Contact: Mike Myslinski at 650-552-5324 or Frank Wells at 562-942-7979
BURLINGAME – California educators join CTA President David A. Sanchez in a new statewide radio ad launched by the California Teachers Association this week that shows how President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” is forcing teachers to teach to the test and robbing our children of a well-rounded education.
“This law forces us to teach to the test, rather than help students learn,” one teacher warns in the spot. Another cautions, “Its focus on testing is destroying art, music and vocational education.” And those are the very classes that give kids a “well-rounded education,” a third educator says.
Escalating its efforts to urge members of Congress to stop more federal attacks on our students, educators and public schools, the 340,000-member CTA is airing the ad as part of a statewide campaign calling on Congress to vote no on the current NCLB reauthorization proposal. CTA’s campaign also includes video and written testimony from California teachers about how NCLB hurts their students. These “NCLB: Stories From the Frontline” testimonies, as well as the new radio and blog ads, can be found at www.cta.org.
President Sanchez drives home classroom teachers’ concerns in the 60-second radio ad airing in every media market in the state, and warns about the repercussions of a destructive idea in the NCLB reauthorization proposal: paying teachers based on test scores.
“The one-size-fits-all approach of No Child Left Behind is hurting our kids and schools,” Sanchez says in the ad. “Parents and teachers support accountability, but students should be judged by more than a standardized test score. Now there’s a proposal to pay teachers based on those test scores. This means more teaching to the test and will make it harder to attract teachers into lower-performing schools. Rather than punishing our public schools, politicians should keep their promises to help all children succeed.”
Sanchez concludes by urging the public to call their representatives in Congress to tell them to vote no on the NCLB reauthorization proposal under consideration now in the U.S. House of Representatives. The CTA Take Action hotline number is (888) 268-4334.