House bill to renew No Child Left Behind law under sharp attack
The draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law has come under sharp attack from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teachers unions, the latest sign of how difficult it may be for Congress to pass the law this fall. At a marathon hearing of the House Education Committee, legislators heard from an array of civil rights groups that protested that a proposal in the bill for a pilot program that would allow districts to devise their own measures of student progress, rather than using statewide tests, would gut the law’s intent of demanding that schools teach all children, regardless of poverty, race or other factors, to the same standard. Dianne M. Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, said the bill had "the potential to set back accountability by years, if not decades," and would lead to lower standards for children in urban and high poverty schools. "It strikes me as not unlike allowing my teenage son and his friends to score their own driver’s license tests," Ms. Piché said. Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the committee, countered that district tests would have to be approved by the federal Education Department, which he said would safeguard against any watering down of standards. The draft has also come under criticism from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Congressional Republicans.
Leaders of the teachers’ unions—Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, and Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers—told the committee that they would not support the bill in its current form and that they objected to a proposal to count student test scores in granting pay bonuses. Mr. Weaver’s testimony produced the sharpest exchange of the day, when Mr. Miller accused the unions of reneging on an earlier agreement to support the measure when it was incorporated into a 2005 bill proposed by Democrats. But Mr. Weaver and Ms. Cortese disputed that account, saying that while they supported the 2005 bill over all, they had expressed concerns about any provisions that would mandate test scores be included in determining pay.
New York Times By Diana Jean Schemo
[Editor’s Note: NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael Resnick presented NSBA’s testimony at the hearing, which is posted below. The House committee’s discussion draft of Title I of NCLB and NSBA’s initial comments on that portion are at the next links. Those are followed by links to the House committee’s summary and the full texts of the remaining titles of its discussion draft. New York Newsday notes that proposed revisions to the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, found in Title IV, would expand the definition of violence under that measure to include bullying and harassment, adding reporting requirements and eligibility for state funding to address these problems. The San Francisco Chronicle story addresses the political climate for NCLB reauthorization in the House and the Senate, as well as among presidential candidates.]
Resnick testimony
NSBA School Law pages on discussion draft of Title I
NSBA initial comments and recommendations on discussion draft of Title I
House committee summary of discussion draft of Titles III–XI
Full text of discussion draft of Title II
Full text of discussion draft of Titles III–XI
New York Newsday By Beth Murtagh
San Francisco Chronicle By Zachary Coile