Executive Director's Column: Secretary Paige Meets with NSBA Board

By Anne L. Bryant

7/1/2003 -- NSBA's Board of Directors had a wonderful opportunity at its June 7 board meeting to visit with Education Secretary Rod Paige.

Paige, a former board member and superintendent in Houston, spent more than an hour talking to our board members on a rainy Saturday morning. As usual, he was articulate, forceful, and humorous. And because of his long experience in education, he could easily "connect" to NSBA board members.

I will honor our commitment not to report on his remarks -- there were no reporters or tape recorders at the meeting -- but I will tell you about some of the questions our conversation triggered for our board.

Members of the NSBA board brought up the issues on their minds, and now I would like to hear from you, the readers of School Board News about the issues on your minds.

What are your concerns with NSBA's three top priorities -- implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the reauthorization of the special education law, and education funding -- or any other issues?

At the risk of overloading our system, I'm inviting you to e-mail me about your concerns (abryant@nsba.org), and in another month or so, I'll report back to you on what I've heard.

Meanwhile, here's what the the members of the NSBA board asked the secretary.

• A board member from a rural district raised these concerns about the NCLB requirement that all teachers must be "highly qualified":

Six students from tiny Sunburst High School (total enrollment 80) in Montana competed in the International Science and Engineering Fair in Cleveland in May, and all six won major awards. This kind of success has become a tradition in Sunburst.

In fact, Montana students demonstrate solid achievement in science. Recent NAEP science test results showed the state's eighth graders ranking number one in the nation. Clearly, there is some extraordinary teaching and learning going on.

But now Montana faces a dilemma. To meet the needs of small, rural schools, the state's system of teacher licensing allows for a "broad field science endorsement," which qualifies teachers to teach any secondary science course. But this endorsement does not fit the definition of "highly qualified teacher" in NCLB.

So, how will the Education Department provide reasonable flexibility for states in defining teachers as "highly qualified"? And in providing flexibility for rural states, how will the department demonstrate respect for the competence and professionalism of highly effective teachers?

• A school board with large numbers of non-English proficient students is concerned about making adequate yearly progress:

Under NCLB, students who come under the category of limited English proficiency, leave that category because they succeed in learning English.

At the same time, new students with limited English language skills continue to enter our schools, ensuring that there will never be adequate yearly progress.

It seems as if the system is "loaded" against these students. What should we do?

• A board member in a school district with increasing enrollment is worried about having enough funding to implement NCLB:

Following passage of NCLB, although Congress had authorized $264 billion for a variety of K-12 programs, Congress appropriated only $221 billion for those programs.

When Congress passed NCLB, it promised an additional $16 billion to help states and school local districts that are struggling under poor economic conditions. Is there help on the way?

• A board member who has seen substantial progress in an urban district is concerned about budget cuts:

In my state, state spending is the lowest per child, and I'm not proud of it, but even with that, we have made huge strides in our district. We have shrunk the gap between middle-class students and poorer students.

We've had much success with federal grants under the Gear-Up and 21st Century Community Learning Center programs and by using university freshmen as tutors.

This grant money will run out by next year, and NCLB won't let us use these tutors because we pay them a small stipend. How can we continue our progress?

• A school attorney who works on special education issues is concerned about alternative assessments:

Under the NCLB regulations, school districts can exempt only a very limited number of special education students with significant cognitive impairments from the assessments or allow them to take alternative assessments.

But there are other groups of special education students, such as those with very serious emotional disorders, profound autism, or extremely fragile medical conditions who might need alternative assessments. No provisions have been made for such students. What is the Education Department doing to address this issue?

• A board member is worried about the upcoming report cards:

This summer and fall, school districts across the nation will release report cards on schools' academic progress. While we are working in our community to prepare the public for what the scores mean and what we are doing to improve learning, the Education Secretary has a lot of "bully pulpit" power.

How you and your staff talk about the news will matter. How can you help us to speak about progress, while the media likely will want to focus on "failure"?

The secretary did a great job -- admitting where there were still problematic areas that we all need to solve and acknowledging issues where he and a board member disagreed.