RA Action:

News from the NEA Annual Meeting

July 2, 2007

Presidential Candidate Statements On
No Child Left Behind & A Vision of 21st Century Public Education

What proposals would you advance for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as the No Child Left Behind Act? Please include specific examples of provisions that should be amended, deleted, or added.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR)
The emphasis on reading and math scores in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has caused our schools to reduce time and money spent on other areas essential to educate the whole child, such as art and music. Raising reading and math scores must not come at the expense of other elements of a well-rounded curriculum, and NCLB must insist that schools not get away with teaching to the test.

In general, testing should be an important component, but not the only way we assess a student’s progress. We know that students learn in a variety of ways, and NCLB must recognize multiple measures, including portfolios, oral presentations, experiential demonstrations, and other methods of demonstrating competence.

I have a plan that will redesign our delivery model of public education, especially at the high school level. It’s called personalized learning. Don’t mistake this with individualizing. Individualizing suggests that the educators are still in charge of crafting the path of learning for the student. Personalizing shifts the ownership of the path to the student with educators serving as part of the student’s support team. Each student will have a personalized learning plan, not an I.E.P., but a plan where he is the lead author based on his interests, passions, and dreams. To truly personalize, we must create unlimited opportunities by harnessing resources such as the Internet and our communities, including colleges, businesses, organizations, and talented individuals.

We must break away from the Carnegie Unit (120-150 hours of seat time in the classroom) and other traditional clock (5 1/2 hours/day) and calendar (180 days/year) requirements. Instead of giving students credit for physically taking up space, we must award credit for results, and make certain that we are truly filling minds and not just seats. NCLB must change the way we look at attendance to accommodate other times and places for learning.

We need a national focus on professional development to ensure that our educators have the skills to make personalized learning succeed. NCLB funds in every state should be used to provide incentives to make certain that this transformation actually happens and succeeds.

If we do this right, we will virtually eliminate dropouts, and realize the vision we have longed for—a public education system that makes the American dream available to all.

What is your vision of a 21st Century public education? How would you describe the role of the federal government in fulfilling that vision? What can the federal government do to ensure that all students attend a great public school?

The 21st century will belong to the creative; they will thrive and prosper, both as individuals and as societies. The creative ones will be the competitive ones. How do you nurture something as elusive as creativity? You can’t teach it the way you do state capitals and multiplication tables. You and I know how—by offering art and music to all our students, all the way through school. So the secret weapons for becoming creative and competitive are art and music, our “weapons of mass instruction.”

It infuriates me when people dismiss the arts as extracurricular, extraneous, and expendable. To me, they’re essential. In too many schools, we only willingly develop the talents of children who run well, jump high, and throw or shoot a ball. What about the child who doesn’t have exceptional athletic ability? What would happen if an art teacher puts a paintbrush in a young boy’s hand and, as a direct result, he discovers his God-given talent? People who may never have noticed him before suddenly are praising him. Inside every child, there are treasures to find. Education’s Job One in the 21st century must be to find those treasures and unlock them.

Studies have shown a direct correlation between music education and spatial reasoning, a key to improving math scores. Music develops both sides of the brain and the capacity to think in the abstract. Music teaches students how to learn, and that skill is transferable to learning foreign languages, algebra, or history.

Art and music also keep children in school. There is an established correlation between engagement in the arts and dropout rates. But we have to do even more to bring down the 30 percent dropout rate and save the students who leave, primarily, because they are bored. We need a new delivery model for transforming our schools, especially at the high school level. I have a plan that, done right, will virtually eliminate dropouts, raise standards, yet save so much money that we can strengthen early learning, reduce college costs, and make teaching a more attractive and rewarding profession than ever.

It’s called personalized learning. I want each child at the center of his education, so that each student’s learning is relevant to his interests and aspirations. With the help of teachers, parents, and community, each student becomes the primary driver of his own learning plan. While the resources needed to inspire every student will never exist solely within the walls of our schools, many of those resources are readily available in our communities and on the Internet and should be accessible to all of our students with the possibility of acquiring credits towards graduation. In order to do this well, we will need to harness all of the worthwhile opportunities in our communities including businesses, colleges, organizations, and talented individuals. The opportunities that can be made available are virtually limitless.

We must personalize learning by recognizing that learning can take place anytime, anywhere. If our schools allow students to own their learning based on their interests, passions, and dreams, and to own their timetables, our children will stay in school and achieve at unprecedented levels. The primary job of our educators will be to get our students to dream beyond where they ever would have dreamed on their own.

As President, I will lead this transformation by putting more focus than ever before in our nation’s history on creating a public school system that is designed from the ground up to leave no child behind. The federal government can help fulfill my vision and ensure that every student attends a great public school by supporting art and music programs and personalized learning, both conceptually and financially. The federal government is in a unique position to survey the national field and serve as the clearinghouse for great models in the “laboratories” of our states and provide incentives aimed at ensuring that “No Child Left Behind” is more than a slogan.

Finally, I say to all Americans that we need urgency in moving forward with school redesign. America ’s economic leadership of the world is at risk if we do not act now to ensure that our public schools are the best in the world.