September 10, 2007: Testimony on the House Discussion Draft of the No Child Left Behind Reauthorization
Oral Testimony of Michael A. Resnick
Associate Executive Director,
National School Boards Association
To the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor
Discussion Draft of the No Child Left Behind Reauthorization
September 10, 2007
Chairman Miller and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Title I discussion draft to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act.
My name is Michael Resnick, Associate Executive Director of the National School Boards Association. Our association represents the nation’s 95,000 local school board members.
I want to express our appreciation for the committee’s leadership in pressing forward, this year with the reauthorization.
Local school boards have had extensive experience in implementing NCLB over the past five years and are united in agreeing that the law needs significant changes – changes that cannot wait for another two or three years.
If I leave the committee with just one overall impression today I hope it is this: in moving forward with the reauthorization this year, we urge you to heed the lessons learned during implementation of the current law. This comprehensive draft, even with the best intentions, will produce unintended consequences.
This is a complicated proposal with a myriad of changes and interaction of provisions in this and other titles. We urge your continued openness to adjusting the bill through final enactment – including allowing for adequate local involvement.
I want to focus on a few key issues from the 50 separate comments for improvement we submitted last week and attached to this testimony.
We are pleased that your draft reflects a paradigm shift away from the rigid punitive aspects and “one-size-fits-all” approach we now have, and recognizes the need for greater flexibility and increased options for states and districts in the law’s implementation.
In general – with some refinement – we are pleased with key concepts in the draft such as growth models and indexing systems, multiple measures of academic achievement, the local assessment pilot program, and reforms regarding accountability measures for students with disabilities and English Language Learners. We strongly support the proposed changes to more strategically target the identification of schools for improvement, such as tying identification to when the same group of students miss their academic targets in the same subject for two consecutive years. This new direction also appears to emphasize a desire to provide constructive assistance – including the Graduation Promise Fund Program.
However, we do have ample concerns. In some ways the draft suggests an exchange to focus assistance and sanctions on the highest priority schools for an expansion on management and process duties on many others. In so doing, the draft adds many new requirements, including significant process, data collection and reporting requirements for schools and districts.
No one, least of all our students, will be well served if their schools are overwhelmed by increased data and implementation requirements, especially with the numerous other changes this bill would bring. For example, as states adopt growth models, develop detailed data systems, design new standards and assessments, and enact new interventions, local districts will need to make significant adjustments to their curriculum, instructional materials, professional development programs, and more.
We are concerned that the sum total of these process and substantive requirements, some occurring simultaneously, will substantially complicate general understanding of the revised law and its actual implementation.
We urge you to prioritize the specific details that are absolutely necessary to help raise student achievement, and discard those that may meet a theoretical ideal but in practice will only complicate the work of schools.
A few examples may help:
1) On LEA Improvement Plans: We urge you to reconsider this exhaustive and highly structured list of requirements. We are concerned that rural and smaller districts – and urban districts for different reasons – lack the resources and manpower to undertake all that would be required – than say being negotiated between the SEA and LEA to meet local conditions.
2) On Testing of Students with Disabilities: The draft allows local districts to apply to exceed the two percent cap, but requires schools to provide past evidence regarding teacher qualifications and research-based instruction. How far back in those students’ education must that evidence be provided? How will schools adequately assemble it for students moving in from other districts or states? How much review of all that student documentation will actually occur at the state and federal levels? Why not defer to the IEP team evaluation, consistent with IDEA?
3) On English Language Learners (ELL): For determining AYP, the bill should recognize research findings that ELL students frequently take four to seven years to become proficient in “academic English,” the language skills needed in the classroom.
4) On using other indicators for AYP: While the goal is good, the draft requires substantial data collection, is fairly limited in its weighting, is restrictive in the conditions for its use, and quite complex and variable from year-to-year in setting benchmarks to be as beneficial as it could be in scoring AYP – or as a planning tool for the use of these indicators.
5) On providing teacher quality through school salary equalization: The effort should focus on incentives not mandates on teacher assignment – especially given the realities of negotiated contract agreements in many states.
Finally, funding matters. Accountability is a two-way street, and the federal government must do its part. We urge the addition of funding triggers in the event adequate funding does not materialize.
This reauthorization will shape the course of America’s public schools for another 5 or 6 years. We must get it right. We look forward to continuing to work with the committee as this process advances. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.