Legislation focuses on funding, teacher quality

When Jalik Parham traveled to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in June his mission was clear. The Brooklyn, N.Y., teacher and AFT member was there to voice support for the Strengthen Our Schools Initiative, a comprehensive legislative program that Parham believes will improve the nation’s schools and give his seventh-grade students at Rafael Cordero Junior High School the support and resources they need to be successful.

Presented by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and other Democrats, the initiative is a series of bills aimed at full funding for the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, better access to higher education, prekindergarten and Head Start programs, and increases in school construction and teacher quality.

“As a math teacher in a school in which 95 percent of the children are low-income and many are bilingual, I was thrilled to see that this bill takes steps to ensure that all children—especially those in high-need schools—have teachers with expertise in the subjects we teach,” Parham said at a press briefing on the legislation.

Among the proposed bills is the Teacher Excellence for All Children Act (TEACH Act), which calls for an additional $3.4 billion (double the current level of funding) for improving teacher quality, including prepaid tuition and loan forgiveness for teachers entering the profession, and bonuses for veteran teachers in hard-to-staff schools and shortage areas.

The TEACH Act calls for the creation of additional Teacher Centers nationwide. “These centers have a proven track record in increasing academic achievement in traditionally low-performing schools,” Parham noted.

AFT presses Congress for strong IDEA rules

The AFT kept up the pressure this summer to make sure the latest version of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) gives teachers access to valuable student individual education plans, clearly addresses student discipline and deals with concerns about new “highly qualified teacher” requirements for special education teachers.

Elizabeth Truly, legal consultant to New York City’s United Federation of Teachers/NYSUT, in the area of special education, was the most recent in a list of AFT activists and leaders to present testimony in a series of public hearings on IDEA, which was signed into law late last year. The U.S. Education Department is preparing to finalize IDEA regulations later this year, and Truly’s testimony hit hard on the concerns frontline educators have voiced about IDEA.

“One of the most common complaints we receive from our members is that they do not have access to the IEPs of the children they serve,” particularly at the middle and high school level, Truly testified at the hearing. She urged the department to require public agencies to provide a copy of children’s IEPs to each of their teachers, since it contains information on the supports, services and accommodations necessary for student success.

Student discipline is an issue that also “demands clarity” in the rule-making process, Truly said. Proposed regulations are too complicated, plagued by “internal ambiguities and conflicts,” and fall short of the department’s stated goal of creating a single reference document for parents, schools and state regulators.

“When the requirements for disciplining students with disabilities aren’t clear, school officials tend to throw up their hands and take the path of least resistance,” she warned.

Similarly, the lack of clarity over highly qualified teacher provisions as they affect special education teachers has prompted schools to take a path-of-least-resistance approach when it comes to placements, she pointed out. “We are receiving reports from our state and local representatives that public agencies, frustrated in their efforts to understand and implement the new [highly qualified teacher] requirements, are discontinuing special classes and placing all but the most significantly disabled students in general education classes with minimal special education support.”

And Truly also challenged the department’s current view that highly qualified teacher requirements in IDEA do not apply to private school teachers, even in situations where a public agency refers a child with a disability to a private school. This could encourage “public agencies that are unable to recruit and retain an adequate supply of highly qualified teachers to inappropriately place children with disabilities in more costly and more restrictive private settings.”

Truly, who made her comments at a July 12 hearing in Washington, D.C., also addressed the need for a strong complaint procedure to help guarantee that public agencies comply with the law.