No teacher left unsupported would improve 'No Child Left Behind,' Sen. Jeff Merkley told at Senate hearing | OregonLive.com

No teacher left unsupported would improve 'No Child Left Behind,' Sen. Jeff Merkley told at Senate hearing

Published: Friday, July 15, 2011, 5:48 PM Updated: Friday, July 15, 2011, 5:48 PM

By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian

Bruce Ely/ The OregonianU.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley asks students in a summer enrichment camp at Gilbert Heights Elementary in east Portland to raise their hands if they have ever developed a budget. Merkley held a formal hearing on federal education policy at the school, which is in the David Douglas school district that he attended as a child and where his two children now go to school.

Helping teachers improve, not dinging schools for their test scores, should be the driving force behind federal education policy, Oregon educators and student advocates told U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore, on Friday.

Merkley, a member of the Senate health and education panel charged with rewriting the much-maligned federal No Child Left Behind law, heard testimony from 14 diverse Oregonians during a formal Senate hearing held in a Portland elementary school gym.

They delivered three main points:

Make effective teaching -- and the training and collaboration that help teachers accomplish that -- the centra