschool programs that are voluntary and suit their specific needs.
Regarding teacher training, Egan said President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are interested in establishing teacher residency programs, similar to those in Chicago and Boston, that are modeled after the intensive, hands-one training provided to doctors. “When you look at teacher retention rates, those two districts jump off the page,” Egan said.
Reproduced with permission from
School Board News. Copyright © 2009, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789.