Utahns Hope to Reform NCLB

By Jennifer Toomer-Cook and Suzanne Struglinski The Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — As debate starts on Capitol Hill over the next federal education policy bill, Utah’s congressional delegation is probing ways to give power back to the people who run local schools.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, introduced a bill last month that outlines changes to testing and gives flexibility to teacher requirements. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, has a panel of education experts working on recommendations on how to make the education law better, and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who was a high school teacher for almost 30 years, would rather allow Utah and other states to opt out of the federal rules and use federal money for education as it sees fit.

On Monday, the House Education and Labor Committee heard from 43 witnesses as part of reauthorization work on the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration’s controversial federal education bill.

The law, known as NCLB, seeks to have all children, regardless of race, native language, disability or income, reading and doing math on grade level by 2014. It requires annual reports on progress toward the goal of each student and school. If one student group doesn’t meet state test score goals, then the whole school fails to make adequate yearly progress.

There are other parts to the law, too, like requiring a teacher be highly qualified to teach, meaning a major in the subject, and sanctions for low-income schools not meeting state goals. Education officials decry the regulations as a one-size-fits-all program that doesn’t really fit in, say, rural areas where teachers teach many subjects at once and students with disabilities.

The state receives about $109 million a year under No Child Left Behind, mostly for low-income and disadvantaged children.

The Utah Legislature has talked about opting out of the program they largely view as trampling on states’ rights to govern public education. Twice state lawmakers have examined bills to assert their position, both to hasty response from the U.S. Department of Education seeking their retreat.

But lawmakers nevertheless passed a law requiring state resources be put toward state — not federal — education goals.

Now Congress is trying to figure out how to fix the federal law.

“We still feel like the general nature of the bill must be changed to restore the control of public schools to states and to their state leaderships,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington said.

Matheson’s bill would make changes Harrington’s office has been clamoring for but been largely denied by the U.S. Department of Education. That includes letting states give schools credit for test score improvement and use several tests to determine whether schools make the grade.

“All these provisions really came from what we heard from people in Utah,” Matheson said. “Be it the state Board of Education, or the teachers or the PTA or the superintendents or the principals, it’s been a rather extensive dialogue since frankly the bill passed in 2001.”

The bill would let school districts decide to offer tutoring first, and transfer options second, for Title I schools repeatedly failing to make adequate yearly progress toward state achievement goals. Right now, districts have to offer to bus kids elsewhere first, then give them tutoring a year later. It also would let students with disabilities take tests on their intellectual level, instead of age-based grade level, as determined by individual education plans.

Matheson’s bill also touches on “highly qualified teacher” requirements. It would give teachers rural schools until the 2011- 12 school year to become highly qualified, typically meaning, a degree in the subject they’re teaching, such as math or science, and put up $50 million extra to help them.

“Yes, we want qualified teachers, yes we want some standards but let’s expand that definition,” Matheson said. “Let’s acknowledge experience, let’s acknowledge a college minor.”

Matheson used the example of a teacher in Utah who may have served a church mission in a foreign country and can now fluently speak the language, but under the rules now, because the language was not their college major, they are not deemed qualified under the law.

“We are not saying we don’t want qualified teachers, we’re saying let’s have a more reasonable and expanded set of accommodations for how we decide if someone is qualified,” Matheson said.

While Matheson would like to see his bill passed as a stand- alone piece of legislation, he would also like to see parts of his bill incorporated into the bill.

The bill also would seek to focus help on the specific group of kids who fail. So, if only low-income kids in a school fail the math exam, then only the low-income kids would receive an invitation to transfer to a higher-scoring school or get supplemental services, like tutoring.

“We very much support the concepts that he’s pursuing,” Harrington said.

But Andrea Rorrer, University of Utah assistant professor in educational leadership and policy and director of the Utah Education Policy Center, says the proposal contradicts NCLB’s philosophy of accountability for student achievement to every school rather than just low-income schools and student groups.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of leverage for proposals … that go back to targeting particular students,” Rorrer said.

“The catch with a proposition like that is … say the group not performing well in mathematics is actually Pacific Islander girls. But not all of those are eligible for Title I, and not all of those are performing poorly.”

So really, resources aren’t any more effectively targeted.

An education advisory committee to SolveEdNow.org was set up to examine NCLB, available research on what works and what doesn’t, and make recommendations to Cannon on how to improve the federal program.

Cannon created the committee in March specifically to address NCLB reauthorization and any other education issues they see fit.

Cannon wants to make sure the law — or any changes to it — would not stand in the way of teachers using new technology in the classroom or other creative or innovative ways to get through to their students.

“Tests are not helpful in helping kids learn,” Cannon said. He added that teaching to a test does not help students and limits what teachers can do.

Cannon wants to see NCLB fixed so that it that encourages states to experiment and institute change without having to first check with Washington. He does not want the federal obstacles to be put in the way of teachers teaching or students learning.

Meanwhile, Bishop called Matheson’s bill “cute,” and said if there was ever a time to use the cliche “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, this is it.”

“All this tinkering does nothing to help out,” said Bishop, who sits on the Education Committee. “The bottom line is that the federal government should not be telling the states how the states run their schools. … It is not the details of the bill, it is the actual premise of the bill.”

Bishop said schools should be responsible to “the clientele” — the parents and kids — not someone in Washington.

“No one is actually helping a kid in the classroom,” Bishop said. “The federal government doesn’t make schools better.”

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com; jtcook@desnews.com

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.