Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 20, 2007 A LUMP OF NCLB

NCLB in waiting

By Tommy Thompson/Roy Barnes

Yesterday, across the United States, more than 7,000 students dropped out of school. And the same number will drop out tomorrow, and the next day.

This statistic is staggering, to be sure, but it's not the only worrisome one. Every day we see evidence we are also letting down far too many of those students who remain in school. Far too few of our students are even minimally proficient in reading and math. Even our best and brightest students have difficulty competing with their peers internationally. And the achievement gap between our most and least advantaged students is still far too wide.

As former governors of Wisconsin and Georgia we are all too familiar with the consequences of our neglect. Our business owners express frustration at their workers' lack of skills and the costs of training them. Our colleges and universities tell us of the millions they spend annually on remedial courses for college freshman. And our parents and community leaders ask us — plead with us — to institute a system of public education that will ensure their children can succeed in a 21st century, global economy.

And now, as our students are buckling down to complete their work before the holiday season, members of Congress are about to take a winter break without completing theirs.

The reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) lies dormant as Congress and the president have allowed their political differences to stall progress on making needed improvements to the law. They blame each other, interest groups and politics for the failure to move a bill. The losers are our children, teachers and parents who demand better schools and better results.

And yet, the solutions to improving NCLB are at the fingertips of Congress and the president. For example, the independent, bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind, which we co-chair, spent more than a year traveling the country hearing directly from educators, parents, students, business leaders and many other experts about what's working and not working in our schools. We used that feedback, along with analysis of the myriad data-based research on the strengths and weaknesses of NCLB, to formulate 75 concrete recommendations to improve the law and accelerate academic progress for all students.

Others, from both sides of the political aisle, have made useful proposals to refine and improve various provisions while maintaining NCLB's strong academic bottom line on behalf of students.

We are heartened that Chairman Edward Kennedy and Sen. Mike Enzi have vowed to move a bipartisan NCLB reauthorization bill in the new year, and hope the rest of the Senate and the House and the president will follow their lead and work together.

We believe that if the parties could agree on a few basic principles from the beginning, the conversations on how to improve NCLB would move beyond politics and interest group posturing to solutions.

(1) Embrace the successes of NCLB accountability and build on them. There is broad agreement among parents, educators and civil rights and business leaders that NCLB has brought an unprecedented focus on accountability for results and a deeper commitment to ensuring all children, regardless of race or economic status, become proficient in core subjects based on challenging academic standards.

(2) Accept that though NCLB has been an important step forward, significant improvements are needed to reach the worthy goals set out in the law. We must preserve the foundational principles of the law by refining its approaches in ways that are informed by more than five years of experience in classrooms, central offices, state houses and the public square since its passage.

(3) Recognize there have been some encouraging signs of progress in education since passage of NCLB. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show all categories of students improved in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

Among fourth-graders, the highest rate of gains in reading scores has been among lower-performing students. These are the students who were traditionally left behind and often “invisible” in accountability systems prior to NCLB's passage. Importantly, NAEP results also show the achievement gap between white and African American students in fourth-grade reading has narrowed to the lowest since 1992. While this is significant progress, much remains to be done.

(4) Respond with the urgency needed to address this issue that is so critical to our children's futures as well as our nation's economy and competitiveness in the world. Parents, teachers, students, and business, civil rights, and higher education leaders are calling for action. We have a responsibility as a nation to take bold steps to accelerate progress in closing achievement gaps, erase low graduation rates that still plague our schools, and ensure that all children are prepared for successful and productive lives after graduating high school.

(5) Finally, we should leave the door open for innovation and compromise. There is ample room for compromise and innovation that will accelerate progress and make a good education a reality for every student.

Congress needs to make education legislation a priority in early 2008, before the presidential election hits full swing, and develop the bipartisan resolve needed to reauthorize NCLB. America's parents, teachers and students deserve attention now. To paraphrase famed baseball manager Yogi Berra — “It can get late, early.”

Tommy Thompson, a Republican, is former secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and former governor of Wisconsin. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, is the former governor of Georgia. They co-chair the Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind.