Local support needed to bolster education’s message in Washington, D.C. 

CSBA’s Federal Issues Council delivered a strong message on education issues to the White House, U.S. Department of Education and Capitol Hill last month, making the case for fixing the No Child Left Behind Act and safeguarding funding for programs that are crucial to local education efforts throughout California and the nation.

Education allies in the National Conference of State Legislatures, National League of Cities and National Head Start Association were especially supportive, and the contacts made with them during the March 5-8 trip to Washington, D.C., will help build the coalitions needed to successfully influence national policy and budgeting. The timing of the FIC delegation’s trip also reinforced the messages delivered to policy-makers at the National School Boards Association’s annual Federal Relations Network Conference in February.

“Our meetings went well, and it is always very important for our voices to be heard,” said CSBA President Luan B. Rivera, who led the 18-member FIC delegation to Washington.

Whether the topic was funding for vocational education and rural schools, support for Head Start, the fundamental changes required in NCLB or other education issues, “most of the people with whom we met admitted that they had heard these concerns from other groups,” Rivera reported. Congress is not inclined to support President Bush’s recommendations to cut federal education programs like the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination program. In fact, shortly after the FIC trip the U.S. Senate voted to restore $7 billion to education budgets for fiscal 2007.

“Their attitude was a little bit different this year,” Rick Pratt, CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations, noted of Bush administration officials. “We expressed our concerns regarding reauthorization of NCLB, and they seemed to be a little bit more open to listening than in previous years. There’s been such a bipartisan outpouring of opposition to NCLB throughout the country.”

Ruben Barrales, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, was especially receptive to CSBA’s message, acknowledging that NCLB’s overarching national reach has imposed hardships on local districts. He pointed to greater flexibility since Margaret Spellings became Secretary of Education in January 2005.

Rivera said CSBA’s rapport with Barrales benefited from the White House official’s roots in California, where he was a businessman and San Mateo County supervisor before becoming the Bush administration’s liaison to state and local elected officials.

Local connections also helped in the FIC delegation’s meeting with Heath Weems, Senior Legislative Assistant to U.S. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, who recently ascended to the chairmanship of the powerful House Committee on Education and the Workforce. McKeon’s committee will play a central role as NCLB comes before Congress for reauthorization next year.

Dr. Kerry Clegg, Immediate Past President of CSBA and a McKeon constituent, joined Ben Liao, CSBA Director-at-Large Asian/Pacific Islander, in highlighting a particularly egregious problem with NCLB in the Cupertino Union School District, where Liao is a trustee. Cupertino consistently posts some of the highest scores on California’s Academic Performance Index but was sanctioned under NCLB last year solely because too many special education students opted out of the state test.

In all their meetings with officials, FIC delegates sought to dispel three “myths” about NCLB:

• That good intentions make for good policy objectives;
• That a single number – NCLB’s “adequate yearly progress” – can accurately measure student and school performance; and
• That any measure should trigger automatic interventions from a predetermined list instead of guiding corrective actions more appropriate to individual circumstances.

As Pratt said, “You should be looking at multiple indicators, using those to diagnose what’s going wrong with a particular school and then taking appropriately designed action.”

Weems said that Rep. McKeon remains open-minded on education policy and, like the White House’s Barrales, is encouraged by the flexibility demonstrated by the Department of Education under Spellings.

CSBA President Rivera, however, remains skeptical that the Bush administration or Congress will follow through with the fundamental changes required to make NCLB the realistic, effective program that is needed to steer national education policy and empower the states, which are ultimately responsible for the performance of their schools.

Rivera cited the counsel of David Shreve, Senior Committee Director of Education at the National Conference of State Legislatures, who met with the FIC delegation to discuss common issues. Shreve said his organization has presented 43 detailed recommendations on NCLB to the administration, but only three have been addressed and none has been resolved.

“It is structured to over-identify failure,” Shreve said of the federal education law, but he warned that congressional leaders and the White House will try to fast-track NCLB’s reauthorization through Congress next year.

“He said the only way to stop it is through individual members in Congress,” Rivera reported. “All of us need to contact our representatives in Congress, press them hard and share stories from our districts. They are all facing reelection and care about the feelings of the people in their districts. I think we need an ongoing drive to keep our membership in touch with Congress.”