Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Diane Ravitch, news that the Senate has passed their long-awaited revision to No Child Left Behind, the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). The underlying legislation is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, whose purpose was to authorize federal aid to education targeted to schools that enrolled significant numbers of children living in poverty. The original bill was about equity, not testing and accountability. And we can all see how that turned out. The Senate bill retains annual testing, but r emoves federal sanctions attached to test results. Any rewards or sanctions attached to test scores will be left to states.

Update:  there was also a measure that would simply allow parents to opt-out of testing (as opposed to the amendment that did pass that notifies parents whether their state allows opt-outs).  It was defeated, seemingly on the premise that local control over opting out should be left to states.  Both Senators Murray and Cantwell voted no on the measure.  It is legal in Washington State to opt out. End of update. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the revamped NCLB/ECAA: The U.S. Senate passed an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., to the “Every Child Achieves Act” that aims to inform parents about opting out of standardized testing. Isakson’s amendment, which was passed by a unanimous vote Tuesday, would require any local educational agency that receives federal Title I funds to notify parents of each student attending school that they may request information regarding any state or local policy, procedure, or parental right regarding p...

One of the big complaints about NCLB was that it gave the federal government a much larger role in public education beyond mere oversight and reporting.  It gave them a very big stick to use on districts and states.  (Bringing in RTtT was more the carrot but I'll bet it felt very much like a stick sometimes to states who got those funds.) This federal Big Brother idea made people on the right AND on the left unhappy. That's quite the trick for one law. The one usefulness of NCLB was that it forced districts to account for every - single - student.  As they should.  But trying to fit all these students - ELL, Sped, homeless - into the same testing box with everyone else was never going to work.

From Senator Patty Murray's office: TOMORROW - Floor Debate Begins on Sen. Murray’s  Bill to Fix “No Child Left Behind”