President's Viewpoint
Keep This Promise!

An appeal to President Bush from "children left behing" in poor schools

Dear Mr. President:

We are not only, as you call us, "children left behind." We also are children forgotten and out of sight. So we appreciate that you and the First Lady have focused attention on the desperate needs of our schools.

Because we are invisible, many people think that we are few in number. The truth is that there are nearly 10 million of us, born into poverty in inner cities and rural backwaters. The schools we attend are underfunded and overcrowded. We are America's neediest students, but we are least likely to have qualified teachers. In many of our schools, as many as 50 to 90 percent of the teachers are not certified.

When you signed the "No Child Left Behind Act" in January, our hopes soared. For us, the single most important reform is the law's requirement that by the year 2006 every teacher in every public school--including ours--must be fully certified and "highly qualified." Our hopes soared again when, in your State of the Union speech, you boldly stated your commitment to this "great goal for America: a qualified teacher in every classroom."

Please understand what this commitment means to us. We look across town to wonderful suburban public schools with modern facilities and teaching staffs that are 100 percent certified, many with M.A.s and Ph.Ds. Students achieve at high levels, and 90 percent or more go on to college.

But in our schools, children are being left behind in droves. In about half the high schools in America's 35 largest cities, the non-graduation rate has risen to 50 percent or higher. It is no coincidence that many schools with 50 percent non-graduation rates also have teaching staffs that are 50 percent non-certified or worse.

Today, our predicament is deepening. States are holding us to the same high academic standards as kids in those gleaming suburban schools. And we must pass the same high-stakes tests in order to get a diploma. In other words, states are raising the bar for student achievement at the same time they are lowering the bar for teacher quality in our schools. Do you understand why many of us feel we are being set up to fail? And why your commitment to a "highly qualified" teacher in every one of our classrooms is so desperately important?

Your commitment has raised our hopes. But more recent events have raised our fears. In January, the "No Child Left Behind Act" promised a modest $776 million in additional funding for teacher quality. But in February, the White House proposed a 2003 budget that cuts funding for teacher quality. The Department of Education's deputy secretary explained that it is time to "take a little bit of a pause."

We respectfully disagree. It is time for urgency. Nationwide, there are nearly 200,000 non-certified teachers, and the law allows only four years to make that zero. This is a monumental challenge.

In 1961, President Kennedy announced an equally historic challenge: to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The day after the speech, he did not cut NASA's funding; he mobilized the full resources of the federal government to make good on his goal.

Mr. President, our lives are filled with broken promises. We are wary of politicians with empty slogans. But we trust your word. And we know from harsh experience that you are right: to leave no child behind it is necessary to leave no teacher unqualified.

Comments? E-mail Bob Chase at BobChase@nea.org.