Speak to federal legislators about ESEA and get a signed copy of Reign of Error!
The advent of the 114th Congress has been marked by renewed energy to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), better known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB, the 2001 reauthorization of ESEA, changed ESEA from a law devoted to equity to a law devoted to testing and accountability.
As NPE President Diane Ravitch recently wrote, “The switch from ESEA to NCLB was a substitution of punishment and sanctions for direct federal aid to the neediest districts. ESEA and the federal aid it supplied were supposed to help poor children, not convert their schools into test-prep factories or close them or privatize them.”
Last month a Republican effort to pass a House reauthorization bill -- the Student Success Act (H.R. 5) -- failed to gain sufficient support among Democrats and conservative Republicans for passage. H.R. 5 also elicited the promise of a presidential veto from Barack Obama. To date, Senate efforts at reauthorization appear to be more promising. Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee Chairman (Senator Lamar Alexander, R-TN) and Ranking Democratic Member (Senator Patty Murray, D-WA) are currently working on a bipartisan rewrite, which is expected to be ready for markup the week of April 13th.
Between now and April 13th Congress will be in recess and Senators and House Representatives will be in their home districts. Now is the perfect time to reach out and tell them what YOU want (and don’t want) to see in an ESEA rewrite.We’re asking our friends and allies to call, write, or email your Senators and Representatives and if possible, set up meetings to discuss your thoughts on ESEA. Movement on a Senate bill seems most likely after the break, so focus on your Senators if possible.
Here are some helpful talking points, based on Diane Ravitch’s recent article, How to Fix No Child Left Behind, as well as NPE’s letter writing campaigns to the House of Representatives and the Senate HELP Committee.
Restore the original purpose of the ESEA
- equity for poor children and the schools they attend
- schools need more money for smaller classes, social workers, nurses, and librarians, not more testing.
Designate federal aid for reducing class size, for intensive tutoring by certified teachers and for other interventions that are known to be effective
- Do not allow portability of Title I funds
- Do not allow a reduction in the use of Title II funds for class size reduction
Keep highly trained well-prepared teachers in the classroom
- Elevate the status of the teaching profession
- Do not use student test scores to reward or punish teachers
Eliminate the testing and accountability portions of the law and leave decisions about when and how often to test to states and districts
- Testing every child every year in grades 3-8 and 11 is an enormous waste of money and instructional time
- No high performing nation tests every child every year
- Teachers should write their own tests; they know what they taught and what their students should have learned
- Use normed standardized tests only for diagnostic purposes, to help students
Rely on the federal testing program – the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – to provide an audit of every state’s progress.
- NAEP data are disaggregated by race, gender, ethnicity, language and disability status
- NAEP tracks achievement gaps between blacks and whites and Hispanics and whites
- NAEP Tests samples of students, and tells us whatever we need to know
Please fill out our form below and let us know if you speak with your Senator(s) and/or Representative or their staff and let us know what have to say about ESEA.
The first five allies to respond will get a signed copy of Reign of Error! Be the first person to get a meeting and send us a photo of you with your Senator or Representative to info@networkforpubliceducation.org and you'll get a signed copy of Anthony Cody's The Educator And The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges The Gates Foundation.Speak to federal legislators about ESEA and get a signed copy of Reign of Error! – The Network For Public Education: