Congress must take the time needed to get the No Child Left Behind Act right. That was the message scores of classroom educators and AFT activists took to Capitol Hill on Sept. 20 in a day of frank discussions with House and Senate members from 15 states, including many members of the House Education and Labor Committee, the body charged with drafting the legislation.

The lobby day activities were timely, since the committee in recent weeks released a 1,000-page discussion draft of the No Child Left Behind Act, leading to speculation that Congress might put the legislation on a fast track. This would be the wrong move, AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese told activists before they fanned out across Capitol Hill. The AFT is deeply troubled by many provisions in the discussion draft, which often identifies the right problems but offers the wrong solutions and includes many contradictory provisions. When it comes to reauthorization, "the product, not the clock, should govern the process."

Lobby day activists reminded representatives that many of the problems schools currently face—testing and test prep that steal growing numbers of weeks from the school year, a narrowing of the curriculum to just the basics, and an accountability system that denies credit for progress, to name just a few—were unintended consequences of the first NCLB. Lawmakers need to learn from that lesson.

Marsha M. Allen, a special education teacher in Chicago, was part of the delegation that met with Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill) on lobby day.  Congress "needs to take a breath and think all this through," Allen told her representative in Congress. "In the classroom, it's the teachers who are going to have to implement this. It's the teachers' voice that needs to be heard right now."

The lobby day was just the latest step in the union's top-priority mobilization effort around NCLB reauthorization, a campaign that spans all AFT constituencies as well as others who care about strengthening and improving our public schools. At the same time activists were meeting with their representatives, AFT leaders were engaged in discussions with the National Council of La Raza on testing of English language leaders, resources and other matters tied to NCLB. 

The message that activists delivered to their representatives was also getting through to schools and communities back home. On the day of the Capitol Hill visits, AFT activists conducted radio interviews to explain why it was so critical for Congress to take the time it needs to get NCLB right. Comments from AFT activists were fielded by 13 national, state and city radio networks, plus several news-talk stations, a potential listening audience of more than 2 million.

September 21, 2007