October 16, 2007: Letter to the Congressional Black Caucus

October 16, 2007

The Honorable Carolyn C. Kilpatrick
Chairman
Congressional Black Caucus
United States House of Representatives
2264 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Re:  Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) / No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act

Dear Chairman Kilpatrick:

The National School Boards Association (NSBA), representing over 95,000 local school board members, commends you and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus for your support for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), last reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. NSBA seeks your support for several key amendments to the current law, and for the reauthorization of ESEA during this 110th Congress, rather than to delay the reauthorization until 2009 or later.

Over the past year, NSBA has focused our lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill and in local congressional districts by recommending specific legislative language, conducting formal staff briefings, and providing copies of resolutions passed by local school boards endorsing the provisions contained in H.R. 648 – a comprehensive bill with bipartisan support that addresses local school board concerns across the nation. Resolutions from two of your school districts (Lincoln Park Public Schools and Detroit Public Schools) are attached to this letter.

As the House of Representatives begins the legislative process to reauthorize ESEA, we want to fully engage the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have continued to strongly support the need for high quality public schools for all students. NSBA continues to support the broader goal of ESEA/NCLB to improve the academic achievement of each child. However, we believe that the current provisions of the current law, if they remain unchanged, would hurt rather than help our school’s efforts to raise student achievement and close the achievement gap. Based on input from local school boards across the nation, NSBA developed over 40 specific recommendations to improve the law, which are reflected in H.R. 648.

As you are aware, in August 2007, Chairman George Miller and Senior Republican Member Howard “Buck” McKeon of the House Education and Labor Committee released a “discussion draft” to amend ESEA/NCLB in preparation for the introduction of the Chairman’s Mark.

NSBA is generally pleased with the direction that the committee took by shifting the emphasis of the law away from punitive sanctions and a “one-size-fits-all” approach and moving toward an approach that recognizes the need for greater flexibility and increased options for states and local school districts in improving academic achievement for all students. Additionally, we are pleased with a number of proposed changes including, growth models and indexing systems, multiple measures of academic achievement, a pilot program to allow use of locally-designed assessments, and several key reforms regarding progress measures for students with disabilities and English Language Learners (ELL).

We seek your support for these specific changes. Additionally, we seek your support for new provisions that are needed if Congress intends for local school districts and schools to be truly successful in achieving the primary goals of the federal law. Therefore, we ask that you actively support and encourage the inclusion of the following provisions in a final House bill:

  • Fully address assessments and AYP for ELL students that would: 1) not require assessing students at all during first year enrolled; 2) allow three full additional academic years before academic assessment scores would count on a case-by-case basis even if the LEA is not participating in a growth model pilot; 3) provide for monitoring of the students during the first four years even if LEA is not participating in a growth model pilot. Individual assessments would NOT be tied to any formulas.
  • Establish a permanent three percent for alternate academic assessments for students with disabilities; allowing an additional one percent to be counted as determined by the IEP team; and eliminate the current “evidence” requirements in the discussion draft in order to increase the percentages of students eligible; eliminate references to the percentage as temporary pending completion of a Department of Education study, but rather establish the three percent as permanent; use study findings to affirm. Also eliminate restrictive definitions.
  • Allow for continued use of HOUSSE in addressing qualifications of veteran teachers, at least for special education teachers of multiple core subjects, for rural teachers of multiple core subjects, for teachers from other countries teaching here temporarily, for teachers hired by a district after moving from another state, and for teachers who are rehired after temporarily leaving the profession or retirement.
  • Eliminate the extensive reporting and data collection requirements on school district and school improvement plans and on local application processes.
  • Allow local school districts to reallocate 20 percent set-asides to support supplemental services to other Title I services as early as December 15th.
  • Suspend sanctions requirements such as restructuring schools in “high priority redesign” status and suspend reporting/data collection requirements in any year in which Congress fails to increase Title I by $2.5 billion over the previous year; and increase IDEA by $2 billion over the previous year.
  • Modify the goal of “100 percent by 2014” to a more realistic goal, recognizing that it is statistically impossible to meet such a goal given the current design for measuring student, school and school district progress.
  • Eliminate the penalty for not meeting the 95 percent participation rate as long as the number of students participating in the assessment achieved the AYP target. (Example: if only 50 students needed to become proficient, but 65 students represented the 95 percent participation, while only 60 students actually participated, the school would not be penalized).
  • Allow local school districts to offer additional assessments during the year and to get credit for AYP purposes when the student scores proficient. By so doing, the group as a whole would not be unfairly penalized.
  • Clarify that local school districts in improvement status would be permitted to provide supplemental educational services, subject to SEA approval.
  • Allow schools and school districts to take advantage of “safe harbor” if progress of the subgroup increased performance by 5 percent, rather than the current 10 percent requirement.
  • Target eligibility for supplemental educational services and public school choice for those specific students within a demographic group that failed to meet AYP, rather than all students within the school, given the very limited Title I funding available to the school.
Thank you for your continued support for high quality public education across the nation, and for your strong support to complete ESEA reauthorization during this 110th Congress. Questions concerning our recommendations may be directed to Reginald M. Felton, director of federal relations at 703-838-6782, or by e-mail, rfelton@nsba.org.

Sincerely,

Michael A. Resnick
Associate Executive Director

Cc:     Members, Congressional Black Caucus

 
 
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