Cortese, who chairs the task force, reported that AFT leaders have already met with congressional leaders on the upcoming NCLB reauthorization and have underscored their concerns about the current law. Lawmakers were receptive on most issues, including the need for an accountability system that helps improve schools rather than label them, Cortese said.

The task force also met with a staffer for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who will play a key Senate role in the reauthorization. Carmel Martin, who works with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said there was strong interest in AFT recommendations to fix NCLB that were released late last year. (The full list of recommendations is available under “No Child Left Behind” in the “Hot Topics” section of AFT Online (www.aft.org).

Martin said lawmakers needed feedback on how the law is working in schools, and several task force members described the types of NCLB concerns they consistently heard from the field. AFT leaders noted the stress of testing and test prep, not only on schools and teachers but on children as young as 8. Others mentioned the double standard of a “highly qualified teacher” requirement that ignores charter schools. And the breakdown of accountability in the supplemental educational services area, where the publicly funded “educational services” offered by some providers sometimes amount to nothing more than MP3 players and other giveaways to students. Capitol Hill also needs to take the lead in promoting parent involvement in schools, several members said, and that means better use of school staff with experience in this area.

The task force also reviewed preliminary results of an AFT survey of paraprofessional members—one that focuses on issues related to NCLB. When the law was enacted, it ramped up requirements on what paraprofessionals may and may not do. The law specified that paras needed to work under the direct supervision of a teacher, which includes not being assigned to work as a substitute teacher. One objective of the survey is to determine if these provisions are being implemented.

The task force also discussed groups that have used NCLB as a blunt instrument to carry out attacks on teachers’ collective bargaining rights. NCLB is built on the belief that all students are provided with comparable education opportunities. Some groups charge that this principle is being undercut by collective bargaining, which they say causes high-poverty schools to be staffed with less-qualified teachers than other schools.

The AFT is working on all fronts to dispel this myth, said Cortese, who co-authored a Dec. 13 Education Week article with AFT researcher Howard Nelson, which offers convincing evidence that “teachers who work under a collectively bargained agreement are less likely to transfer to another school than teachers who do not have a collectively bargained agreement.” The winter issue of American Educator, the union’s professional magazine, not only rebuts the “urban legend” of collective bargaining as the cause of staffing problems, it also shows how some of the strongest collective bargaining environments have yielded some of the most effective strategies for ensuring that all classrooms are staffed with highly qualified teachers.

“Our lobbying efforts were buttressed by the letters and e-mails that Congress received on this issue from our e-Activists and other AFT members who responded to the ‘contact Congress’ request we posted in the legislative action center on the AFT Web site,” AFT director of legislation Tor Cowan says.

The $250 above-the-line tax deduction allows K-12 educators to write off that amount of their out-of-pocket expenses for classroom supplies, even if they do not itemize. The amount of the deduction is small, but it is an important provision that will provide classroom educators—many of whom spend more than $250—over $379 million in tax relief in the next two years.

The tax break was included in a broad tax and trade bill, the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, which President Bush signed in December. It also included a tax deduction of up to $4,000 for college tuition and an extension of the Qualified Zone Academy Bond(QZAB) program, which will provide more than $800 million in federally subsidized school bonds. These bonds will be used to repair and upgrade K-12 public schools and serves as an important model for AFT’s school construction efforts (see feature story).