American Public Calls on Bush Administration to Strengthen Public Information & Involvement in NCLB
March 16, 2005

New Public Education Network Report Charges Lack of Enforcement, Information Threatens to Erode Public Support for Law

WASHINGTON, DC - March 16, 2005 - In an open letter to the Bush Administration and congressional leaders, Public Education Network (PEN) today called on federal officials to vigorously enforce key provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act to avoid undermining public support for the law's goals.

In the letter - delivered to President Bush, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, and key leaders in Congress - PEN cites a serious flaw in the law's accountability framework. While schools and students face stiff sanctions and the stigma of not meeting state performance targets, the law imposes no consequences on states themselves, regardless of whether benchmarks are met or whether they fulfill their obligations.

And while public involvement is critical to the long-term success of the education law, parents and the public charge that their efforts to get involved in schools are regularly rebuffed by school leaders and by another crucial barrier - the lack of useful information about school performance and improvement.

These are among the key findings of a report released today by Public Education Network (PEN). The report, Open to the Public: Speaking Out on No Child Left Behind synthesizes the opinions of hundreds of Americans who participated in public hearings on NCLB in eight states and over 12,000 Americans who took part in an online survey intended to gauge opinion on the law's implementation.

"Although the law mentions parent and community involvement more than 300 times, the most dramatic shift in federal education policy in half a century is shutting out many of the nation's parents and the public from effective involvement with their schools," says Wendy D. Puriefoy, president of PEN. "Rather than bringing Americans closer to their public schools, implementation of the law is making more Americans mistrust them."

The report is consistent with a series of public opinion polls conducted by PEN and other groups finding that while Americans generally support the law's goals, the more they learn about the law the less supportive they feel. In the report and letter, PEN calls on federal officials to take the following steps to address the public's concerns:

Ø Hold states accountable for performance and for enforcing the law. While states currently set performance targets and establish the overall structure of the law's implementation, they face no consequences when large numbers of students fail to meet objectives. Penalties should be imposed upon states, parallel to those imposed upon school districts, when insufficient numbers of children meet AYP targets, including the designation of states as "in need of improvement" or "in corrective action" with the concomitant assistance and sanctions described in NCLB.

Ø Enforce the law's information requirements. Under NCLB, states and districts have produced a wealth of information on school performance, teacher quality, and other factors, but the information is often unavailable or difficult for parents and the public to understand. Federal officials should ensure that states and local districts provide more information about the use of assessments, teacher qualifications, and supplemental services in a comprehensive, timely, and accessible manner, translated into home languages as necessary.

Ø Enforce NCLB's parent involvement provisions. In most school districts parents reported having met resistance from school officials when they tried to get involved, and 75 percent of survey respondents had not been involved in any NCLB-related activity. By enforcing provisions already in the law, the federal government can send a strong signal to states and school districts that parents and the public can and should be active partners in school improvement, and can build public ownership of the schools.

Ø Count significant progress toward AYP. The reaction of teachers and administrators to high stakes tests has put enormous pressure on students, and has led to significant narrowing of the curriculum. Immigrant students report being pushed out of school. To reduce these incidents, and encourage rather than discourage student and teacher efforts, schools should receive AYP 'credit' for making significant progress toward proficiency targets.

Ø Provide supplemental services before allowing transfers, and ensure quality services. Parents of children in low-performing schools prefer the option of receiving supplemental education services before the option to transfer their child to another school. By ensuring that support is provided first, federal officials can help support neighborhood schools while giving them time to improve.

Ø Keep the Public in the Conversation. Public education is a public institution and a public responsibility. The public exercises its responsibility through setting high expectations, electing officials, and sustaining effective policies that make a difference for achievement. If the public does not have the information and the opportunity it needs to play its role, the quality of public education will always be compromised.

"The drafters of the law recognized the importance of sustaining public support and made public engagement provisions central to the law's implementation," says Puriefoy. "But in reality, the powerful promise of increased parent and public involvement has been a miserable failure. The American people play purely perfunctory roles - reading report cards they cannot understand, approving reports they did not participate in developing, and showing up to meetings for the sake of representation, not engagement. Vigorous enforcement of the public provisions of this law must happen if this is to be a truly effective reform."

In fact, the majority of hearing participants and survey respondents identified serious concerns about the law's implementation, including:

The limits of tests. Nine of ten survey respondents said a single annual test cannot tell if individual students are performing satisfactorily or if a school needs improvement.

Lowered standards. Hearing participants expressed concern that some states have lowered performance targets to ensure that more schools can meet them, and worried that schools have abandoned more ambitious learning experiences in favor of short-term gains in test scores.

Questions about teacher quality. Few parents are receiving the data required by NCLB regarding the qualifications of teachers at their school. And while the U.S. Department of Education and states maintain that nearly all teachers are highly qualified, few survey respondents agreed, and hearing participants felt the definition of highly qualified is insufficient; they want teachers to also have high expectations for their children.

Lack of information. Few members of the public have received information on assessments, teacher quality, school choice or supplemental services. Most survey respondents said NCLB has made no difference in the amount or quality of school information they receive.

Schools' unwillingness to involve parents or community organizations. Some parents feel their involvement has been symbolic at most, and that their participation was invited reluctantly in order to fulfill requirements.

Insufficient Funding. Hearing participants strongly criticized state and federal officials for under-funding schools

Maria Leon, a parent speaking in Spanish at the Los Angeles hearing captured many witnesses' sentiments: "I don't want No Child Left Behind to stay a wonderful idea. I want it to really become as it should be and have it really serve to improve our children's education and that way, better our community as a whole."

Support for the Public Hearings came from The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, New York Community Trust, and Open Society Institute.

Public Education Network is a national organization of local education funds (LEFs) and individuals working to improve public schools and build public support for quality public education for poor and disadvantaged children in low-income communities across the nation. PEN and its 89 LEF members work in 34 states and the District of Columbia on behalf of 11.1 million children in more than 1200 school districts, seeking to bring the community voice into the debate on quality public education in the firm belief that an active, vocal constituency will ensure every child, in every community, a quality public education.