PrintExpect to see a lot more union activity in the coming months surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The union will coordinate face-to-face meetings between classroom professionals and their elected representatives, launch targeted ad campaigns, and address key decision-makers at the federal and state levels in an effort to get the law right.
Each activity will be an opportunity—an opportunity for you and your colleagues to voice concerns about NCLB as it’s playing out in the classroom and to reiterate the AFT’s longstanding belief that standards-based school improvement must be developed and implemented responsibly. And it must be supported with the resources needed to make it work. It’s a message that hundreds of AFT members have delivered loud and clear in a special NCLB feedback section on the AFT Web site.
Featured on these pages are many of those who contributed comments. These opinions factored heavily in the union’s official position on NCLB, and they will be a driving force in the coordinated, grass-roots effort to get the law right over the next several months. That means creating a fair and accurate accountability system tied to the law. That means offering the tools to support educator excellence, including professional development. That means providing students with the research-based help they need to meet high standards. And that means delivering on resources, long promised and long overdue, that schools need to tackle this immense job.
Making sure that the people who actually do the work have a voice in the decision-making process—it’s union work, and no organization understands that better than your AFT.
