NEA Offers Praise, Concerns in Response to Title I Draft

NEA had some praise for -- and a number of reservations about -- the reauthorization draft of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (ESEA) that was released for comment by the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor.

In a letter to committee leaders, NEA officials noted that some positive steps, including some that reflect NEA members' priorities for changing the federal education law, don't go far enough and that the revised Title I as proposed actually would add new mandates and requirements on states and local school districts without guaranteed funding to cover their costs.

NEA President Reg Weaver was among those invited to respond to the Title I draft  at an Education Committee hearing on Monday, Sept. 10.

The 435-page draft released by the Education Committee covers Title I only, though the entire NCLB is up for reauthorization. NEA noted that there are "significant interactions between many of the provisions" in Title I and other Titles yet to be released, complicating and limiting "our ability to fully analyze and comment on this draft."

NEA's letter to the Education Committee is from Diane Shust, Director of Governmental Relations and Education Policy and Practice Director Joel Packer.

In it, they note:

While we appreciate that the bill recognizes that a child is more than a test score through its provision of multiple measures in the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) system and are pleased that it includes several NEA priority concepts, we are concerned that in many cases it is still overly restrictive and prescriptive in the authority provided to states and school districts in designing their accountability plans and procedures, and still overly focused on measuring schools based on two test scores.  We do not believe that an accountability system based primarily on two test scores is either an accurate or fair reflection of student learning or school quality, particularly when so many of the tests being utilized do not test knowledge or skills, but rather rote memorization.

We are also concerned that this Title imposes many additional mandates and requirements on schools and states (such as the longitudinal data system and student mobility audit) without any guarantee that additional funding will be provided to meet both new mandates and help states and schools overcome the cumulative $56 billion shortfall that occurred since 2002 between the NCLB authorized and actual funding levels.

A summary of NEA's major concerns is included in the letter. NEA also subsequently filed comprehensive detailed comments  on the Title I draft language.

The law in question is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that was dramatically revised and recast as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act when last reauthorized in 2001.