3/15/05 -- A group of state lawmakers issued a report Feb. 23 sharply critical of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and urged Congress to amend the law to give states more flexibility in meeting the act’s goals.
The report by a task force of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is based on six hearings and a 10-month study of how the law is being implemented. While the study praises NCLB’s objective of eliminating the achievement gap between white and minority students, it calls for 43 specific changes in the law.
Of particular concern to the state legislators is the lack of funding, the contradictions between NCLB and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the need to give states more flexibility.
NCSL believes the goal of achieving 100 percent proficiency is not statistically achievable and that struggling schools need the opportunity to address problems before allowing students to transfer to other schools.
New York state Sen. Steve Saland, co-chair of the NCSL task force, says the idea for NCLB originated in the states, but its restrictions stifle state innovations.
“We believe the federal government’s role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public education,” Saland says. “States that were once pioneers are now captives of a one-size-fits-all educational accountability system.”
Among NCSL’s recommendations are the following:
• Remove obstacles that stifle state innovations and undermine state programs that were proving to work before passage of the act.
• Fully fund the act and provide states the financial flexibility to meet its goals.
• The Government Accounting Office should carry out a study to determine the act’s costs and whether it violates the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act.
• Remove the one-size-fits-all method that measures student performance and encourage more sophisticated and accurate systems that gauge the growth of individual students and not just groups of students.
• Recognize that some schools face special challenges, including adequately teaching English language learners and students with disabilities.
• NCLB should recognize the differences among rural, suburban, and urban schools.
ýany of the recommendations proposed by NCSL mirror NSBA’s NCLB Improvements Act. NSBA’s bill, which addresses 40 provisions of the law, in general calls for Congress to give states more flexibility, improve the method for determining adequate yearly progress (AYP) and the sanctions for schools that fail to make AYP, and condition the sanctions on specific levels of federal funding.