California delegates back national effort to “fix” NCLB in Congress 

Legislation to “fix and fund” the No Child Left Behind Act was priority one for the California delegation to Washington, D.C. during the Federal Relations Network conference. Hosted by the National School Boards Association, the conference informed school board members about important federal education issues and prepared participants to visit members of Congress.

A delegation of more than 40 traveled from California to share the experiences of local districts with their representatives. CSBA staff from the Governmental Relations and Communications departments arrived in the capital early to brief the California Congressional Delegation staff. The presentation at the California Institute for Federal Policy Research covered the California budget, implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, and reauthorization of Head Start, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The education policy briefing is a regular feature of the annual advocacy trip.

With extensive input from CSBA and state policy-makers, NSBA has drafted legislation to amend NCLB to improve its implementation. “The NCLB Improvement Act of 2005” – the bill’s working title – is based on four goals:

• Provide states with more flexibility to improve accountability for student performance;
• Improve alignment between the needs of students and the way “adequate yearly progress” is measured;
• Improve the method for identifying schools that fail to make adequate progress and the application of sanctions; and
• Connect the law’s remedies with necessary funding.

NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick introduced the legislation to conference attendees on Jan. 30. Several accommodations made to the law last year do not address the major concerns of school districts nationwide, he said. “As much as we appreciate the changes that were made, they really tinker around the edges. They don’t address the basic flaws … and school districts will be labeled as failing.”

He urged school board members to talk to their congressional representatives and urge them to correct aspects of the law that have proven unworkable.

“By over-reaching as it does,” Resnick said, “NCLB is needlessly squandering the public’s confidence in our schools along with squandering precious time and money on fixing problems with a meat axe instead of a scalpel.”

Specifically, the NSBA legislation would allow states to use their own accountability system and measure progress instead of relying solely on an arbitrary cutscore to determine which schools and districts make AYP. The bill would also allow schools and districts to use alternate methods to measure the progress of students with disabilities, such as allowing students taking out-of-grade-level tests to count toward participation rates. The U.S. DOE recently disallowed the practice in California, which could mean that another 1,525 schools and 310 districts could be identified to enter Program Improvement this year. Conversations are underway with federal officials seeking to delay the rules change until at least next year. The legislation would also seek to ameliorate the “diversity penalty” which counts some students in multiple subgroups, thus increasing the chance a school will fail to make AYP.

Another change sought in the legislation concerns triggers for the AYP sanctions. In California, parents may exempt their children from testing – their right under state law – forcing an otherwise excellent school into Program Improvement because of failing to meet the participation rate. The bill’s fourth goal is to set aside some of the more serious sanctions unless Congress significantly increases Title I funding.

During the trip to Washington, members of the delegation also visited the offices of Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. During meetings with each senator’s education policy director, California board members stressed the need to amend NCLB, reauthorize the Perkins vocational education act, Head Start preschool legislation, and a law to supplement funding to rural school districts that lost revenue when timber cutting was halted for environmental reasons.