AFT policy brief gives context to NCLB battles

Last summer, delegates to the AFT convention overwhelmingly adopted “Moving Every Child Forward,” a resolution tied to the No Child Left Behind Act. It sets out an across-the-board union commitment to fix serious flaws in the law while maintaining the AFT’s longstanding commitment to high standards and accountability. The resolution—a crisp, 490-word action agenda on NCLB—was months in the making and harnessed the expertise and opinions of thousands of policy specialists, education leaders, union activists and frontline educators.

Much of the work that went into developing that resolution has been collected and is presented in “NCLB: Its Problems, Its Promise,” an online policy brief detailing some of the major challenges that helped shape the resolution. And, particularly in light of current battles over education, the document serves as an important reference point as NCLB-related issues are being hammered out at the federal and state levels.

Case in point: Reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which Congress is expected to act on in late 2004. The problems with NCLB as it relates to students with disabilities have taken a prominent role in the debate over IDEA. The AFT policy brief provides context for understanding these problems.

Assessment of students with disabilities under NCLB remains a contentious issue, for example. Current regulations require that the test scores of students taking an alternate assessment (except for the 1 percent of students with the most severe cognitive disabilities) must be measured against grade-level standards. This almost guarantees that the so-called gap students—those who are performing well below grade level but who do not fall into that 1 percent—will be rated as not proficient. “These are students who may be improving, but the regular assessment, even with accommodations, does not accurately measure their academic progress,” the AFT policy brief stresses. And the current regulation could undercut the authority of individualized education teams, which play a central role in shaping disabled students’ education under IDEA and which frequently rely on out-of-level assessments as a better gauge of progress. “Districts and schools are left with no sound options for appropriate assessment of these [gap] students for AYP purposes,” the policy brief stresses.

Also key to the debate over IDEA will be the concept of “highly qualified” special education teachers, as detailed in NCLB regulations. Under the U.S. Department of Education’s current interpretation, special education teachers who are fully certified in their field are also required to meet separate subject-matter requirements for each core academic subject they teach. “This requirement is simply unrealistic, particularly in the case of those who teach multiple subjects in self-contained classrooms,” notes the policy brief, which recommends an amendment to permit special education, bilingual and vocational education teachers who are fully certified by their state to be considered “highly qualified” under the law.

“NCLB: Its Problems, Its Promise” is available at www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/PolicyBrief18.pdf.

Getting NCLB on the right course

The AFT executive council in October approved the creation of the AFT task force on NCLB reauthorization. Headed by AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese, the task force will focus on the union’s agenda for the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and help the union respond to various proposals to address problems in the current law.

The panel will further develop the union’s proactive approach toward fixing NCLB, the latest installment in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In the wake of the November elections and with reauthorization of the law approaching, the union will work to ensure that its longstanding concerns about NCLB top the public agenda.

Along with considerations about how the law affects the special education community (see story above), the task force will explore alternatives to the controversial “adequate yearly progress” requirement that measures school improvement. In its current form, AYP does not give schools sufficient credit for improved student achievement; nor does it allow schools to present valid and reliable evidence of student progress. And the mandated interventions for schools that fail to make AYP are not based on scientific research and are sometimes punitive rather than constructive. Other issues the task force is expected to tackle include:

• The highly qualified teacher requirements are unworkable for some teachers and do not apply to all who teach public school students;
• Paraprofessionals are currently denied the range of options necessary to demonstrate they are qualified and lack the financial support to meet NCLB requirements;
• The public school choice provision under NCLB is designed in a way that can undermine schools rather than help improve student achievement; and
• Supplemental educational service providers other than school districts are permitted to ignore the nondiscrimination provisions of the law.