FIC takes campaign to ‘Fix NCLB’ to Washington

As Congress begins debating reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act—and with a growing chorus of lawmakers calling for fundamental changes in the law—members of CSBA’s Federal Issues Council brought the association’s Fix NCLB campaign to Washington, D.C., March 12-14.

The campaign to reform the sweeping federal mandate topped the agenda in FIC meetings with officials from the White House and U.S. Department of Education, members of Congress and their staffs and representatives of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the nation’s capital. NCLB also dominated meetings with representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of Counties.

With each group, the FIC delegation delivered the same message: Congress must seize this opportunity to significantly reform NCLB so the law can help schools and children rather than hurting them.
Rick Pratt, CSBA’s assistant executive director for Governmental Relations, said it’s obvious that the political climate in Washington has changed since FIC’s visit a year ago.

“There’s a groundswell of concern over this law, and it’s happening across the country,” he said. “The administration realizes that people are jumping ship, and that if they’re going to salvage this law, they’re going to have to make some changes.”

CSBA’s Fix NCLB campaign provides specific examples of problems with the law drawn from California school districts and county offices of education. These problems include unworkable mandates that do not recognize differences between diverse groups of students and schools, sanctions that punish already-struggling schools without offering solutions, unrealistic and unreachable goals, inadequate federal funding and the law’s unfair measures for evaluating academic achievement that label some good schools as failures.

Congressional hearings begin
“NCLB is a classic example of a law with unintended consequences and uneven, unfair and sometimes capricious implementation,” said CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin during a March 12 meeting with Melissa Shannon, senior policy adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “During reauthorization, CSBA is hoping for as open and deliberative a process as possible. We’re counting on sensible, coherent conversations.”

The FIC visit came at a particularly opportune time, said CSBA President Kathy Kinley. FIC members discussed local problems with the law with members of Congress, White House domestic policy staff and Department of Education officials the same week that federal Education Secretary Margaret Spellings faced tough questioning about NCLB during congressional reauthorization hearings on Capitol Hill.

“The timing of the FIC trip was excellent,” Kinley said. “NCLB is the big issue for us this year. California must take major responsibility for working to fix NCLB. We have 6.3 million students and 1.8 million English language learners, so we are the state most impacted by this law.”
English learners—who are often not literate in their native languages—face particular hardships under NCLB’s unyielding testing regimen.

The day after FIC members left the capital, more than 50 Republican members of the House and Senate introduced legislation that would fundamentally alter NCLB, giving states flexibility to negotiate compliance with the law’s requirements.

New responsiveness at the White House
In their meetings with White House and Department of Education officials, FIC members say they saw a new willingness to concede that some aspects of NCLB aren’t working. Holly Kuzmich, Spellings’ deputy chief of staff for policy and programs,  indicated during a March 12 FIC meeting, for example, that the department is in the final stages of revising rules that would permit 2 percent of disabled students to take modified exams. She also said the department is considering changing rules for English learners and targeting interventions to the worst-performing schools. Initially, NCLB was “a blunt instrument,” Kuzmich conceded, but she said the administration is refining it to be more reasonable.

Education Department staff also promised the administration would consider “targeted interventions” that focus on schools that are really struggling. They admitted that it may make sense to differentiate between different categories of schools that are in Program Improvement under NCLB rules. Some excellent schools in California have failed to meet NCLB’s definition of adequate yearly progress because too many students were sick on test day or parents exercised their right to opt their children out of testing. Under NCLB’s existing strictures, schools that fail a single AYP category face the same sanctions as schools that fail to meet all 46 targets.

FIC members concurred that federal officials seemed more receptive this year to CSBA’s Fix NCLB message. “In the past, we’ve been stonewalled,” said Pratt. “This year when we raised problems with NCLB, they were more likely to say, ‘We’ve heard that from others, and we’ll do something about it.’” Kinley agreed. “There seems to be some openness to getting real input,” she said, “Federal officials seemed more respectful and open to really hearing from us on what changes in the law will really make it work.”

Allies abound
A growing number of political and public policy organizations are speaking out about their concerns with NCLB. The National Governors Association, which had been silent in the NCLB debate in the past, is now active in the campaign to reform it, joining the National Conference of State Legislatures, National Association of Counties, Council of State School Officers, CSBA, the National School Boards Association and others.

Education policy expert Joan Wodiska, a school board member from Virginia who is on staff with the governors association, told FIC members in a March 14 meeting that the nation’s governors are now eager to work for changes in NCLB. The governors association has an NCLB point person in each of the 50 states, she said, and the group will soon issue detailed recommendations for reforming NCLB. The governors, she said, agree that states should be allowed to use an academic growth model to measure student performance. “We believe that NCLB should reward—not punish,” she said.

Leighann Lenti, who represents Gov. Schwarzenegger in Washington, said the governor is working with Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell to get the message out about the need for specific NCLB reforms. She said the governor and superintendent are lobbying members of California’s congressional delegation for a reauthorized NCLB that permits states like California to integrate their accountability systems with NCLB’s adequate yearly progress measure of school performance.

This is a key issue for California, which had a growth model for evaluating schools in place well before Congress passed NCLB in 2001. The state’s Academic Performance Index includes multiple measures for judging school performance, and it rewards schools and districts for progress toward academic goals.

California’s governor is “on the same page” as CSBA when it comes to NCLB, Lenti said, and she credited the association’s Fix NCLB message with contributing to the success of the state’s effort to get key changes in the law. “This shows that the entire state is together on our issues,” she said. “We are presenting a united front.”