Re: nclb - civil rights - wall street journal

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Nice try, but the Journal story simply shows that civil rights groups 
strongly oppose weakening the accountability provisions of NCLB - the 
same accountability provisions that FairTest/FEA/NEA claim have no 
validity and no value.  Your ship is sinking fast.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Monty Neill <monty@fairtest.org>
To: ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com; ARN-L <arn-l@interversity.org>; 
arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 9:28 am
Subject: [arn-l] nclb - civil rights - wall street journal

Here is Wall St Journal July 12 editorial defending NCLB. Note even 
they admit "None of these [civil rights] groups [that opposed Rep 
Graves' bill to suspend intensification of sanctions for one year] 
supports NCLB in toto."

Indeed. 22 civil rights groups signed a letter last summer calling for 
changes to the assessment and accountability structure. Some 20 have 
signed the Joint Statement on NCLB.

These groups want a strong federal role, they want accountability, they 
want disaggregated data. But they recognize that how NCLB does these 
needs a major overhaul because it is not supporting the kinds of 
educational improvements children of color and low-income students 
need. It is not to hard to figure out that CR groups want two things: 
to keep some clear accountability in NCLB (hence, defend the notion of 
accountability and oppose altering it without addressing the bill more 
fully) and want major changes in the structure and implementation of 
the law. Are there contradictions in these messages? To some extent. 
Are they complementary? Yes, in large part. Ways of accomplish both 
parts of this goal are found in the reports of the Forum on Educational 
Accountability (www.fairtest.org and www.edaccountability.org), the 
Forum for Education and Democracy, the NEA and more. These materials 
are quite complementary, with some differences which can be sorted out, 
as can differences over core issues of assessment and accountability be 
sorted out with most civil rights groups. Of course, some folks don't 
want that to happen, they want to pit civil rights against education in 
order to preserve the high-stakes testing (among other things).

Monty


The Wrong Education Fix
July 12, 2008; Page A10
President Bush has often spoken about education reform as a civil 
rights issue. So we're not entirely surprised to see civil rights 
groups now defending the No Child Left Behind law against attempts to 
gut its most effective provisions.

Last month, Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, 
introduced the NCLB Recess Until Reauthorization Act, which would 
essentially suspend the law's accountability provisions but not the 
funding. Under Mr. Graves's bill, schools would no longer have to file 
progress reports that expose achievement gaps between kids of different 
races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Since NCLB passed in 2002, minority parents in particular have come to 
rely on this information to find out if a school is serving the needs 
of their children. But apparently Mr. Graves and his co-sponsor, 
Democrat Timothy Waltz of Minnesota, believe that the problem with 
public education today is too much accountability. Not surprisingly, 
teachers unions like the National Education Association are supporting 
their efforts.

What's heartening about this story is who has lined up to block this 
nonsense. The coalition includes the Citizens Commission on Civil 
Rights, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban 
League, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and more 
than a dozen other liberal outfits.

In a letter to House Members, the coalition said it opposed the 
proposal because "it would allow states, districts, and schools to 
receive federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act with no 
accountability for complying with key provision of the law."

None of these groups supports NCLB in toto. But they do realize that, 
whatever the law's problems, the accountability provisions are not 
among them. NCLB has forced schools to pay attention to the learning 
gap, and the result has been that poor and minority children are doing 
better. We are nowhere near closing that gap, but it is undeniable that 
the lowest-performing students have made significant gains on 
standardized tests in the NCLB era. Easing up on accountability would 
be a big step backward.

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Deputy Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810 x 101;  fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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