Title I Draft: NEA’s Response

Earlier this week, NEA submitted its comments on the House Committee on Education and Labor’s reauthorization draft of Title I.

Bottom line, it’s a mixed bag; some of NEA members’ concerns are addressed, such as multiple measures, but many proposed changes don’t go far enough — oh, and there appears to be a lot of new mandates and requirements on states and local school districts but no guaranteed $$ to pay for them.

And then there’s still all that emphasis on testing. As NEA wrote:

While we appreciate that the bill recognizes that a child is more than a test score through its provision of multiple measures in the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) system and are pleased that it includes several NEA priority concepts, we are concerned that in many cases it is still overly restrictive and prescriptive in the authority provided to states and school districts in designing their accountability plans and procedures, and still overly focused on measuring schools based on two test scores.  We do not believe that an accountability system based primarily on two test scores is either an accurate or fair reflection of student learning or school quality, particularly when so many of the tests being utilized do not test knowledge or skills, but rather rote memorization.

For a complete rundown of NEA’s comments, see: NEA Offers Praise and Concerns in Response to Title I Draft.

Title I and the rest of the drafts are now up on the House Committee’s Web site — stay tuned for more reaction.

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