Feingold, Leahy Call For Changes to NCLB

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0813-04.htm


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
AUGUST 13, 2007
3:48 PM


CONTACT: Senator Russ Feingold
Senator Patrick Leahy

Feingold, Leahy Call For Changes to NCLB
High-Stakes Testing and Top-Down Federal Control Are Main Concerns in No Child Left Behind Reauthorization


WASHINGTON - AUGUST 13 -U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) are pushing for needed reforms to improve the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law. The Senators have written to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee outlining some of their priorities for the reauthorization of NCLB. While Feingold and Leahy support strong accountability measures for our nation’s schools, they called NCLB’s one-size-fits-all policies the wrong approach. Instead, Feingold and Leahy called for changes to be made to the federal testing mandates to ensure local control over decisions affecting our children’s day-to-day classroom experiences, including the frequency and use of standardized tests. Feingold and Leahy are pushing for changes to reaffirm that states, local districts, and educators are the leaders in school reform and accountability efforts and the role of the federal government is to support innovative state and local school reform efforts.

“NCLB has hamstrung state and local decision-making by establishing a federal system that measures and punishes our students and our schools based on, among other things, annual high-stakes standardized testing,” Feingold said. “This is the wrong approach, and the groundswell of opposition to NCLB – from parents, educators, and administrators – shows just how flawed it is.”

“Five years of experience with NCLB have shown that its one-size-fits-all approach and unfunded mandates can do more harm than good in states like Vermont,” said Leahy. “To truly raise the achievement of all of Vermont’s students, we need flexibility and sensitivity to the particular needs of our state and our students.”

Both Feingold and Leahy were among the ten senators to vote against NCLB in December of 2001. Feingold’s and Leahy’s major priorities for reforming the legislation include:

* Maintaining local control over decisions affecting children’s day-to-day classroom experiences including the frequency and use of standardized testing

* Reforming the one-size-fits all adequate yearly progress model to provide flexibility for states to develop alternative accountability models such as growth models, which give a more complete picture of annual progress in our nation’s schools

* Improving the Department of Education’s peer review process by requiring the Secretary to ensure decisions made by peer review teams among the various states are consistent

* Encouraging states to use multiple forms of assessment by providing more resources for states and local districts to develop innovative assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills

* Providing additional resources to help states build technical capacity in order to comply with existing federal accountability requirements

* Creating a volunteer teacher advisory committee to provide Congress and the Department of Education feedback on NCLB’s impact in the classroom

* Providing more flexibility for schools to address their unique school improvement needs

* Reexamining the feasibility of the 2014 deadline for 100% proficiency and putting in place a trigger that waives the 2014 deadline as long as federal Title I funding does not meet authorized levels

A copy of the letter is available at link.

[Coexist]

1. nice to hear -

but I doubt it will go anywhere.

[MasonJar]

2. Scap it.