Empowering Schools

Yesterday the Forum on Educational Accountability released a joint statement on NCLB, calling for more than a name change. Signed by 85 national organizations, including Council for Exceptional Children, Learning Disabilities Association of America, National Council of Churches, Public Education Network, American Federation of School Administrators, and the National Education Association, the statement includes a list of 14 roles properly held by the federal government around education. It concludes:

Incremental changes will not fix NCLB's serious flaws and will not enable all students to succeed. To ensure high-quality learning outcomes, Congress must overhaul ESEA, particularly Title I, to empower schools to improve, focus on improved assistance, help ensure funding equity and adequacy, redefine accountability, and reshape the federal relationship with states and districts.

The federal government must provide strong leadership through supportive policies and sufficient funding. The systemic school improvement and accountability changes outlined in this document are interrelated changes that reinforce each other and must be implemented together. They are not a menu from which to pick and choose. Experience and research show that these are among the most critical changes that states and localities can make to improve learning. The federal government therefore must provide strong financial support to these efforts and more broadly work to ensure all schools have adequate resources to educate all their students well.

We therefore call on Congress and the President to follow the guidance found in the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB and the initiatives described above.