Letter to the Senate HELP Committee
Dear Senator:
On behalf of the three million members of the National Education Association and the students they serve, we would like to discuss our vision for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and how the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, scheduled for markup tomorrow, measures up. We recognize there have been and will continue to be adjustments made to the bill. While important areas of improvement are still needed to help students, we believe the bill is moving in a positive direction. We will provide our views on select amendments to the bill tomorrow.
The last time ESEA was reauthorized, Congress did not listen enough to educators and parents—the result was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which has not benefitted students nearly as much as intended and, in fact, has had many unintended negative consequences. Congress now has an opportunity to correct course and fulfill the original intent of ESEA. Fittingly, your work this week comes on the heels of the 50th anniversary of the signing of ESEA into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who appropriately said, “Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.” It is time to make good on that promise.
Reauthorization of ESEA is an opportunity to set a new vision of shared responsibility for public education that promotes opportunity, equity, and excellence for all students. Toward that end, we have urged Congress fulfill three core goals:
- Creation of a new accountability system with an “opportunity dashboard” as its centerpiece. The dashboard should include data on attendance and graduation rates, as well as students’ access to resources and supports such as advanced coursework, fully qualified teachers, specialized instructional personnel, high-quality early education programs, and arts and athletic programs.
- Giving students more time to learn by addressing over-testing and decoupling the tests from high-stakes decisions. Less high-stakes testing would allow teachers to spend more one-on-one time with students, especially those most in need of extra help, and undo narrowing of the curriculum. States and school districts also need flexibility to determine which tests provide the most useful information to help educators improve instruction and help students learn.
- Ensuring all students have access to qualified educators who are empowered to lead. Every student deserves committed, caring, and qualified educators who are empowered to focus on what is most important: student learning. To help ensure that the expertise of accomplished educators shapes policy and practice, incentives should be provided for educator-led professional development for all school personnel, including education support professionals.
The Every Child Achieves Act takes a number of steps in the right direction, but also has drawbacks that should be improved going forward. We do want to acknowledge the leadership of Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray in making these significant improvements in the manager’s package:
- The addition of multiple measures of success used by elementary and middle schools. The initial draft bill already included multiple measures for high schools.
- The requirement of student support and school success indicators in state-designed accountability systems, such as access to advanced coursework, access to school counselors or nurses, and access to fine arts and regular physical education. Requiring such indicators is necessary to ensure that states report—and act on—opportunity gaps in order to provide all students with the tools and resources needed to succeed.
Detailed analysis
Additionally, we are pleased by provisions of the bill in these key areas:
- Voice of educators. The bill acknowledges the critical role of all educators: principals, teachers, education support professionals (including paraprofessionals), and specialized instructional support personnel (like school counselors). It also promotes school leader and teacher residency programs. We are hopeful the bill can be strengthened so that committees of stakeholders can diagnose and propose improvement plans for struggling schools.
- Accountability system. The bill replaces the unworkable system of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in NCLB that led to the intense focus on over-testing and unfair labeling and punishing of schools. It also replaces the one-size-fits-all system of sanctions and interventions—including the requirement to devote 20 percent of funds to supplemental educational services (SES) and school choice—with a more flexible system: locally determined supports and interventions based on a needs assessment in the identified school. The disaggregation of data for racial, ethnic, and other subgroups of students is preserved, which will help maintain transparency about how schools and students are performing. The bill also allows for alternative standards and assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
- School quality and climate. The bill requires state report cards to include information on indicators such as discipline, absenteeism, bullying and harassment, teacher retention, expenditures and class size, as well as data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
- Labor-management collaboration. The bill strengthens labor-management collaboration by retaining the savings clause (collective bargaining protections) in Title I and adding it to Title II.
- Funding. Unlike H.R. 5, this bill preserves maintenance of effort provisions—to preserve state investment in our schools—and does not include Title I portability. The bill also allows funding to be used to improve equitable access to teachers, principals, and other school leaders, and to reduce class sizes for low-income and minority students.
- Family engagement. The bill expands the language governing parent involvement to include extended family and guardians.
At the same time, we are concerned that the bill falls short in these areas:
- Closing opportunity gaps. While the manager’s package moves in a better direction, the bill should go further in helping to close opportunity gaps by requiring a broader range of student support and school success indicators to be part of the accountability system, and ensuring that states are held accountable for closing those gaps. Closing opportunity gaps is our highest priority because it will do the most to help ensure students are college- and career-ready.
- Testing. The current mandatory testing regime is left intact, with all 17 tests required by NCLB continuing—14 in reading and mathematics (annually in grades 3-8, once in high school) plus 3 in science (once in elementary, middle and high school), meaning students will still have less time available for learning than they should. Simply put, this bill does nothing to reduce the excessive testing happening across the country. It does not address the number of federally-mandated tests, nor does it require states and districts to take steps to stop the overuse and misuse of tests throughout the school year.
The bill would be improved with the inclusion of grade-span testing (once in elementary, middle and high school) to allow students to focus more on critical thinking and less on rote memorization. We believe the bill’s pilot state-designed assessment system should be accessible to all states that meet the criteria; arbitrarily determined factors should not curtail the expansion of innovation, especially since the pilot is an opportunity to create assessment systems driven by teaching and learning factors rather than accountability alone.
- School segregation. The provision on public school choice does not include language to prevent re-segregation of schools. At a time when our student population is becoming more diverse, federal policy must ensure that diversity is recognized as a national strength and that we do not take a step backwards from the gains of Brown v. Board of Educationwith respect to school integration.
- Educator pay/qualifications. The bill promotes pay for performance, which research shows does not work. Additionally, states should be encouraged to ensure that all educators are profession-ready and that they have the supports needed to be successful.
- Student performance. The bill is inconsistent in that it allows alternative assessments for students with disabilities, but then continues the arbitrary cap of 1 percent on the number of such students who may take them. We believe parents and educators can better make this decision on an individual student basis. The bill also eliminates programmatic focus/national attention on student access to AP/IB programs and dropout prevention initiatives. Additionally, English-language learners are not given enough time to attain proficiency before their test scores are used for accountability purposes.
- Charter schools. The bill largely preserves the status quo: an aggressive federal push to expand the charter sector coupled with weak and inadequate requirements for accountability, transparency, and equity.
- Funding. The bill fails to provide dedicated funding for key elements of education that help ensure student success, such as high-quality preschool, educational technology, after-school programs, and Promise Neighborhoods; instead they are reduced to “allowable uses.” The “pay for success” initiatives in Title IV raise a host of concerns, including the potential to outsource public education services.
Again, we are hopeful that further improvements will be made to address equal educational opportunities for students and look forward to working with you this week to ensure that the bill helps the students it is intended to serve. Our goal remains a final ESEA reauthorization that truly promotes opportunity, equity, and excellence for all students.
Sincerely,
Mary Kusler
Director of Government Relations
Director of Government Relations
NSBA Letter to Senate HELP Committee Prior to Mark-Up of the Every Child Achieves Act
Monday, April 13, 2015
Federal Advocacy Resources
In this letter to Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel applauds the Committee's bipartisan effort to modernize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) through its introduction of the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). In advance of the Committee's mark-up of the bill, the letter outlines NSBA's priorities. These are measures NSBA believes will allow school districts throughout the country to have the flexibility they need to successfully address the educational challenges faced in school board members' local communities. These priorities include strong local governance, the exclusion of Title I portability provisions and the inclusion of maintenance of effort (MOE) provisions, as well as full federal investments in Title I. Mr. Gentzel closes the letter by urging Committee members to oppose any proposals supporting vouchers or tuition tax credits to non-public schools.
AFT, NABE, TESOL on Senate Bipartisan ESEA Bill
Encouraging Signs for English Language Learners and Their Teachers
WASHINGTON—Leaders of three organizations representing the majority of educators who teach English language learners said Monday they are encouraged by the Senate bipartisan Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization proposal.
“The proposed bill represents a significant step forward to support the academic and language needs of ELLs, to adequately prepare teachers to work with ELLs, and to promote equity,” said leaders of the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association for Bilingual Education, and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) International Association, in a statement to their members.
One of the most important provisions in the bill, said AFT President Randi Weingarten, would be to give English language learners with basic or little English proficiency a three-year grace period before taking English language arts assessments in English. “This is a significant step toward more appropriately assessing English learners, and it better aligns with what research shows and educators know: that it takes time to learn English. ELLs need enough time to be part of the English-language culture. We’ve seen testing after one year, and it’s just not fair or right. This is an example of the commonsense provisions Sens. Murray and Alexander have put in their bill.”
English language learners—preK-12 students who are working toward becoming proficient in the English language—are one of the fastest-growing student populations. The goals of these three organizations include promoting educational excellence and equity for ELLs to ensure they are able to meet the same challenging college- and career-ready standards required of all students.
Leaders from the three organizations said they were pleased the Senate bill includes funds for professional development for general education and mainstream educators who have not worked with ELLs, and funds to help recruit, retain, mentor and induct educators of ELLs and ELLs with disabilities.
Weingarten said Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) took an important bipartisan first step in reclaiming the original purpose of ESEA, which was to help children, particularly those at risk, and address education equity.
“This is a significant and great beginning of a long legislative process to get a final bill that provides the right resources and policies for those with the most needs, including ELLs, and for their teachers,” Weingarten said.
Santiago Wood, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, said the bill is encouraging, and NABE will work on making it better as the legislative process continues. “We will be advocating for high-quality bilingual education programs, considering we live in a globally competitive economy and all students could benefit from learning more than one language,” Wood said.
“We will focus our efforts on promoting a strong collaboration between English as a second language teachers and other teachers for the benefit of this diverse student population. This collaboration is at the heart of effective instruction for ELLs,” said Rosa Aronson, executive director of TESOL International Association.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is expected to take up the Alexander-Murray bill on Tuesday.