PrintAFT offers NCLB solutions
The AFT in late March submitted No Child Left Behind Act legislative specifications to the U.S. Senate education committee. These are specific changes the union and its members would like in a reauthorized NCLB, and they track longstanding AFT recommendations in the key areas of assessment and accountability, school improvement interventions, staffing schools, and funding and systemwide accountability. Other education groups also have submitted legislative specifications to Congress, and the union is working closely with such organizations as the National Education Association to ensure that the message and remedies sent to Capitol Hill are coordinated and effective.
The AFT is recommending “that adequate yearly progress (AYP) include a growth model, [and] we also offer specific recommendations on how to make assessments for English language learners and students with disabilities more valid, reliable and specific,” AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese reports. The union also is proposing that schools be given resources and technical assistance to develop and implement a school improvement plan if they do not make AYP under the new accountability model that incorporates growth. For those schools that don’t make AYP for several years, “a small, manageable number would be targeted for intensive, structured interventions such as those done in Miami-Dade’s Zone schools and the former Chancellor’s District in New York City,” Cortese says.
The union also is recommending that federal funds be provided to districts to attract teachers to schools most in need of assistance—and to keep them in these schools. The AFT Teachers program and policy council focused on the issues surrounding hard-to-staff schools when it convened in March (see 'Real solutions for hard-to-staff schools '). “And of course, the AFT makes clear that we won’t accept an NCLB reauthorization bill without the appropriate funding to meet the requirements,” Cortese stresses.
The AFT in March joined 110 other organizations as part of the Forum on Educational Accountability and offered a Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB. The statement aims to help shape public debate over reauthorization, and to urge Congress to make NCLB supportive of practices that improve student achievement.
