FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BURLINGAME – Barbara E. Kerr, president of the 335,000-member California Teachers Association, issued this statement today about the flawed No Child Left Behind Act and the state's release of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores required by the law:
"The release of today's scores, whether they are AYP or API, shows one glaring truth: Our accountability systems are confusing and contradictory, making most of the information useless to parents and teachers. These scores also should not be allowed to mask the fact that many schools lack basic resources to provide students with the education they deserve.
President Bush and U.S. Secretary of Education Rodney Paige will use this week's Republican National Convention to add to the distortions about their flawed No Child Left Behind Act. California's teachers can see through their plan to set schools up for failure under the
"Catch-22" requirements of this massively underfunded law. The 6.2 million children in the nation's largest public school system deserve better.
No Child Left Behind focuses on the wrong priorities for our schools by wasting billions of dollars on paperwork, bureaucracy and more standardized testing, rather than giving kids what they really need to succeed: smaller class sizes, up-to-date textbooks and materials, and quality teachers.
Today's data offers some glaring contradictions: 317 of our public schools grew 30 or more points on the state's Academic Performance Index, but failed to make federal Adequate Yearly Progress goals and could be punished down the road. High schools made the biggest increase in AYP scores, but that's simply a reflection that more students took the test. CTA believes it is wrong and simplistic to label a school based on a snapshot of two tests taken once a year. Teachers believe multiple indicators such as classroom performance, graduation rates and attendance should be used to evaluate how well students are doing.
We need to simplify the accountability systems and provide our schools with stable and adequate funding."