On Tuesday March 16th, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released the Obama administration’s reauthorization blueprint for ESEA. The document, encompassing broad principles for renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act seeks to address perennial complaints that the law’s current version—the No Child Left Behind Act—is inflexible and focuses too narrowly on student test scores to get a picture of a school’s achievement.
The Obama administration’s long-anticipated blueprint for overhauling the Bush-era NCLB law seeks to maintain the current statute’s focus on disaggregating data and improving the performance of particular student groups, such as students in special education.
The administration is planning to look beyond the current law’s focus on test scores in assessing schools’ performance and also report on factors such as attendance, course completion, and school climate. It would also permit states to expand the subjects tested beyond reading and mathematics.
The “blueprint” has drawn fire from NEA leadership as well as that of the AFT. Below is a statement from NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.
NEA president to Administration:
‘Takes working together to improve schools’
‘Blueprint’ proposal needs redrafting if it is to fulfill America’s education promise
WASHINGTON—The White House has announced that the Obama administration’s “blueprint” for reauthorization will be forwarded to Congress on Monday, March, 15, 2010. The following statement can be attributed to Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association:
“We are disappointed by this first effort by the Administration to rectify the considerable problems in current federal education law.
“What excited educators about President Obama’s hopes and vision for education on the campaign trail has not made its way into this blueprint. We were expecting to see a much broader effort to truly transform public education for kids. Instead, this blueprint’s accountability system still relies on standardized tests to identify winners and losers. We were expecting more funding stability to enable states to meet higher expectations. Instead, this blueprint requires states to compete for critical resources, setting up another winners-and-losers scenario. We were expecting school turnaround efforts to be research-based and fully collaborative. Instead, we see too much top-down scapegoating of teachers and not enough collaboration.
“The public knows that struggling schools need a wide range of targeted actions to ensure they succeed, and yet the Administration’s plan continues to call for prescriptions before the actual problems are diagnosed. We need proven answers along with the deep insight of the experienced professionals who actually work in schools.
‘We know that it takes all stakeholders working together to improve our schools. The Administration’s plan leaves out students’ first teachers – their parents. There is no attempt in the blueprint to support parents’ efforts to be more involved in their children’s education.
“The National Education Association cannot support the Administration’s plan at this time. We are sharing the blueprint with our members so their voices are heard. We intend to engage in a productive dialogue to meet the needs of students, educators and public schools.
For more information about NEA’s principles for the reauthorization of ESEA, visit www.nea.org/esea.