The NEA is Fighting for NCLB Overhaul

Abstract

ACOMPLEX federal law that has been on the books since 1965--upon which are based numerous beneficial programs that provide funding to our nation's education system through a range of complex mechanisms--cannot easily be cast aside as the Educator Roundtable recommends. The decision by the NEA not to support the repeal of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is made on a practical and realistic basis. Repealing laws is a lot more complex and involved than the Educator Roundtable implies. As almost 10,000 NEA members decided at our 2006 representative assembly, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the latest version of which is NCLB, does not warrant repeal. The law requires significant attention to its shortcomings in order to make it work on the ground--in America's classrooms. What the Educator Roundtable asserts is that NCLB is not working, and the NEA agrees wholeheartedly. Just because the NEA isn't advocating the impractical approach of repealing NCLB does not mean that we are standing on the sidelines. Indeed, I believe that the NEA and the Educator Roundtable want the same things from the federal government: a reduction in NCLB's single-minded, test-based, label-and-punish accountability system, coupled with the provision of funding for proven programs that make a difference, such as smaller class sizes and high-quality pre-K programs. The NEA is aggressively addressing the problems with the law in the way our members expect us to do. We are using our knowledge of the legislative process and our members' grassroots influence and political strength to advocate before Congress the changes that are needed to make federal education policy work the right way: to help students and educators improve teaching and learning. To this end, it has been the NEA's hope that this reauthorization of ESEA would finally offer an opportunity for a renewed, broad, and bold national discussion of how to improve and support public education. Simply put, this reauthorization is and should be about more than tweaking the NCLB portions of ESEA. It should be a comprehensive examination of whether federal policies follow what the research says about how children learn and what makes a successful school. This is the opportunity for a major course correction. Teachers care deeply about this process and its outcome because they will have lived for more than five years under a system that was crafted without enough of their input, that has proven to be unworkable, and that in too many cases has had negative, unintended consequences. They are counting on a thoughtful process this time and a bill that does not merely recognize the technical flaws of the statute but also addresses the conceptual and philosophical flaws of the entire current test-label-punish theory of education reform. To that end, the NEA is at the table, scrutinizing every proposal being put forward by Congress to ensure that the reauthorization does not continue a one-size-fits-all prescription from the federal level. Again, for us this reauthorization is about more than fixing the AYP (adequate yearly progress) requirements and other provisions of NCLB that have been problematic; it's about recognizing that providing a high-quality education to every student takes more than a measurement system. It's about sending a message to students that they are more than just test scores. We should care at least as much about whether a child graduates after receiving a comprehensive, high-quality education as we do about how he or she performs on a standardized test. We should be sending a message to educators that the art and practice of teaching must be about more than test preparation. If the only measures we really value are test scores, rather than some of the other indicators of a rich and challenging educational experience, then we will have missed the mark again about adequately serving and educating all children. …