Key Lawmaker Calls for 'Serious Changes' to NCLB

A key lawmaker has for the first time laid out major changes he says should be included in a reauthorized version of the No Child Left Behind Act. Most of the changes are consistent with NEA's priorities for changing the federal education law.

In remarks on July 30 at the National Press Club in Washington, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education Committee, said that "there are no votes in the U.S. House of Representatives for continuing the No Child Left Behind Act without making serious changes to it."

Miller is a chief architect of NLCB and is leading the effort to reauthorize the legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said during his remarks he expects to present a bill the House can pass early this fall.

Changes he is proposing include the use of growth models to measure schools' progress in raising student achievement, multiple measures for assessing achievement, better tests that will measure more than basic skills, measures to improve high school education, and increased federal funding, all of which NEA supports.

However, NEA opposes performance pay for teachers, which Miller also is proposing.

Joel Packer, director of NEA's Education Policy and Practice Department, told Education Week, "We are opposed to, in this bill, for the federal government to tell schools and school districts that if you take this pot of money you must include test scores as one of the measures of evaluating or compensating teachers," Mr. Packer said. "The other thing with linking evaluations to test scores is that there is not much of a track record to see where it works. So if it is relatively unproven, why would the federal government require it?"

Packer said NEA is opposed to including student test scores as a required or mandatory element of any federal program for evaluating or compensating teachers. He added, "We are not opposed if that is one of several allowable elements subject to collective bargaining or majority teacher support where bargaining does not exist."

Congress Daily reported that Rep. Miller "stressed that he did not expect performance pay to "sweep the nation as soon as the legislation is passed, and that the measure would not upset collective bargaining agreements between school systems and teachers' unions."

Post your own comments about Miller's remarks on NEA's NCLB Blog  

Miller's speech at the National Press Club marked the first time he has publicly revealed the major changes he envisions in the reauthorized legislation and indicated a new willingness to seriously revise the original law.

"Throughout our schools and communities, the American people have a very strong sense that the No Child Left Behind Act is not fair, not flexible, and is not funded. And they are not wrong," Miller said.

Noting a change in tone on Rep. Miller's part with regard to reauthorization of the school law, NEA's Packer observed, "He has been much more of a defender of the existing law. But I think he is changing his view based on what he is hearing from educators, and based on what he is hearing from his fellow members, especially House freshmen."

And Education Week blogger Alexander Russo wrote, "If multiple measures are definitely in, then this represents the first big break by Miller from the groups that helped craft and defend NCLB 1.0 and the EdSec -- and a big win symbolically at least for NCLB 1.0 critics like the NEA who have been clamoring for years now that annual standardized tests were a bad way to go and, more recently, working hard on freshman lawmakers that previous compromises (like the growth model or the idea of treating schools that just miss AYP one year differently from those that miss it all the time, every year) aren't enough.

July 2007