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WASHINGTON, DC -- Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, issued the following statement today at a Committee hearing on “No Child Left Behind: Can Growth Models Ensure Improved Education for All Students?”
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Good morning.
I want to thank Chairman McKeon for scheduling today’s hearing on one of the most important decisions we face in reviewing the No Child Left Behind law: whether or not to reform the law’s current accountability system. I can think of no question more central to the reauthorization and goals of the law.
As one of the original authors of No Child Left Behind, I am often asked how I would like to see the law changed. The short answer is that I would like to see us be responsive to legitimate concerns while maintaining the core values of the law – providing equal educational opportunities for all children and an excellent education to every single child.
There are some well-founded concerns with the current accountability system.
One widespread concern relates to schools that are not making adequate yearly progress under the law even though their students are making impressive academic progress.
For example, take a fifth grader who starts the year reading at the first grade level. His or her school could make great strides in helping the student read and, over the course of a year, improve enough to read at the third grade level. But the school could miss making adequate yearly progress under the law if that student, and enough others, are still not reading at grade level.
A second major concern is that different students are measured each year, so the achievement of this year’s fifth graders is measured against the achievement of last year’s fifth graders. As a result, a gain or loss in the percentage of students who are proficient in reading or math could be a result of factors besides the school.
We need to carefully weigh and address these and other concerns.
It is important that any accountability system identify the schools that need extra help in the most fair and accurate way possible, so they can qualify for additional resources, and so their children can qualify for extra academic opportunities, such as tutoring or the ability to transfer to another public school. It is absolutely necessary that Congress appropriate the funds promised to make these services available to the children who need them.
I have an open mind about alternative accountability measures, and I have three basic questions about growth models that I hope our witnesses will address:
• First, do states have the data capacity and expertise they need to ensure that information gathered to determine whether a school has made adequate progress is both valid and reliable?
• Second, do growth models appropriately credit improving schools, or do they overstate academic progress? In other words, are they a step forward in offering a fairer, more reliable means of accountability, or are they a step backward – simply another loophole that hinders accountability?
• Third, and most importantly, are growth models consistent with No Child Left Behind’s ultimate goal of ensuring that all children can read and do math and science at grade level by 2014? It is imperative that growth be pegged to proficiency.
No Child Left Behind’s goals – of an excellent education for all children and equality of educational opportunity for all children – are goals that our nation has been pursuing for at least 40 years, ever since the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1966. But we have yet to achieve them.
Poor and minority children are still often assigned to less-challenging classes and less qualified teachers. As a result, fewer than half of minority children can read at grade level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. On average, black and Latino 17-year-old students are taught math at the same level as white 13-year-old students.
This is unacceptable. For these children, a good education is often their best and only hope for a prosperous future. That’s why we must stay true to No Child Left Behind’s promise to provide opportunity and an excellent education to every child, even as we make the necessary adjustments to the law.
I thank our panelists for being with us today and for the light you will shed on these important questions. I would like to extend a special thank you to Marnie Shaul – who I understand is retiring – for her outstanding work at the Government Accountability Office, including all of her work on the very useful report that we will hear about today.
I also thank Chairman McKeon and his staff for the bipartisan process that led to this hearing. I hope that today’s hearing will help us make great progress towards our reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
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