AFT members pulled no punches when they gathered at the Illinois Federation of Teachers offices in suburban Chicago on June 23 to tell congressional lawmakers how the No Child Left Behind Act is playing out in classrooms across their state. The meeting, organized by the Illinois Federation of Teachers in cooperation with AFT, is the latest in a series of union-sponsored events across several states aimed at giving Congress the unvarnished truth about NCLB and its effect on the classroom-information that will be indispensable if Capitol Hill is to get the law right when it reauthorizes NCLB in the coming weeks.

Funding alone will not give NCLB the fix it needs, AFT members stressed in their meeting with Reps. Phil Hare (D-Ill.) and Judy Biggert (R-Ill.). The two members of the House education committee listened intently to members' concerns and left carrying pages of notes detailing frontline frustrations: obstacles endured not only by teachers and PSRPs but also by students and families under current version of the law.

One AFT member, a music teacher, spoke of how instruments in her classroom now gather dust because the school has prioritized NCLB test-prep instruction over music instruction. Other teachers decribed how testing concerns had robbed time from award-winning social studies programs in their schools or cost teachers a full eight weeks of instruction out of their academic calendars. Several members also expressed deep concern that some groups are calling for NCLB's flawed test system to be used for the evaluation of teachers-something it was never designed for. And, when it comes to NCLB language dealing with hard-to-staff schools, many educators in the audience said Congress has not paid enough attention to incentives that attract educators to challenging assignments-beginning with safe, orderly schools with strong and supportive building leadership.

Both Hare and Biggert thanked teachers and PSRPs for their time and critical input into the reauthorization process. "The best testimony has been from teachers," said Hare. "The intent [behind NCLB] has been good... but nobody has come up to say, 'Phil, can you keep this the same, it's been marvelous.'"

AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese, right, with Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) at the Illinois town hall meeting. Photo by Amy Excell, Illinois Federation of Teachers.

Biggert also said the feedback from this meeting and other roundtables was critically important. "NCLB is such an important issue, and we've got to get it right," she told the room. The lawmaker said she is focusing on a range of issues as Congress readies bills for introduction over the next few weeks. Among the topics she listed as priorities were the need for NCLB accountability measures to reflect student growth and the need to fight any NCLB-related narrowing of the curriculum. Biggert, who has negotiated school collective bargaining agreements at the district level, signaled that these union-district contracts have been constructive vehicles for school improvement and should remain so in any reauthorized NCLB. "The district and union working together is absolutely critical," she said.

AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese moderated the discussion, which also featured comments from two AFT vice presidents, IFT president James Dougherty and Chicago Teachers Union president Marilyn Stewart. Other AFT locals represented at the meeting were the Quincy Federation of Teachers, Southwest Suburban Federation of Teachers, West Suburban Teachers Union and AFT Local 604 (Joliet).

Cortese commended both Biggert and Hare for taking a Saturday out of the busy congressional schedule to engage frontline educators in a substantive discussion of NCLB-the types of discussions that cannot be sidestepped if NCLB is to succeed. "You can't create [solutions] in a vacuum and expect them to work," Cortese stressed, adding that the AFT and its members stand ready "to work with anyone to find rational solutions" to the well-documented problems surrounding NCLB in its current form. [Mike Rose]

June 25, 2007