Education Experts Testify on Closing the Achievement Gap, NCLB Reauthorization
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 3/22/2007
Closing the achievement gap is "a national priority" according to education experts, administrators, and legislators at the March 13 congressional hearing on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.
"Access to a high quality public education is still a fundamental right upon which all others depend; and yet 50 years later, the promise of Brown v. Board of Education remains unfulfilled. Inequality is rampant by almost every measure," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The unusual joint hearing was held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D. Mass., and the House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by Rep. George Miller, D. Ca., to discuss the role NCLB plays in closing the achievement gap between white students and minority students.
Committee members and witnesses said that the l joint hearing underscored the importance of the law and the need to reauthorize a bill that works. "We have an obligation to revisit the No Child Left Behind Act so we can build on its strengths, meet the concerns about its implementation, and encourage reforms that will help students succeed," said Chairman Kennedy. "We must ensure that the law lives up to its promise and works for our nation's children and our nation's schools."
NCLB has been the subject of fierce debate since it was passed by a bipartisan majority in 2002. Five years after it was passed, minority students still lag behind white students in reading and math, disparities which the Act was designed to correct.
Congress will hold hearings over the next several months to determine how to make the law more effective, particularly in closing the achievement gap.
"It is clear that the law needs significant improvements, and our goal is to hear from as many stakeholders as possible so that we can make those improvements this year and achieve the goals set out in No Child Left Behind: narrowing the achievement gap and raising achievement for all students," said Chairman Miller.
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said that gains have been made in closing the achievement gap, but it is unclear how much of that can be attributed to NCLB.
"These gaps are stubborn because they result from the long-standing cross-generational patterns of inferior education, and from the persistent racial and economic inequities that are rampant in the nation's educational system, public and private," said Casserly.
Witnesses were uncertain about the efficacy of NCLB's "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) requirement, which measures a school's progress toward the goal of bringing all children up to proficiency in reading and math.
Former Governor Roy E. Barnes, co-chairman of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Commission called the requirement a "blunt instrument" that needs to be refined.
American Federation of Teachers President Edward J. McElroy said the AYP requirement is "devastating and demoralizing" to schools, students and parents alike. McElroy argued that schools that are making great strides in getting students up to speed may be categorized as "failing" because the requirement isn't based on where children are when they come in that year.
Elizabeth Burmaster, president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said that the law must shift from its "current focus on prescriptive compliance requirements to a dynamic law focused on providing real incentives for innovative state and local models – along with fair and meaningful accountability for results."
"This Congress has the opportunity to use the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind to boldly attack the entrenched inequities and failures within our educational system … We cannot continue to provide the least education to the most rapidly growing segments of society at exactly the moment when the economy will need them the most," said Henderson.
