Here is a change I can support on No Child Left Behind -- but one that probably won't make it into law.

The House education committee chairman called yesterday for "serious changes" to the No Child Left Behind law, including new ways to measure school progress, in a proposal some Republicans fear could jeopardize efforts to renew the law this year.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the chairman, said the five-year-old law, a cornerstone of President Bush's domestic policy, has put too much emphasis on standardized testing.

* * *

Miller said he expects that the House will vote in September on legislation to renew the law, which requires students to be tested in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress on those tests face possible sanctions.

But Miller said yesterday that schools should be able to include measures besides the reading and math tests in determining progress, such as graduation rates or the number of students passing Advanced Placement exams. "Many Americans do not believe that the success of our students or of our schools can be measured by one test administered on one day, and I agree with them," he said.

Some civil rights groups have expressed concern that such changes could weaken the law. "In our experience, institutions that are held accountable for too many things are, in the end, accountable for nothing," several groups that back the law, such as the Citizens' Commission for Civil Rights and the Education Trust, wrote in a recent letter to Miller.

Please understand -- I am a supporter of the notion that we need testing in order to hold schools and teachers -- and , most importantly, students -- accountable for learning, but I do not always believe that the current testing regimes in place do that. We here in Texas will be making a change in a few years because ours really does not do that -- and something NCLB needs to ensure that other states do so as well.

Posted by: Greg at 03:19 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 352 words, total size 2 kb.