Thursday, October 15, 2009

President Obama and NCLB

As an educator I am directly affected by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2002. This law enacted high stake tests that determined a schools success. The objective of the law was to close the achievement gap between race, socioeconomic status, ELL students, special education students, gender as well as United States as compared with other nations. While NCLB received bipartisan support in Washington, many lawmakers have now realized that there were critical flaws in the legislation that need to be reformed. With the election of President Obama and the appointment of Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education it seems likely that NCLB will have significant changes made to it. What is not yet evident is specifically how and when the law will change. President Obama himself has not said very much about how he will change NCLB, except that he will. His position on NCLB according to his website is as follows, “We will recruit an army of new teachers and develop innovative ways to reward teachers who are doing a great job, and we will reform No Child Left Behind so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.” With this statement President Obama could take the legislation anywhere, but it signals a move to alter how funding is given out for schools that are not succeeding. In order to learn more about how NCLB will change in the coming years we have to look at Scretary Arne Duncan and his opinions of the law.
Fortunately Arne Duncan has been more specific about changes to NCLB in a September 24th press conference released and posted on the Department of Educations website. Here Duncan clearly states that there are fundamental flaws to the current legislation that need to be changed. It is also notable that Duncan refers to the education law as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA was originally passed in 1965 and was passed as NCLB in 2002. The change in name shows that the current administration is attempting to get away from the many of the ideas and problems created in the 2002 law.
One significant change will be to alter the goals of the current high stakes testing that schools face. Secretary Duncan wants to have tests follow student growth and improvement rather than to follow scores of a specific teacher or grade level as it is currently. This is a change that most educators that I talk to are in complete support of because it maintains a high level of accountability but demonstrates the actual academic growth of the students and school. Also consistent with President Obama’s quote above Secretary Duncan wants the new ESEA law to include funds to improve teacher quality and for new teacher recruitment. The final specific change that is currently underway and marks a significant change in approach in developing education legislation is a series of town hall meetings designed to gain input from educators around the nation. While the meetings are going to occur in all fifty states the first five have already been set up taking place from October 7 through December 2 in Washington D.C.
The current administration intends on changing the current form of ESEA the question is when. There have not been any timelines set and other than a few press conferences and town hall meetings little has been done to develop a new bill. It seems as though Secretary Duncan is pushing for change but President Obama will likely wait until other issues are resolved with the economy, health care, and the war in Afghanistan.

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