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NEA welcomes overdue flexibility for students with limited English

Washington, D.C. - The National Education Association (NEA) welcomed the Bush administration's overdue recognition of the need for more flexibility in another critical area of the ESEA/"No Child Left Behind" education law. The parts of the law and regulations affecting students with limited English have led to widespread confusion and set back ongoing efforts to ensure these children have access to a quality public education.

"Teachers, parents and many others have been advocating over the past year common sense changes in how we assess English language learners," said NEA President Reg Weaver. "These new rules are a step in the right direction, but there's much more that the federal government must do to guarantee that 'No Child Left Behind' is more than just a promise for all children."

These new rules serve as a reminder that many of the 27,000 schools labeled as not meeting annual standards over the past year fell unfairly into this category due to the Department of Education's delay in modifying these rules. In addition, the Department's failure to issue final rules governing assessments for students with disabilities until last December means that many schools will likely face sanctions after the next round of standardized testing this spring because states will not have had enough time to overhaul their assessment systems.

In recognition of the urgent need to build more common sense flexibility into "No Child Left Behind" in order to ensure true accountability, NEA called on the Department of Education to take the following actions immediately:

• Work with schools, school districts and states to reevaluate and relabel schools that were wrongly and unfairly labeled as not meeting annual standards due to one-size-fits-all tests being used for English language learners as well as special needs students.
• Suspend additional labeling and penalties for one year so that states have time to reevaluate which students are now eligible to take different tests and revise their tests accordingly so that no school is inappropriately labeled as not meeting annual standards.
• Lend technical assistance and resources to schools, school districts and states so that they can develop the appropriate assessments for these two groups of children as well as provide local educators with user-friendly materials.
• Take further steps to make the rules affecting students with limited English more flexible and sensible. For example, students who have been in the country for less than one year are still required to take math tests, even though many cannot yet read the instructions or questions.
• Review other areas of the law that a growing number of state and local officials and educators see as interfering with their efforts to boost student achievement and close the achievement gap. NEA has drafted legislation, the Great Public Schools for Every Child Act, that would put much-needed improvements to the law in place.

"We hope that Secretary Paige and the Department of Education will continue listening to the common sense recommendations made by NEA, policymakers, administrators, parents and many others that are needed to make this law work and give every child the tools and individualized attention that he or she needs to be successful," added Weaver.