Daniel Kaufman, senior press officer for the National Education Association, announced Monday to a School of Communication class the organization's opposition to President Bush's proposal to expand the No Child Left Behind Act to high schools.
Kaufman said that the NEA, the nation's largest teachers' union with 2.7 million members, wants to "fix and fund" the current law, before thinking about expanding it, as the president proposed in his State of the Union address Jan. 28.
In his address, Bush said the United States has "achieved historic education reform" in the past two years. Kaufman contends that the act, passed in 2001, is rife with problems and provides only a "snapshot" of a student's progress without taking into account all the factors that indicate a school's improvement, such as dropout and graduation rates.
"It is more important that students are assessed, rather than tested," Kaufman said.
Bush wants to increase standardized testing and accountability requirements in high schools, but Kaufman said that multiple measures should be taken into account before defining a school as failing or "in need of improvement" as the federal act does.
Schools found to be in need of improvement must allow its students to attend any other school in its district, a provision of the law that, Kaufman said, has largely benefited students who are already doing well. The law prevents schools from using their resources appropriately, because it forces them to focus on preparing students for standardized testing, Kaufman said.
The NEA projects that more than 10,000 schools have been found to be "in need of improvement," according to the law, and said that that standardized testing is not an effective measure of the quality of education.
"It's like comparing apples to oranges, because you are comparing one year's students to the next," Kaufman said, "You can't judge progress by two test scores."
Last year funding for No Child Left Behind fell short by $27 billion and Bush's proposed budget for 2006 brings the funding shortfall to $39 billion, Kaufman said. Though Bush has set aside $1.5 billion in order to fund in an increase in testing, Kaufman said this is clearly inadequate to carry out such a large-scale expansion.
"We believe teachers want to help their students, but they do not have the appropriate resources to do so," Kaufman said. He added that schools lack the funds to renovate buildings and update materials such as computers and textbooks.
However, the NEA agrees with Bush in that schools must attain more "highly qualified" teachers, another of the law's requirements, but should also focus on proven methods of increasing student achievement, such as keeping class sizes small and providing mentoring to new teachers, Kaufman said.
Many schools are not meeting the standards set by No Child Left Behind, Kaufman said. While the NEA states that the federal law does not give a school enough autonomy in determining how to improve education on an individual level, Kaufman said, there's also concern that states are compromising No Child Left Behind standards in order for more schools to meet the requirements.
