Tougher Standards Urged for Federal Education Law (No Child Left Behind)

[Doondoo]

No Child Left Behind, the federal education law, should be toughened to judge teachers and principals by their students’ test scores, and to block chronically ineffective educators from working in high-poverty schools, a private bipartisan commission recommended on Tuesday.

The recommendations were in a report released here by the Commission on No Child Left Behind, a 15-member group led by former Gov. Roy E. Barnes of Georgia and Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and financed by private foundations. The report is meant to be a blueprint for Congress as it prepares to consider renewal of the law, President Bush’s signature education initiative, later this year.

The commission also proposed that states revamp their testing systems to track individual student progress from year to year, and to give schools credit if students are within sight of achievement targets, rather than only if they reach them.

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Edward J. McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said there were no reliable assessment systems to tie student achievement to teacher performance. Currently the law calls for low-income schools to have “highly qualified” teachers, with degrees in the subjects they are teaching. The proposals would ratchet up that criteria.

“The highly qualified measure was only just introduced, and we’re just coming to terms with that,” Mr. McElroy said. “To add another hoop at this point in time just demoralizes people. It’s the opposite of what you’d want to do if you want the system to work.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/education/14child.html?ref=education