Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - September 13, 2005)
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 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.
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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