2/8/05 -- Members of the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives who spoke at NSBA’s Federal Relations Network (FRN) Conference in Washington, D.C., promised to carefully consider NSBA’s advocacy agenda -- including NSBA’s bill to fix the flaws in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, told the audience at the FRN luncheon Feb. 1 that he will continue to fight for full funding for special education, rural education, and distance learning.
NSBA honored Burns with a “special recognition award” for his efforts in the last Congress to save the e-rate program and restore funding for the Title V innovative education program.
Congressional speakers varied in their views about NCLB. Sen. Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.), the new chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, indicated that NCLB should be given more time before a major revision is needed.
“The system is working,” Enzi says. But he also told FRN members: “Let us know what problems you have. We’ll look at them.” The committee plans to hold hearings this year on the effectiveness of NCLB.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chair of the Education and Early Childhood Subcommittee, told FRN members: “NCLB is not going to be repealed any time soon. The question is, how well will it work?”
ýCLB isn’t scheduled to be reauthorized until 2007, Alexander says, “but we should accelerate our listening immediately.” He promised to consider NSBA’s bill and says members of Congress need to talk to principals, teachers, and school board members and “understand how it is working, what’s not working, and how to improve it.”
Before adopting the President’s proposal to expand the testing mandate under NCLB to high school, Alexander says, we need to understand how it is working for grades 3-8.
And, while it’s important to ensure students are proficient in reading and math, he says, “it is equally important to keep history and civics in our schools so children know what it is to be American.” Alexander is a former secretary of education and former governor of Tennessee.
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.), a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, characterized NCLB as “good intentions gone awry.”
Noting that Congress has underfunded NCLB by an aggregate of $27 billion, Bishop says, “This is simply unacceptable.”
But he says it is “highly, highly unlikely” that Congress will provide enough money, due to the high cost of the war in Iraq, homeland security, the President’s position on tax cuts, and the huge federal deficit.
Regarding the President’s proposals to expand NCLB to high schools, Bishop says we should make sure we’re fully funding the mandates we already have before imposing another mandate.
“We are fixating on tests” when we have cut funding for teacher quality, class size reduction, and other education reforms,” he says. “Learning isn’t about testing; it’s about teaching.”
Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) says she supports full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and also maintained that “there is solid evidence that NCLB is working” and that it does not need a “substantial overhaul or increased funding.”
When NCLB was enacted, it was supposed to have a lot of flexibility, Rep. Thomas E. Petri (R-Wis.) told the audience. “If states are unresponsive, let them know.”
Acknowledging that there are still a lot of issues, such as the contradiction between NCLB and IDEA, Petri called NCLB “a work in progress.”
According to Petri: “The key point is whether a child can read at grade level by grade 3. We need to get as many resources as possible into the classroom” to accomplish this goal.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who voted against passage of NCLB, urged FRN members to ask their congressional representatives to “fix the mess created by NCLB.”
“Let’s fix it and fully fund it,” McCollum says. “If Congress won’t fully fund it or fix it, let’s repeal it.”
“Accountability is important, but so is local control,” McCollum says. “The goals are noble, but the implementation has been haphazard, flawed, and damaging to public education.”
She also urged school board members to ask members of Congress, “Will you strengthen public schools and leave all vouchers behind? You can’t vote for vouchers and claim to be for public schools.”
McCollum urged school board members to “hold members of Congress accountable for our work, our rhetoric, and our actions.”