Legislation Introduced by Congresswoman DeLauro

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Summary

No Child Left Behind Reform Act

The "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB), signed into law more than three years ago, represented the biggest reform of American education in 40 years. Many members of Congress voted for it because they agreed on the need to raise school standards and ensure student achievement. These were important goals then and they remain so today.

Unfortunately, the high hopes for this law have not been realized. The NCLB Act has been a huge disappointment to the teachers, parents and schoolchildren who have depended on this program to improve the quality of education in this country. Why? Because the law, as implemented by the Administration, is often inflexible and has proven unhelpful for students who need help the most. For teachers, the law is restrictive--keeping them from doing their best in the classroom by forcing them to teach not to the student, but to a test. Worse still, the Administration’s promise of sufficient resources to implement No Child Left Behind’s much needed reforms is a promise that has yet to be kept. Since its passage, the law has been funded at a level that is more than $26 billion below what was promised.

That is why DeLauro introduced the No Child Left Behind Reform Act (NCLBR), which would change the current No Child Left Behind law to 1) provide states with more flexibility in measuring student achievement, 2) allow schools to target school choice and supplemental services to the students that demonstrate the need for them, and 3) ensure that NCLB's highly qualified teacher provisions are both rigorous and reasonable. The No Child Left Behind Reform Act would:

Allow schools to be given credit for performing well on measures other than test scores. The bill also authorizes $80 million to develop and maintain systems that can monitor and track individual student improvement on measures of student achievement over time.

Allow states to target school choice and supplemental services to students in the specific subgroups that do not meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

Provide additional flexibility for teachers in meeting the Highly Qualified (HQ) requirements by allowing states to create a broad-based social studies, science and middle school certificate. These changes will make it easier, particularly at the middle school level, for teachers who teach multiple subjects to meet the requirements of NCLB.

These reforms are reasonable solutions to a system that is failing our children. Congress needs to act immediately to make sure no other schoolchildren fall in the trap of NCLB's faulty policies.

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