No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Statement

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to achieving equity in American education and to examining the implementation of the law, making changes where needed. The AmherstRegionalSchool District has always been committed to the equity goals of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the most recent version of ESEA: high academic achievement for all students and closing the achievement gap. We have worked tirelessly to achieve these goals and will continue to do so. Our experience with the law over the past five years, however, has led us to conclude that the principles of the law cannot be achieved without fundamental changes in the law, vastly improved implementation, and adequate funding[1]. These modifications are essential to driving the kinds of reforms needed to improve student achievement on a more sustainable basis.

The face of American schooling is changing in ways that we do not believe the public realizes or endorses. The pressure of high stakes testing catalyzed by NCLB is compelling schools to focus on a narrow curriculum, depriving students of the rich learning that comes from the study of art, music, history, science, foreign language, and physical education – all currently being pushed to the periphery or eliminated completely. It is unacceptable that a liberal arts curriculum is gutted in the name of closing the achievement gap, and it is not in the best interests of any students, their families or the nation to continue on this path.

Congress must listen to parents and front-line educators, the ones who know students the best. To this end, we have outlined several principles that we think should guide our educational decisions and have enumerated particular recommendations for the reauthorization of ESEA.

1. Critical Thinking and Basic Skills – We believe that a good education fosters complex reasoning skills as well as basic reading and quantitative skills. High achievement in math and reading means that our students are able to read critically and reason about quantitative data. Basic skills alone will not prepare our children for lifelong learning or for careers.

2. Equity – We believe that schools should educate all children well and we want to work with local, state, and federal agencies to improve learning for all. We support assessments that help us know how individuals and subgroups are performing in school; however, assessments that restrict access to future educational opportunities are patently inequitable. Since children often enter school with qualitatively different kinds of experiences, we recognize that schools are partners in decreasing the achievement gap, but they do not act in isolation from other social institutions or from the home.

3. Rich Curriculum – We believe schools should expand the experiences of children and youth in language arts, math, science, history, foreign languages, music, art, and physical education alike.

4. Accountability to Children and Their Families – We want to promise our families that their children will receive rich learning experiences that will heighten their curiosity, strengthen their reasoning skills, and encourage creativity.

5. Assessment that Supports Learning – We believe that the results of assessment should be timely and should be geared towards giving learners and teachers information about competencies as they are still forming, so as to set a path for learning.

6. Multiple Measures – We believe that decisions about the performance of districts, schools, or students that affect their funding, control, or academic progress must be based on a valid, complementary set of assessments.

7. Reasonable Benchmarks – We believe that some testing to see how districts are doing in literacy and math is necessary. Progress regarding student achievement should be determined by examining students’ complex growth from one point to another. These assessments should be done at transition years (or some other defensible periods) and at levels of difficulty that are realistic and that allow for attention to other disciplines.

8. Accomplished Educators– We want our students to be taught by educators who are qualified, skilled, and engaged in learning and improving their craft throughout their careers. We recognize that professional expertise is developed through institutional support, time, experience and effort.

9. Local Control – We believe that accomplished educators who work daily with students and are familiar with their strengths and weaknesses are best able to make educational decisions about curriculum and assessment. Schools must have the flexibility to plan for improvement.

10. Investing in Education- We want our students to learn in safe facilities, use up-to date educational resources, and to be taught by accomplished educators in classes small enough to receive the individual attention necessary to support their academic growth. We believe that providing the financial resources to develop such educational environments is necessary so that all students may achieve success.

The teachers, parents, administrators, and concerned citizens of Amherst, Leverett, Pelham, and Shutesbury Massachusetts call on our legislators to implement the following changes in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act upon its reauthorization:

· Schools must be receive additional federal funding in order to provide all children with accomplished teachers, small class sizes, as well as staff and programs to provide necessary individual support for academic success.

· Assessments mandated by the federal government should be funded by the federal government.

· The arbitrary and unrealistic yearly progress goals (annual yearly progress or AYP) currently demanded by NCLB must be eliminated.

· States must be authorized to establish accountability systems that focus on multiple measures of overall school and school district quality and effectiveness, including growth and progress models.

· The accountability system must recognize progress toward reasonable benchmarks, and abandon the current “make or break” system of accountability.

· Assessments should support instruction, not interrupt it. Students are spending too much time on summative assessments used for accountability purposes; these should be limited to key “milestones” (e.g. 4^th, 6^th, and 10^th grades). More emphasis should be put on formative assessments that teachers can incorporate into the curriculum to guide student learning.

· Evaluations of teaching and learning must be based on multiple assessments of students that seek to document students’ mastery and comprehension.

· Schools need the flexibility and funds to organize their curriculum and instruction to insure the success of all learners, giving schools the ability to offer additional individual support where needed.

· States should be required to develop assessments that measure students’ progress in conceptual knowledge, process skills, and higher order thinking.

Common Sense Assessments for English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities

· Students with disabilities should be assessed as determined by their Individualized Education Program and not subjected to arbitrary caps (e.g. students with disabilities should be tested at the level at which they are taught, rather than at the level determined by their chronological grade level, and these practices should be in place for any student who is designated as needing accommodation).

· Districts must help English Language Learners (ELL’s) learn to understand, speak, and write in English simultaneously with their acquisition of knowledge of math, language arts, science, and the other content areas in the school curriculum.

· Allow ELL learners to continue to be classified as such for at least 3 years after meeting federal standards for language proficiency. It takes longer than the allotted time to become proficient in English and perform well on standardized tests.

· Establish a school leadership team, consisting of principals, teachers, and other school staff, to develop a long-term improvement plan with measurable outcomes

· A system of coordinated services, in which health and human services agencies work to support schools and students, should be established in every state, funded by state and federal resources.

· The reauthorized ESEA should provide for resources to assist states in establishing and implementing a system of high-quality early childhood education.

· The federal government should assist states in providing each public school with full-time counselors, appropriate administrative support, health care professionals, and other student services personnel.

· The law should include provisions for high-quality after-school programs that offer a variety of activities and academic assistance.

· There must be ongoing mentorship, professional development, and adequate compensation for qualified teachers.

· All schools must be funded at levels that support teachers and increase retention of qualified individuals.

Accountability Currently Results in Punitive Measures Rather Than Support for Schools

We encourage an accountability system that requires the examination of achievement data by various subgroups. Yet, by and large, the current accountability framework does not accurately or fairly assess student, school, or school district performance. What has evolved in the name of accountability is a measurement framework that bases its determination of school quality on students’ performance on a single assessment, fails to recognize progress being made, mandates the participation of small schools in assessments that are not statistically valid, and subjects schools and school districts to an “all-or-nothing” system.

The federal accountability framework in NCLB currently holds public schools to arbitrary and unrealistic yearly progress goals (adequate yearly progress or AYP). This accountability system focuses on a single measure of overall school and school district quality and effectiveness, and ignores growth and progress. The accountability system is punitive and does not recognize success.

It is irresponsible, ineffective, and harmful to students and educators to determine quality of instruction and student achievement by a single test. Further, the information provided by state-level high stakes assessments that are used to determine adequate yearly progress often are out-of-synch with other measures of academic achievement (such as NAEP data and graduation rates). Evaluations of teaching and learning are more responsibly determined based on multiple, diverse assessments that seek to document students’ mastery and comprehension of various topics.

The focus on testing and the frequency of testing narrows the curriculum, pushing out art, history, science, foreign language, etc.

The use of criterion referenced tests, where every student must reach the same bar regardless of where he/she begins encourages testing of superficial factual knowledge instead of higher order thinking skills that take time to develop. The detrimental effects of these test items can be felt in instruction where all students experience pressure to memorize content and students who are less well prepared fall farther and farther behind.

Testing begins very young for children. Research shows fourth grade to be a crucial time in the development of complex reasoning suggesting that the reliance on third grade performance to label schools and children is untenable.[2] In addition, the frequency of testing takes valuable time away from instruction and places children under high stress situations year after year.

Assessment of English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities is Inequitable

Providing high-quality instruction and accurately assessing academic growth for students with disabilities and students who are learning to speak English are among the greatest challenges for many school districts, including ARPS. ESEA does not currently reflect an understanding of academic growth for students with disabilities or of students who are learning English. Students with disabilities are not currently assessed under the conditions determined by their Individualized Education Program (IEP) team and they are subjected to an arbitrary cap of 2% of students’ being allowed to take an alternative exam. English Language Learners are currently released from MCAS testing for 1 year (substituting a test of English language proficiency). Yet schools lack resources to bring ELL’s up to language proficiency at the same time as preparing these students in content for MCAS testing in their second year in the schools.

Meaningful intervention at the state and local levels can help to raise individual student achievement in struggling schools, but the current sanctions under NCLB have proven to be ineffective and unworkable. The current system of sanctions is punitive and is not tailored to the needs of schools and communities.

Each student arrives at school with a unique set of experiences and needs. Many students lack even the most rudimentary academic readiness preparation. Many are undernourished or ill, and some have never received medical or dental care. Others may be homeless or experience parental neglect. All these factors have a strong effect on a child’s ability to learn and thrive. Schools cannot solve this problem without expanded services and without coordination with health and human service agencies, nor should they be expected to do so.

[1] A list of problems we have identified with the current NCLB act is appended to this document

[2] McCaslin, M., Burross, H. L., & Good, T. L. (2005, January 2). Change and continuity in student achievement from grades 3 to 5: A policy dilemma. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(1).