President Obama wants No Child Left Behind fixed soon

Washington, D.C. – In a recent speech at Kenmore Middle School, President Obama urged Congress to fix No Child Left Behind (NCLB) before the start of the next school year. The President articulated key priorities for reforming NCLB that will enable us to win the future and prepare our students to out-educate and out-compete the world in the 21^st century economy:

• A fair accountability system that shares responsibility for improvement and rewards excellence, and that is based on high standards and is informed by sophisticated assessments that measure individual student growth;

• A flexible system that empowers principals and teachers, and supports reform and innovation at the state and local level.

NCLB’s broken accountability system means that the overwhelming majority of schools will not meet NCLB’s goals and the students most at risk won’t get the help they need.

Over the past several weeks, President Obama has highlighted schools across the country that demonstrate the impact of reforms at the state and local levels, the importance of shared responsibility in education, and most importantly the goal of achieving results.

In his speech, the President praised current efforts by Congress to replace NCLB and urged Congress to make these reforms before the next school year begins.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a landmark federal law established in 1965. ESEA was originally established to ensure educational equity for all students. The law is routinely \”reauthorized\” by Congress and has not been reauthorized since 2002 – the longest-ever period between rewrites of this law.

NCLB was proposed by the Bush Administration and enacted by the 107^th Congress, in 2001, by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote and signed into law in 2002. NCLB requires each state to set academic standards; test all students periodically in science as well as in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school; and to set annual accountability targets for every school to meet. However, 37% of America’s schools today are not meeting their annual targets mandated by NCLB.

America’s future economic competitiveness is being decided every day, in classrooms across the nation. In order to help prepare each of our children to win the future and succeed in the global marketplace, the President has called upon Congress to act this year to replace NCLB with a law that re-shapes the federal role in education to better promote responsibility, reform and results:

• President Obama’s plan will replace No Child Left Behind’s accountability system with a new federal framework that is fair, flexible, and focused on helping every student graduate ready for college and career.

• The President’s ESEA plan will support a new effort to build the teaching profession throughreforms that will help states create better systems to recruit, prepare, develop, reward, advance and retain effective educators.

• New economic and global challenges, as well as new knowledge about learning and effective teaching, demand new models for our schools. The President’s plan supports incorporating more time for learning and enrichment in and out of school; a continuation of the historic Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Fund; and greater investments in our public schools, including high-performing charter schools, magnet schools, and other autonomous public schools.

• The President’s ESEA plan would dedicate new resources and promote greater state and local flexibility for schools to implement high-quality instruction in reading, math, and science, along with a well-rounded curriculum that will equip students with the skills needed to succeed in the 21^st century.

Challenging the Status Quo:

NCLB Status Quo: Rely on unsophisticated bubble tests to grade students and schools.

Obama Plan: Support better tests. The Obama Administration has invested $350 million to support states in their efforts to create more sophisticated assessment systems that measure problem solving and other 21^st century skills and that will provide teachers will timely information to help them improve instruction.

NCLB Status Quo: States lowered standards to meet yearly goals under No Child Left Behind. Often, graduating students need remedial courses in college.

Obama Plan: Support efforts of the nation’s governors and State education leaders to adopt college and career ready standards so when kids go to college they won’t need to take remedial courses.

NCLB Status Quo: Too often the schools with the greatest challenges don’t have the most effective teachers.

The Obama Plan: Provide incentives and accountability for getting effective teachers to the schools that need them the most, and identifying and leaning from the most effective teachers.