[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 13, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9986-S9988]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Ms. COLLINS (for herself and Ms. Snowe):
S. 1690. A bill to provide for flexibility and improvements in
elementary and secondary education, and for other purposes; to the
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a bill that
gives students, parents and teachers options and flexibility for
meeting accountability and proficiency standards--the No Child Left
Behind Flexibility and Improvements Act. My colleague, Senator Collins,
and I have been working hand-in-hand with Maine's educators to identify
problems with the No Child Left Behind Act and develop practical
solutions to these issues. The bill we introduce today is the product
of our combined efforts.
In 2001, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, Congress,
in a bipartisan fashion, set forth a truly ambitious education reform.
This is a law that was conceived and created with the worthy intention
to provide equal educational opportunity for every American child. Upon
implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act some unforseen
complications of the Act have become apparent. And that is why Senator
Collins and I called for the creation of No Child Left Behind Task
Force in 2003 in response to the concerns we heard in meetings with
Maine's education professionals.
As described by the Task Force, ``the challenge that the Task Force
faced was to confront the issues raised by No Child Left Behind, to ask
how the common State and Federal objectives could be met, and to assess
how No Child Left Behind and the Maine Learning Results could be
coordinated better to the benefit of the citizens of Maine.'' The
members of this Task Force have their fingers on the pulse of their
students' needs and are therefore uniquely qualified to assess this law
and make recommendations on how to improve it. In March of this year we
received the Task Force report, and it is with these recommendations
that Senator Collins and I could understand its impact on our state and
our children, so that we can move forward to improve this law in a
meaningful manner.
Maine's No Child Left Behind Task Force issued several
recommendations in five major areas: annual yearly progress, assessment
and accountability; reading and limited English proficiency students;
special education; highly qualified teachers; and funding. The No Child
Left Behind Flexibility and Improvements Act addresses each of these
areas in several ways. For example, our bill allows local education
authorities to use local assessments as opposed to a state-wide test to
measure adequate yearly progress.
The Act also gives States additional options for deeming a teacher
highly qualified, give schools the discretion to use reading activities
grants in a manner that will best address the needs of their students
and allows schools flexibility with limited English proficiency
students. This is only a sample of the many modifications our bill
makes that will results in No Child Left Behind being more effective in
the State of Maine.
One of our democracy's most noble goals, still a work in progress,
has been to create a level playing field on which our children may
strive to learn and reach their potential. Clearly, education, along
with the family, plays an integral role in achieving this great
imperative, which distinguishes our nation and helps make us worthy of
the world's emulation. The No Child Left Behind Flexibility and
Improvements Act will help to further this goal.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, along with the senior Senator from Maine,
Senator Snowe, I am today introducing the No Child Left Behind
Flexibility and Improvements Act. Our legislation is designed to
provide State and local decision makers with greater control options
and flexibility in the implementation of the No Child Left Behind
[[Page S9987]]
Act of 2002. It would provide commonsense reforms in keeping with the
worthy goals of this landmark law.
Since the law's enactment in 2002, I have had the opportunity to meet
with many educators, administrators, parents, and officials from my
home State to discuss their concerns regarding the implementation of
the No Child Left Behind Act reform. In response to their concerns,
Senator Snowe and I commissioned a Maine NCLB task force in March of
last year. Our task force included members from every county in our
State, and had superintendents, teachers, principals, school board
members, parents, business leaders, former State legislators, special
education specialists, assessment experts, officials from the Maine
Department of Education, a former Maine commissioner of education and a
dean from the University of Maine's College of Education and Human
Development. In other words, it was a broad-based commission that
brought a great deal of expertise, experience, and perspective to the
task force's work. I am very grateful for their dedicated service and
hard work.
Senator Snowe and I charged the task force with three core missions:
First, to examine the problems facing Maine schools, particularly those
in rural areas of our State in implementing the No Child Left Behind
Act and to recommend improvements in current regulations and policies;
second, to make recommendations for statutory changes in the Federal
law; and, third, to provide greater clarity to Maine's educators,
parents, and citizens about the law's goals, requirements, and
relationship to Maine's own State education reform effort which is
known as Maine Learning Results. What we found is there was some
confusion about what was required by No Child Left Behind versus what
was required by Maine Learning Results and how the two interacted.
The task force met numerous times over the course of the year with
the goal of gaining a clearer understanding of NCLB and the
implementation issues facing Maine under federal and State education
policies. The task force also had the benefit of meeting with officials
from the U.S. Department of Education, including then-Deputy Secretary
Hickok who twice traveled to Maine to meet with the task force. The
task force also met with other state officials who shared their
expertise in particular areas.
After the task force completed its work, Senator Snowe and I met with
task force members at the University of Maine in Orono to receive the
final report and to discuss the greatest challenges facing Maine with
the implementation of both federal and State education initiatives.
I was very impressed with the reports we received from the task
force, both the depth and the quality of the task force's analysis, as
well as the practicality of its recommendations. I shared the report
with several of my Senate colleagues, including the chairman and
ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee,
as well as with the Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, and
Maine's education commissioner.
I note Secretary Spellings responded with a letter praising the task
force for its hard work.
The task force report included 26 recommendations for changes to the
No Child Left Behind law or the regulations governing its
implementation. The task force provided recommendations in five core
areas: Annual yearly progress and assessment, reading and limited
English proficiency students, special education, highly qualified
teachers and funding. The task force recommendations highlighted the
need for greater flexibility for the Maine Department of Education, for
local schools to address various implementation concerns facing Maine.
Those 26 recommendations provide the foundation for the legislation I
am introducing today.
Over the past several months, Senator Snowe and I have taken these
recommendations and worked together to translate them into
comprehensive legislation. Our legislation would make significant
statutory changes designed to provide greater local control to Maine
and greater flexibility to all States in their implementation efforts,
not just Maine.
For example, the task force recommended that States be allowed to
measure student performance using different models, such as growth
models, and that special education experts on the IEP team be allowed
to determine the best assessment for special education students. Both
of these recommendations are included in our legislation.
We believe that our legislation will provide a strong basis for
continuing discussions about the implementation challenges facing the
States and will highlight key issues requiring further consideration
during the reauthorization process, expected to begin later in the
109th Congress.
Although our legislation seeks to improve the NCLB implementation
process through specific statutory reforms, we recognize that, in some
cases, the goals of our legislation may be accomplished more quickly
through changes to guidance and regulations from the Department or
Education, or through amendments to the states' own implementation
plans. We will continue to seek additional flexibility through these
avenues to address the immediate implementation concerns facing the
States, and believe that our legislation provides a useful guide to
federal and State officials in these efforts.
Our legislation is a comprehensive effort to address the concerns
raised by our task force and includes the following provisions:
First, our legislation would provide new flexibility in the design of
state accountability systems used to determine ``adequate yearly
progress'' or AYP. Our legislation would explicitly permit a state to
include additional models ``discussed further below'' in its State plan
to demonstrate student progress. Even if a school is unable to meet the
trajectory targets set by the NCLB time-line, a school would not be
identified as failing to make AYP provided it demonstrates improved
student achievement according to these additional models. The principle
here is one of more accurately assessing whether all students are
continuing to make progress.
Our legislation specifically outlines three additional models that
would be permitted under the statute: No. 1, a cohort growth model,
which demonstrates student progress by following the same cohort of
students over time; No. 2, an indexing model, which demonstrates
student progress through improved performance for students below the
proficient level--for example, improvement from a below basic to a
basic level; and No. 3, ``top performing schools'' model, which
demonstrates improvement through progress in closing the achievement
gap between the lowest performing students and, for example, student
performance at the State's top 20 percent of schools.
The list of models in our legislation is not exclusive, and this
section reflects our interest in permitting a far greater diversity in
the types of State accountability systems acceptable under the statute.
We would also require the Secretary to provide examples of these models
to give practical assistance to States in the design of these systems.
While the trajectory goals set in the statute are certainly valuable,
our legislation seeks to clarify that States should be granted greater
flexibility in the design of different accountability systems provided
that they are consistent with the principle of improved student
performance.
Second, our legislation would modify the existing ``safe-harbor''
provision to allow more schools to take advantage of this provision.
The ``safe-harbor'' provision in the law is really another example of
an improvement model already permitted under the statute. In order to
qualify for the safe-harbor provision under current law, schools must
reduce the number of students scoring below the proficient level by 10
percent in a single year.
As the task force found, this has proven to be a difficult threshold
to meet, which has resulted in an underutilization of the safe harbor
provision. Therefore, we have modified the safe harbor to require only
a 5 percent decrease in the number of non-proficient students, or an
aggregate decrease of 10 percent over 2 years. Our modification would
reflect what education assessment experts already know: Significant
gains in academic achievement tend to occur gradually and over time.
[[Page S9988]]
Third, our legislation also would provide new flexibility related to
the statute's 100 percent proficiency requirements for 2013-2014--
another specific recommendation of the task force. Our bill would
require the Secretary of Education to conduct a review every three
years to determine the progress of the 50 States towards meeting the
100 percent goal of the statute by 2013-2014. The Secretary would then
be permitted, at her discretion, to make modifications to the
requirements of the 12-year time-line if she determines modifications
are necessary and in keeping with the broader purposes of the law.
Fourth, our legislation would also provide greater predictability to
the school identification process, and limit school identification to
those schools most in need of improvement. Currently, a school is
designated as ``in need of improvement'' after it fails to make AYP for
2 years in a row in the same subject, regardless of what subgroup has
failed to make AYP. Our legislation would require that in order to be
found in need of improvement, a school would need to fail to make AYP
in both the same subject area and with respect to the same subgroup of
students 2 years in a row.
As our task force noted, the current rules can be extremely
frustrating for school administrators who work hard to address a
reading concern with one group--for example, LEP students--in year one,
only to subsequently be identified in need of improvement when they
learn that a different subgroup--for example, special education
students--failed to make AYP in year two.
We must provide our schools with notice and an ability to work to
improve student performance before they are identified as in need of
improvement. I share the task force's concern that without these
modifications, we risk quickly reaching a point where so many schools
are found to be in need of school improvement, that the identification
becomes meaningless. Worse yet, over-identification of schools creates
the risk of having improvement resources spread too thin to make a
difference in helping the schools that truly need assistance.
Fifth, our legislation would provide additional flexibility for
teachers of multiple academic subjects at the middle and high school
level in meeting teacher quality requirements. The task force heard
from many teachers in Maine about the burden the current requirements
have placed on teachers in small and rural schools. Our legislation
provides new options for these teachers to become highly qualified. It
also would allow teachers of history, geography, civics, and related
subjects to demonstrate subject area knowledge through the obtainment
of a general State social-studies certificate.
Sixth, our legislation addresses concerns about limited English
proficient students. The task force was concerned about an unintended
consequence of the current law, whereby once a student becomes
proficient in English, that student may no longer be included in the
LEP subgroup. Federal officials have taken steps to address this issue,
but our legislation would go further to correct this problem. Our bill
would allow a school to continue to count students who have attained
English proficiency for purposes of calculating AYP until the student
graduates from high school.
Seventh, our legislation would clarify that local assessment systems
are permissible under NCLB. This was an issue of some confusion in
Maine, despite the fact that I had written a letter to then-Secretary
Paige and received strong assurances of the acceptability of
such systems. Both Nebraska and Iowa have been approved to use local
assessment systems to meet NCLB assessment requirements. Although Maine
continues the process of developing its own local assessment system
pursuant to state requirements, I am confident that nothing in the
federal statute would preclude Maine from incorporating a local
assessment system at a time when state officials decide they are ready
to pursue this option. But our bill makes this crystal-clear.
Eighth, our legislation would also revise upward the minimum amount
of funding required for the assessment provisions to go into effect for
fiscal years 2006 and 2007. This change is based on a recommendation by
the task force that efforts be made to ensure adequate funding for the
requirements of the statute.
These revised levels are based on a GAO report that I required as
part of the conference report to NCLB. The GAO report estimated that
although most States, including Maine, had the majority of their
assessment costs covered, particularly in the early years, additional
resources would be needed in future years as the assessment
requirements increased. The report estimated that Maine would have 86
percent of its assessment costs covered through 2007, and while this is
significant funding, additional funding will ensure that all States
have the resources they need, particularly for the adaptation of tests
for LEP and special education populations.
Finally, our legislation would also address concerns that some
special education students are being required to take grade-level
assessments that are inappropriate for them. Our legislation would
build on the important new flexibility the Secretary has provided in
this area. Our legislation would allow the student's IEP team to
determine the appropriate test for a student, and if a special
education student achieves a proficient score on this test, the student
will be deemed proficient for AYP purposes. The IEP requirements of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act--IDEA--will ensure both
parent involvement in this process, and increasingly higher
expectations for these students. We agree with the task force that the
involvement of parents and the IEP team will serve as an important
safeguard to ensure that those special education students who can be
assessed according to State-determined grade-level expectations will be
encouraged to do so.
Our legislation is a comprehensive effort to provide greater
flexibility and common-sense modifications to address the key NCLB
implementation challenges facing Maine, and other States. At the same
time, our legislation remains true to the important goals of NCLB, such
as increasing accountability, closing the achievement gap, and
improving student performance. I look forward to working with my
colleagues to improve this landmark law during the reauthorization
process.
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