Rating NCLB

NEA members say it’s hurting more than helping.

Edited by Alain Jehlen

It has one of the most attractive names ever given to a law. It passed amid high bipartisan hopes of closing the wide achievement gaps that divide American children. And at four years old, it now has a track record.

That’s “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), the current incarnation of the 40-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

NCLB touches virtually every school in the country. Each year the impact grows—and so does a new bipartisan consensus that the law is hurting more than helping efforts to close achievement gaps.

Nobody knows the law’s effects on children better than NEA members, so this month, we hear from the experts—that’s you—about both the good and the bad.

This is not idle talk. NEA lobbyists and organizers are working to radically overhaul the law when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007. Congress may start work on changes this year. And educators can make a difference—if they speak up.

To plan the Association’s effort, NEA President Reg Weaver last June appointed an ESEA advisory committee led by Executive Committee member Becky Pringle. They’re holding hearings with members across the country to come up with proposals, rooted in classroom experience, for changing NCLB into a law that would really help achieve the goal of a great public school for every child.

Armed with these proposals, NEA will intensify its campaign to get Congress to listen to the nation’s working educators.

“We’re not talking about tinkering around the edges,” says Pringle. “We are putting together the ideas of NEA members for how the federal government can help us do our work. It’s essential that members get involved if we are to be successful in making the changes that we and our students need in this legislation, which is the most intrusive education law ever to come out of Washington.”

As NEA revs up its push to transform the law, see what some of your colleagues have to say about what NCLB means in their classrooms.

“Every Child Can Learn”

Originally, NCLB was supposed to ensure high standards for all children and send the message that no one should give up on students who don’t do well in school. That message mostly got sidetracked by the focus on sanctions. But one school that took the message to heart is Rapid City Central High School, the largest high school in South Dakota. It’s a place that has often intimidated American Indian students, especially those coming from intimate tribal schools. In 2001, the school had 300 American Indian ninth-graders—but only 44 eventually graduated.

American Indian and special education students at Central failed to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) in math and reading, and that got the attention of school leaders, says Robert Cook, who joined the staff of about 100 as its only American Indian teacher three years ago. Cook teaches in the school’s new program for at-risk teens, Lakolkiciyapi (Lakota for “an alliance of people working together”), a school-within-a-school that integrates native culture into the curriculum.

“If they feel a sense of belonging, they’ll look at school as a safe place to be,” says Cook of these students. “We can’t teach kids if they don’t come to school.”

So far, so good—last year, Central’s native students achieved AYP in reading and math, and a record number of them graduated.

A Better Deal for Homeless Students

Buried inside NCLB are clauses that strengthen the 1988 McKinney-Vento law on educating homeless children. Schools must now enroll homeless students immediately, without waiting for records from previous schools. And these students are entitled to stay at the same school even if they move.

One of counselor Rose Mathews’ students at Hunters Lane High School in Nashville feared that if he told anybody his dad had kicked him out, the school would, too. The student lived in his car and then at the Salvation Army before confiding in Mathews.

“Before, it would have been, ‘You can go down the road to the school you’re [now] zoned for,’“ says Mathews. But under the new law, she explains, this student was able to stay at Hunters Lane. “It has made us more aware and put us on alert.”

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