Administration open to critiques of federal education law 

Constructive criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act appears to be making an impact in the U.S. Department of Education and the White House, members of CSBA’s Federal Issues Council found in a series of discussions during their trip to the nation’s capital. The delegation worked hard to correct some fundamental weaknesses in the foundation underpinning the federal education policy.

“CSBA really supports the goals of NCLB,” CSBA President Luan B. Rivera told Holly Kuzmich, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at DOE. “We want to work with the administration to correct flaws and close the achievement gap” in student performance.

“We take it very seriously,” Rivera continued. But, she stressed, more federal education funding – not less, as the administration’s 2006-07 budget proposal would provide – is needed to improve the nation’s schools and maintain the country’s edge in a global economy.

More flexibility is also needed, the CSBA delegation told administration officials. NCLB’s reliance on a single, rigid measurement of “adequate yearly progress,” and the severe consequences for schools that fail to measure up to that standard, need to change, especially for a state with the unique challenges that California faces.

“California is an anomaly,” Rudy Castruita, Superintendent of the San Diego County Office of Education, pointed out. The state has the nation’s largest number of students, and many are underprivileged, with nearly half qualifying for free or reduced-price meals. One in five is an English learner. Families are also highly transient.

The lack of a longitudinal data system kept California out of consideration for a pilot program that will allow 10 states to experiment with alternative “growth models” to track student achievement. However, DOE’s Kuzmich shared the CSBA representatives’ interest in developing an index that could correlate existing state measurements, such as California’s Academic Performance Index, to NCLB’s “adequate yearly progress” goals.

CSBA President-elect Dr. Kathy Kinley took up the call for more flexible policies in a meeting with Ruben Barrales, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

“We have documentation of schools excelling, but still being hammered for not measuring up to NCLB standards,” Kinley said, urging the administration to “recognize that programs are working, and give kids the gift of time” to satisfy the high academic standards that California has already established – higher even than NCLB’s.

The problem is NCLB’s “cookie cutter approach,” agreed CSBA President Rivera, calling for the freedom to design a program that works in California, one that “gives schools credit for lifting students up.”