Member Push For Legislative Change

Hundreds of WEAC members in June took advantage of the powerful resources of the NEA Legislative Action Center and the OnWEAC Cyberlobby, flooding the in-boxes of their congressional representatives with personal classroom accounts and urging them to support NEA’s Positive Agenda for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as the No Child Left Behind law.

James Tesch, a WEAC-Retired member from the Winter School District, gets information on how to Cyberlobby during the 2007 Great Schools Lobby Day. Solomon Simon (standing), a member of the Cochrane-Fountain City Education Association was among the volunteers who helped conduct the effort.

The effort was part of the WEAC Great Schools Lobby Day 2007, and educators were ready to have their voices heard. WEAC members sent 639 e-mails, and 149 members signed up to become part of WEAC’s Legislative Action Network (LAN). As part of LAN, WEAC members pledge to Cyberlobby their legislators four times per year.

“This lets the politicians who support us know that we’re thankful, and lets those who don’t support us know that a change in this law is important to education,” said Anne Lembcke, a teacher in the small city of Lodi. Lembcke first took part in a Cyberlobby at an NEA convention in Los Angeles, and regularly contacts her representatives.

“I see the results of NCLB in my Kindergarten classroom every day,” said Kelly McMahon of Milwaukee. “From push-down curriculum, loss of art, music, gym, foreign languages, library, and recess, the children of Wisconsin public schools, especially in poor urban and rural communities are suffering.”

As part of Lobby Day 2007, the WEAC Government Relations staff set up Cyberlobby computers at the Monona Terrace Convention Center as members gathered to prepare for visits to legislators’ offices in the State Capitol. In those visits, they told state legislators their stories about how state funding affects children in their classrooms. They asked legislators to support Governor Doyle’s pro-education 2007-09 state budget plan.

But the focus of the Cyberlobby was the federal ‘No Child’ law and its impact on children and schools. Members accessed the online NEA Legislative Action Center to send e-mails to the congressional representatives, again relating their personal classroom stories about the law.

“As an art teacher, I know that students learn and show what they learn in different ways,” wrote Lynn Preston of Waukesha. “The one-size-fits-all testing does not accurately show what children know. Labeling schools as failing is not the way to improve student learning. The system of testing and accountability is flawed.”

Randy Pierce, a teacher at Oriole Lane Elementary School in Mequon, wrote, “I would challenge members of Congress to spend some quality time in a diverse number of classrooms to see what education is actually about. One size NEVER fits all. It is only mandated by people who are clueless about education.”

“ I would encourage you to make changes to the law that will enable schools to use multiple measures to accurately assess student progress and to shift away from the law's current focus on one high-stakes exam,” wrote Karen Riggs, Tomah High School teacher. “I think it is ridiculous that individual needs are not taken into account among those students tested. Please work toward allowing states to develop their own accountability systems.”

Common themes of the e-mails were:  

• Members encouraged Congress to make changes to NCLB that will allow schools to use multiple measures to accurately assess student progress and shift away from the law’s current focus on one high-stakes test.
• Congress should revisit the law’s one size-fits-all approach and its focus on testing as the sole measurement of student and school success. Members said that from their experience that approach is not working and isn’t an educationally sound practice. In fact, it is getting in the way of our goal of meeting the basic right of every child to attend a great public school.
• An accountability system should include a variety of measures of student learning and school effectiveness. It should reward progress over time to improve student achievement at all levels. And it should recognize individual needs of students, including those with disabilities and those who are English language learners.
• Specifically, Congress should change the law to allow states to develop their own accountability systems that take into account measures like setting attainable performance goals, giving credit for growth in scores, demonstrating evidence of closing achievement gaps, using rigorous curriculum, graduation rates, and state flexibility.
• More than 90% of Wisconsin’s school superintendents believe that NCLB should be changed so that schools are credited for showing growth or maintaining high levels of student learning, even if they don’t meet the annual proficiency targets.  This is important because nearly all schools in Wisconsin and in the United States will be identified as in need of improvement by 2013-14 when 100% of tested students must score proficient or advanced on state tests. At that time, one student at one grade level scoring poorly on a single test can cause an entire school and school district to not meet the annual target. 
• In particular, the law’s approach to dealing with children with special needs must be changed. The arbitrary cap on the percentage of special needs students taking alternative assessments should be removed. In other words, the law should allow students’ Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), not some arbitrary percentage, to determine whether alternate assessments are appropriate. NCLB cannot be allowed to eliminate the “I” in IEP.

Margaret Draheim, a teacher in Appleton, said public education is suffering under the inflexibility of No Child Left Behind. “I have personally seen many good teachers put aside the creative teaching methods they have used in the past, the methods that develop critical thinking skills, because they are forced to teach test-taking skills,” she wrote. “How will that help our nation in the future? Is our goal really a nation of good test takers? Wouldn't a nation of global citizens, able to think creatively, be so much better?”

http://www.weac.org/Capitol/esea.htm

http://www.nea.org/lac/esea/index.html

Posted July 10, 2007