Members of the House of Representatives want changes to the No Child Left Behind Act
Members of the House of Representatives want changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and the chairman of the chamber’s education committee is saying he’s willing to make some of them. Twenty-five House members have formally presented their ideas for revising NCLB in a meeting with the senior members of the Education and Labor Committee. Because K-12 advocacy groups have proposed many of those ideas in recent months, the committee is ready to consider how to incorporate them into a bill to reauthorize the NCLB law, says Rep. George Miller (D-CA). Among the ideas offered: (1) change the method for calculating districts’ and schools’ yearly progress to measure student academic growth and include factors other than test scores when doing so; (2) assess students with disabilities on the basis of their progress toward meeting goals in their individualized education programs, rather than on the grade-level tests given to their peers; and (3) figure out ways to determine whether teachers are highly qualified other than by the types of credentials they have, and give rural schools leniency on the teacher-quality rules to accommodate their particular teaching needs. Rep. Miller acknowledges that many of the ideas mentioned would represent a dramatic overhaul for the current law and says that he is willing to make some of them. "There will be very substantial changes," he says. "There are portions of this bill that simply aren’t working. That’s what reauthorization is about. It’s not just about standing pat." Some House members said this week that they wouldn’t vote to reauthorize the law without big changes. The House panel may consider a draft of a bill as early as June.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, also hopes to draft a reauthorization bill for consideration by summer. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is urging Congress to get to work on renewing the law. Lobbyists for districts and schools also are anxious to see congressional action, saying that if the law is left unaltered, its flaws will result in the inaccurate labeling of hundreds of schools as needing improvement. "At some point, where there is a law that is delivering unfair results, … you have to fix it," says Anne L. Bryant, the executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA). NSBA joined groups representing administrators, principals, and teachers in a joint statement. "The current accountability framework does not accurately or fairly assess student, school, or school district performance," it says. The statement also calls upon Congress to listen "to the front-line educators" in reauthorizing the law. Rep. Miller suggests that he can foresee a way to write a reauthorization bill that would make some of the proposed changes while retaining the law’s central goals. "The core to me is that you’re going to insist on high expectations and high standards with accountability," he says.
Education Week
By David J. Hoff
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[Editor’s Note: The joint statement is linked below. Additional information on NCLB reauthorization is provided on the Advocacy & Legislation section of NSBA’s website at the second link.]
[Joint statement on NCLB reauthorization]
[NSBA Office of Advocacy on NCLB reauthorization]