CEC Proposes Significant Changes to Improve the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

CEC recently recommended several critical changes to NCLB/ESEA on highly qualified teacher provisions, assessment of children with special needs, gifted and talented education, general/special education collaboration to assist struggling learners, appropriations, and school reform. The law is expected to be reauthorized this year.

“Congress has an opportunity to build on the law’s strengths while addressing areas of concern related to children with disabilities and/or gifts and talents,” says CEC’s Associate Executive Director for Policy and Advocacy Services Deb Ziegler. “CEC believes these changes will improve the law and promote greater educational success for students with special needs.”

Following are highlights of CEC’s recommendations to improve NCLB.

Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT)
While CEC believes all teachers should be well-prepared, CEC also believes teachers should be able to straightforwardly demonstrate their knowledge and skills. CEC also asserts that special educators possess a repertoire of evidence-based instructional strategies to provide effective instruction as well as content knowledge. CEC’s recommendations on NCLB’s HQT provisions encompass both the knowledge and skills special education teachers should posses as well as the means of demonstrating their abilities. They include:

• A single measure should not be used to determine teacher preparedness. When determining an individual’s professional competence, multiple measures should be used.
• The High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE) for special educators should be retained. HOUSSE provides states with multiple measures to determine whether a teacher is highly qualified in a core academic subject area or multiple subjects.
• Congress should support alternative routes to teacher certification that include sustained professional development. Teachers who are entering the program should not automatically be deemed highly qualified. 
• The national shortage of special educators should be addressed by making salaries, benefits, and supports competitive and by improving working conditions. Improved working conditions include collegial and administrative supports and reduced caseloads and paperwork.

Assessment and Accountability
CEC believes that children with disabilities and/or gifts and talents should be included in standardized assessments, as this data gives us valuable information to determine how well our schools are meeting their needs. However, CEC is concerned with the way students with special needs are currently included in the assessment and accountability system and believes we must change assessment practices to ensure students with disabilities are appropriately and fairly assessed.

CEC recommends that:

• All children with disabilities and/or gifts and talents should be included in all assessments. These students should have the opportunity to participate in general assessments, assessments with accommodations, and alternate or modified assessments.
• IEP teams should determine how students with disabilities will participate in assessments.
• All children with disabilities and/or gifts and talents should be included when assessment scores are publicly reported. The scores should be reported in the same frequency and format as all other children, regardless of how they participate in assessments.
• The principals of universal design (accessibility for a wide variety of end users) should be part of all educational assessment instruments.
• NCLB’s arbitrary proficiency targets should be replaced with achievement targets based on the most effective public schools’ rates of success.
• Schools should be allowed to count toward graduation rates all levels of diplomas.
• States should be allowed to pilot progress measures using children’s growth in achievement as well as their performance on standardized assessments.
• Rather than relying on standardized tests, multiple indicators of student achievement, including progress monitoring, should be used to determine children’s and schools’ performance.
• States should be allowed to assess children annually in selected grades, thus decreasing the current testing burden.

Providing Assistance to Struggling Learners in General Education: (Response To Intervention (RTI) and Early Intervening Services (EIS))
Addressing the needs of struggling learners through methods such as RTI and EIS may lead to important benefits, says CEC.  We may be able to support these students earlier, which can reduce lags in academic achievement and may lower the number of referrals to special education. To implement such processes, school-wide responsibility for the implementation of these programs should be emphasized, and research and technical assistance of effective, school-wide approaches should be provided.

CEC recommends that:

• The RTI process should be included in NCLB. The law should provide guidance to general and special educators on their roles in implementing RTI as a school-wide intervention process and their collaboration with special educators.
• Pilot programs to determine effective RTI models and processes should be implemented, as well as technical assistance, professional development, and dissemination of these models.
• The Early Intervening Services concept should be reinforced by emphasizing the shared responsibility between general and special educators to support struggling learners.

Gifted Education
Currently, there are an estimated three million children with gifts and talents in the U.S. whose educational needs go largely unaddressed. To ensure these students receive a challenging and accelerated curriculum, CEC believes NCLB should include the educational needs of students with gifts and talents.

CEC recommends that:

• Additional funding be authorized to support and expand gifted education programs, a technical assistance and dissemination network be established, and the Javits program be expanded to increase the number of children directly impacted by gifted education.

Full Funding for NCLB
Since its passage in 2002, school districts and states have struggled to meet NCLB’s requirements, due in large part to the lack of funding from the federal government. Funding for Title I programs has also suffered. CEC believes funding must be increased if NCLB’s goals are to be achieved.

CEC recommends that:

• NCLB funding should be increased to cover a substantial percentage of the costs that states and districts will incur to implement the recommendations. Expenditures for other education programs should not be reduced.
• Title I should be fully funded.
• Funds should be used to invest in improving schools, not arbitrarily or automatically used for school choice or supplemental education services.

School Reform
Sanctions against low-performing schools under NCLB are often seemingly arbitrary and penalize schools instead of focusing on school improvement. CEC says reform should focus on the academic achievement of students, not the degradation of staff or programs.

CEC recommends that:

• School improvement plans should be allowed sufficient time to take hold before applying sanctions. Sanctions should not be applied if they undermine existing reform efforts.
• Sanctions that do not consistently succeed should be replaced with interventions that enable schools to make changes that result in improved student achievement.
• Differentiating levels of progress toward accountability should be matched with appropriate supports.

To read CEC’s complete recommendations on NCLB, go to www.cec.sped.org.