House Leaders Debate Education Bill

There is no doubt in my mind that there's a correlation between low-income and disadvantaged areas and lower academic achievement. These schools tend to have fewer resources for effective instructional practices to improve student achievement than those in suburban areas. Data tends to show that large urban areas to have novice and less-qualified teachers, lower levels of parental involvement, higher crime rates, and other social challenges.

Yet even with these challenges, research and best practices have shown that urban schools can be successful if they take a systemic approach to educating students. With the new focus on accountability through results that was included in NCLB, as well as more effective targeting of the federal government's resources to urban school districts, we've seen a significant amount of progress made in schools from Seattle to Chicago to Philadelphia.

NCLB utilizes the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) designation, determined based on state standards, to ensure all students are making academic progress. The law includes incremental steps by which schools not making AYP receive additional funding and technical support, while new options like public school choice and supplemental educational services become available to their students. It is true that after five consecutive years in which a school does not achieve AYP, it may be identified for restructuring. But thanks to NCLB, children in chronically struggling schools have access to extra help and new options well before a state must intervene to take over the school.

It is true that low-income schools are often more educationally disadvantaged than higher income schools. This issue is the driving force behind No Child Left Behind. We want to identify schools that are not doing as well and provide them the assistance they need to improve. Often, these are high poverty schools because as a society we shamefully have neglected the needs of these schools and students for too long. They get the least resources and the least experienced teachers. The goal of the law is to fix that. Unfortunately, the President refused to fund the law properly and schools were labeled as not making adequate yearly progress without getting the resources to turn around.

The goal of the reauthorization is to start to turn this around, to send critical resources to low-income schools and to emphasize assistance and constructive interventions - rather than sanctions - for the schools that need them most. However, there are some schools that after years of not making progress may need to be restructured. In this case, new schools will have to show that they are implementing effective school models and show success.