November 2006 | Volume 64 | Number 3 NCLB: Taking Stock, Looking Forward Pages 32-36 A Positive Agenda for ESEA Reg Weaver The National Education Association proposes wide-ranging revisions to fix flaws in No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the eighth reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a groundbreaking federal education initiative enacted in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. The National Education Association has strongly supported ESEA since its inception. We also strongly support NCLB's stated goals—to improve student achievement and help close achievement gaps. These goals are crucial to the health of society. NCLB, however, is fundamentally flawed. Its principal weaknesses revolve around its one-size-fits-all system for measuring student achievement and school success and its rigid definitions of highly qualified teachers and paraprofessionals. Further, the law is incomplete: It fails to provide the tools and resources that educators and students need to accomplish its stated goals. To help NCLB achieve its goals, the National Education Association proposes the following changes. Insist on Meaningful Accountability NCLB's current adequate yearly progress model fails to accurately measure student learning and school success. The model bases accountability solely on how many students reach a specific proficiency point on one annual standardized test in each of two subjects, reading and math. It fails to account for a school's results in improving the achievement of individual students over time. Instead it compares snapshots of achievement—for example, test scores for this year's 4th grade class compared with those for last year's 4th grade class, a different group of students with different strengths and weaknesses. NCLB fails to recognize that although all children can learn, all children do not learn in the same way and at the same rate. It fails to provide fair, valid, and reliable achievement measures for students with special needs, including students with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs). NCLB also fails to differentiate between schools that are truly failing to close achievement gaps and those that have fallen short on only one of 37 federally mandated criteria. Consequently, the law overidentifies thousands of schools as low performing. Several studies project that more than 90 percent of U.S. public schools will eventually fail to meet federal standards and be subjected to sanctions (MassPartners for Public Schools, 2005; Moscovitch, 2004; Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, 2004). This overidentification hampers efforts to target already limited resources to the students and schools that actually need assistance. To address these flaws, we recommend that school accountability systems be based on multiple measures, including local assessments, teacher-designed classroom assessments collected over November 2006 Page 1 of 5ASCD11/27/2006http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.459dee008f99653f...time, student portfolios, graduation rates, in-grade retention rates, the percentages of students taking honors classes and Advanced Placement exams, and college enrollment rates. Rather than being subject to a rigid federal one-size-fits-all system, states should have the flexibility to design accountability systems that produce valid results. For example, they might use growth models and other measures to assess changes in student learning over time and recognize improvement on all points of the achievement scale. States should use measurement results to revise instructional practices and curriculum, to give individual assistance to students, and to provide appropriate professional development to educators—not to penalize teachers or schools. States should implement assessment systems that are appropriate, valid, and reliable for all groups of students, including students with disabilities and English language learners. We recommend aligning NCLB assessment requirements more closely with students' Individualized Education Plans and eliminating arbitrary federal limits on the number of students who may be given assessments based on alternate or modified achievement standards. We propose exempting ELL students' scores on reading and math tests given in English from adequate yearly progress calculations for at least the students' first two years in the United States (as opposed to one year as stipulated in current regulations), while continuing to require that schools annually assess ELL students' progress in building English language proficiency. Federal law should encourage states to create comprehensive, flexible standards that do not narrow the curriculum. These standards should incorporate the nature of work and civic life in the 21st century. Students need high-level thinking skills and global understanding, as well as sophisticated information, communication, and technology competencies. As the Partnership for 21st Century Skills—a leading advocacy group that brings together the business community, education leaders, and policymakers (including NEA)—stated, Standards that reflect content mastery alone do not enable accountability and measurement of 21st century skills. And without a comprehensive, valid system of measurement, it is impossible to integrate these skills effectively into classroom instruction or monitor whether students have mastered the skills necessary for success in life and work today. (n.d.) Accountability systems should provide support and assistance to schools and districts most in need of improvement, as well as realistic timelines for reaching improvement goals. If a school fails to demonstrate that it is closing achievement gaps after receiving additional financial assistance, technical resources, and other supports, then the state should provide supportive interventions. Other necessary corrections to NCLB include giving schools and districts more than one year to implement improvement plans before subjecting them to additional sanctions; designating schools or districts as “in need of improvement” only when the same subgroup of students fails to make adequate yearly progress in the same subject for at least two consecutive years; targeting school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) to the specific subgroups that fail to make adequate yearly progress; allowing schools to offer SES