NYTimes on House NCLB Reauthorization Draft

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

DEMOCRATS TRY TO SOFTEN BUSH'S EDUCATION LAW
New York Times - September 1, 2007
by Sam Dillon

As Congress returns next week, leading Democrats are struggling for the 
formula that can attract bipartisan support to extend the life of 
President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. In doing so, they 
are proposing to ease the pressure on suburban schools.

A draft proposal being floated by Representative George Miller, chairman 
of the House education committee, would soften many of the law’s 
accountability provisions while maintaining its overall strategic goal: 
to bring every student to proficiency by 2014 by requiring states to 
administer standardized tests and to punish schools where scores do not 
rise.

The changes, circulated this week by Mr. Miller, a California Democrat, 
and the committee’s ranking Republican, address the most persistent 
complaints against the law, by suburban districts, by middle-class 
parents, by states with large immigrant populations and by teachers 
unions who are crucial to Democrats’ 2008 electoral fortunes.

For the suburbs, for example, Mr. Miller’s draft would draw a 
distinction between schools failing across the board and those where 
only some student groups failed to meet annual testing goals. It would 
give a nod to teachers’ concerns by allowing states to consider not just 
annual math and reading scores in deciding whether a school passes 
muster but other measures, including tests in history, science and 
civics; graduation rates; and Advanced Placement tests.

For states with many immigrants, it would allow students not fluent in 
English to be tested in their native language for five years.

But in a sign of the difficult political calculus in extending a measure 
that has opponents on both the right and the left, for every supporter 
of the proposed changes there has emerged an opponent. .

Amy Wilkins, vice president of the Education Trust, a rights group, said 
the authors were succumbing to pressure from “well-financed and 
ill-informed defenders of the status quo.”

“The heart of the law has been hollowed out,” said Ms. Wilkins, who 
helped draft the original in 2001.

Michael J. Petrilli, a former Department of Education official who is a 
vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has nicknamed the 
education committee’s draft “The Suburban Schools Relief Act of 2007” 
because he says it is intended to appease the middle class.

Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the education secretary, Margaret 
Spellings, said, “We have serious concerns that the draft creates 
loopholes in accountability measures, provides fewer options for 
parents, increases complexity and provides less transparency.”

“We will not support measures that water down the accountability 
provisions,” Ms. Yudof added.

On the other hand, Edward J. McElroy, president of the American 
Federation of Teachers, said, “This draft encourages a serious 
discussion of reauthorization.”

The National Education Association, the other national teachers union, 
which has been implacably critical of the law, said it would withhold 
comment on the draft until it finished polling its local delegates.

The House education committee posted the proposals on its Web site this 
week. Among the most important changes in the draft are those to the 
law’s accountability system, in which states judge whether schools have 
made “adequate yearly progress” and can avoid sanctions.

The draft would allow states to look beyond annual test scores and says 
bluntly that broader criteria “may increase the number of schools that 
make adequate yearly progress.”

Another change would distinguish schools where only one or two student 
groups fail to meet annualtesting goals from those where three or more 
groups fall short. The latter would face more rigorous sanctions; 
students at the former would no longer be eligible to transfer to 
higher-performing schools.

That change would be popular in many suburbs, where thousands of schools 
with sterling local reputations have faced federal sanctions because of 
one or two low-performing groups, but it has already drawn opposition 
from the tutoring industry and the Bush administration.

The draft bill would loosen the rules governing the testing of students 
with limited English, which have provoked disputes between federal 
officials and educators in some states, by allowing states to test 
students in their native language for five years, instead of the law’s 
three years.

“You can see where they’ve tried to satisfy education groups like the 
teachers unions and the school boards,” said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist 
for the American Association of School Administrators.

Both Mr. Miller and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts 
and chairman of the Senate education committee, have promised to draw up 
bills in September to rework the law. President Bush has repeatedly 
described the law as a major reform of American education. It passed in 
2001 with overwhelming bipartisan support, but last November, dozens of 
Democrats who campaigned on promises to change the law were elected, and 
this year, there have already been significant Republican defections.

A bill allowing states to opt out of testing requirements without losing 
federal money, introduced this year by Representative Peter Hoekstra, 
Republican of Michigan, has attracted 50 conservative Republican 
co-sponsors, including the minority whip, Representative Roy Blunt of 
Missouri.

Several groups have complained about the complexity of the draft 
proposals. The measures of schools’ academic progress, for instance, 
would be combined with the math and reading scores under a formula that 
has left even Department of Education officials puzzled.