California teachers need your help

Written by: kevin mcnamara on Sep 20, 2007 11:03 PM EDT

NCLB is up for reauthorization. Speaker Pelossi and Rep. George Miller are making a bad law worse. Please contact them and your local rep. Tell them you do not support the reauthorization of NCLB as written. Here is some info and talking points.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act is hurting our students, teachers and schools. And the reauthorization proposal by Representative George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does nothing to improve the current law. It actually makes it worse.

• California teachers are calling on Congress to vote NO on the NCLB reauthorization proposal by Representative George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It does nothing to improve the law or student learning and will actually make it harder for students, teachers and public schools.
• The Miller/Pelosi reauthorization plan continues to measure student and school success based on standardized test scores and fails to include multiple measures like attendance rates, graduation rates, a rigorous curriculum, and the number of students participating in honors or advanced placement courses. This focus on testing forces teachers to teach to the test and has decimated programs like art, music, social studies and physical education.
• The Miller/Pelosi reauthorization proposal continues to punish lower-performing schools, rather than providing assistance and resources to help all students and schools succeed. It creates four new levels of sanctions for struggling schools. This year NCLB labeled one out of every five California public schools as failing.

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