Fix Flawed, Underfunded Federal Education Law, California Legislature Tells Congress, President Bush

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BURLINGAME - Teachers are praising today's final approval in the Legislature of a joint resolution that officially adds California to the ranks of 31 other states critical of the federal, so-called "No Child Left Behind" education law.

Supported by the California Teachers Association and other education groups, the resolution urges President Bush and Congress to fully fund the massively underfunded law, and calls on Congress to amend the flawed act that sets public schools up for failure.

"Public school teachers and students are saddled with this one-size-fits-all law that undermines education by focusing on the wrong priorities for our schools and wasting billions of dollars on federal paperwork and bureaucracy," said Barbara E. Kerr, president of the 335,000-member CTA. "Teachers are overjoyed that California's lawmakers see how disrespectful this test-obsessed law is to parents and educators. This resolution affirms our many warnings that the law is dangerously flawed."

Assembly Joint Resolution 88 won bipartisan approval in the Legislature. In addition to demanding full funding of the federal law "for the life of the act," it asks Congress to amend the law to: permit a range of accountability models instead of the rigid 95 percent test participation rates that various school subgroups must meet to attain federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals; provide that a teacher certified under California's rigorous certification requirements be deemed "highly qualified" for purposes of the federal law; and allow students whose parents have decided not to have them tested also excluded from the federal participation rate calculation.

Last year alone, 277 California public schools that met the state's academic success measures for four straight years failed to meet absurd federal AYP mandates. Fifty-two percent of the California high schools that failed to meet AYP goals did so because they missed the federal 95 percent test participation quotas, according to the resolution's author, Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael.