NSBA Editorial/ NCLB: A time for action

Although Senate education committee chair Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) has been developing his bill under wraps, he too expressed an intent for floor action by year’s end. If those deadlines are met, a House-Senate conference committee  will have most of 2008 to resolve differences between the two bills.

Because presidential politics are likely to increasingly influence the congressional agenda and decision-making as we move into the 2008 election year, we are concerned that the chances of completing the reauthorization -- and getting it right -- will diminish if the House and Senate bills are not passed within this time frame.

If the reauthorization is put off until after the election, a new administration and Con­gress will not be likely to enact legislation to fix the program until 2010.

That delay will mean that as many as three or four more school years will pass with many of NCLB’s counterproductive problems continuing and even accelerating. For example, the bar to meet adequate yearly progress will continue to rise. More schools will thus be unfairly identified as failing while others will continue to be subjected to an annual progression of unnecessarily costly and disruptive sanctions.

Miller’s discussion draft addresses many of the issues raised by NSBA. However, we are concerned that some of those issues were not adequately addressed and some of our other concerns were not dealt with at all. In too many areas, the draft attempts to fix problems with solutions that in practice will complicate local understanding and implementation rather than follow the more straightforward approaches proposed in the NSBA bill (H.R.648).

While the draft rightly focuses more serious interventions on schools where a substantial portion of students are not making AYP, it would impose an overwhelming volume of data collection and reporting, as well as micromanage planning requirements on those schools and districts that miss the mark by a lesser amount.

We believe these problems can be fixed in a timely way. We hope that in the negotiations among members of Congress that will be needed for bipartisan passage of this legislation, the need for timely fixes to help close the achievement gap and remove the detrimental flaws in the law will overcome “inside” politics.

By acting now, Congress will not only improve NCLB’s impact on all children, but will remove the distraction that NCLB is causing at all levels to move on to broader initiatives. That is, we must ensure that America’s students will receive an education -- beyond reading and math -- that prepares them for the world of the 21st century.