Members of Congress lay the groundwork for 'fixing' NCLB

10/14/03 -- Congress is not likely to make changes to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act this year, but some members have introduced legislation with the hope of laying the groundwork for revising the bill in the next congressional session.

The key sponsors of the original bipartisan legislation, the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the education committees, continue to support NCLB and are not seeking programmatic changes.

But some members of Congress are concerned about large numbers of schools designated as needing improvement and perceived as failing and believe the law needs to be revised.

Since NCLB was signed into law in January 2002, the biggest concerns that have arisen in Congress have to do with the failure to provide sufficient funding. Congress initially authorized $18.5 billion for Title I to help districts and states implement NCLB, but the appropriations bills for 2004 passed by both the House and Senate call for only $12.3 billion.

Amendments to fully fund Title I were proposed in both houses during debate on the education appropriations bills but failed to pass.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, "still strongly supports the objectives of NCLB but is disappointed in the Administration's willingness to fully fund the program," an aide says. Kennedy "opposes any attempt to open up the bill" and make changes to it.

An aide to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chair of that committee, says the senator is "taking note on what his constituents are saying [about NCLB] but has not said anything on whether he will support changes in the law."

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, believes the act is adequately funded, an aide says, and is "opposed to changing the legislation -- at least before the act comes up for reauthorization in 2007."

Rep. George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on that committee, also continues to support the objectives of NCLB.

In a letter to his colleagues designed to "set the record straight," Miller says that, contrary to reports in the media, "NCLB is not designed to inflict punishment on schools that do not meet the achievement goals, but rather to direct services to them and provide options to students to encourage greater success."

Media reports calling for changes in NCLB because too many schools are identified as failing miss the point, Miller says. "If there has been a 'failure' to date with respect to NCLB, it has been the refusal of the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans to fully fund the act to help those schools that need improvement."

"Weakening the achievement goals of NCLB, as some unwisely propose, will return to the days when there was little or no mandate to improve school performance," Miller says.

Among the most vocal critics of NCLB in Congress is Rep. Major Owens (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He is drafting legislation that would delay the testing requirements for three years.

According to Owens, the enactment of NCLB "unleashed forces that threaten students, teachers, and the basic integrity of the educational process. The stakes are very high. On the basis of test scores, students may be held back; teachers, principals, and superintendents may be fired; schools may be closed; and some school systems may be restructured or abolished."

Owens cites several reasons for delaying the NCLB testing provisions: the failure of Congress to provide increased funding for school construction, technology, libraries, and equipment; "incompetence and corruption in the testing industry"; recent reports about incorrect test questions; "the scrubbing of test contents to avoid offending right-wing zealots"; and the concerns that "the overreliance on tests will have a major negative impact on the African-American community."

Among the proposed bills to "fix" NCLB is the Student Testing Fairness Act, introduced Sept. 24 by Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), which would give schools, teachers, and students the flexibility to measure progress using factors other than a single standardized test.

"Effective and proper standardized tests can be used to measure student progress and target help where it is most needed," Strickland says. "However, test scores alone cannot accurately reflect a school's success."

The bill would allow schools to use such measures as the proportion of state report card indicators met, student dropout rates, or a measure based on individual student gains over time -- not just standardized test scores -- in determining whether schools have made adequate yearly progress (AYP).

The Strickland bill also contains several other measures addressing AYP. It would allow schools to receive credit for progress toward proficiency as well as achievement of proficiency when calculating AYP.

It also would give states the flexibility to use data averaging techniques within a school building to measure AYP. And it would make only those students in the subgroups that fail to make AYP eligible for supplemental services or school choice.

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill to amend the NCLB provision on the qualifications of paraprofessionals. NCLB requires paraprofessionals in Title I schools hired before Jan. 8, 2002, to have an associate's degree or pass a state test. Duncan's bill (S.2348) adds another option -- paraprofessionals would instead have to pass an in-class evaluation.

"We started hearing from a lot of teacher aides scared about losing their jobs," says Scott Fischer of Duncan's office. "Many of these aides, in their 40s and 50s, are not interested in going back to school and getting a degree."

Fischer does not expect the House education committee to take any action any time soon to amend NCLB, noting the committee is "worried about compromises undoing the bill." By next year, however, he expects attempts to amend NCLB to gain more support in Congress.

"NSBA continues to support the broader objectives of NCLB and remains hopeful that the U.S. Department of Education will attempt to address many of the concerns expressed by state departments of education and local school districts," says NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick.

"However," Resnick says, "legislative amendments will be ultimately necessary if NCLB is to remain a meaningful accountability system for schools and school districts."