AASA responds to NCLB commission report.

The bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind issued the 230-page "Beyond NCLB" report in February, a blueprint of seventy-five recommendations on how Congress should revamp the federal law, and quickly drew fire from the American Association of School Administrators (www.aasa.org) for its flawed assessment of the current state and ill-advised proposed direction of the law.

The report's recommendations call for increased teacher effectiveness, more help for low-performing schools, voluntary national standards, longitudinal data systems, and an additional assessment in 12th grade to ensure that high school graduates are prepared for college or work.

In its statement, AASA says it is unfortunate that "the commission chose an approach that is 'stay the course plus' and piles new requirements and new mandates on states and districts that are already overburdened with ill-advised federal directives."

Commission Co-Chair Tommy Thompson says the commission "chose to swing for the fences" with its recommendations, but what AASA says is that the commission "took their eye off the ball and struck out."

The commission's report is based on the premise that not taking bold steps to accelerate the nation's educational progress would jeopardize the future of American children and "maintain the status quo." AASA believes, however, that there is no status quo and that education has "been in a state of change for decades." It says that we only jeopardize our competitiveness not by failing to take bold steps but by forgetting about the importance of creativity, innovation and creating global citizens.

Furthermore, AASA maintains that focusing on helping children in poverty should be a priority as we approach reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and it finds equally tragic the commission's having "chosen to ignore the needs of individual special education students and English language learners by advocating for the continuance of arbitrary caps that pay no heed to the Individual Educational Plan process, individual student needs, and school and district characteristics."

The NCLB report cites research showing that teacher quality is the "single most important factor in student success" and argues for ramping up the NCLB Highly Qualified Teacher requirement to a new Highly Qualified Effective Teacher requirement. Under this recommendation, teachers who do not demonstrate effectiveness in the classroom would be barred from teaching students most in need of help.

AASA says the federal government is an inefficient national credentialing body for our nation's teachers and that accountability needs to move away from sanctions and punishments and toward collaboration and trust. AASA does agree with the commission that more comprehensive data systems and assessments are needed.

The complete report is available at www.nclbcommission.org, and the AASA statement can be found at www.aasa.org.