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BUSINESS COALITION FOR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND UPDATE, June 24, 2008
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With the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) up for reauthorization, parents, educators, experts and concerned citizens are speaking up in support of No Child Left Behind. The final in the series of voices from the field, this week’s quote highlights how NCLB is helping every student to receive a high quality education Ricki Sabia "NCLB has made it much easier for my children to get a high quality education. Their schools are more invested in their academic performance. We have only just begun to improve instruction and assessment under NCLB. It is critically important that this progress continue. The future of our children, workforce and economy depend on it.” |
BCSA leaders sent a letter on June 18 to all members of the House of Representatives urging them to vote against any legislative proposals that would undermine the overarching goal of NCLB. The letter recognizes that NCLB can be improved, but that ultimately, its key principles are critical to improving the academic performance of all students. The letter voices BCSA’s continued commitment to supporting strong accountability for improved achievement of the K-12 education system in the United States. To read more click here >>
States eye uniform graduation rate reporting
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in April proposed new rules requiring states to assign students a unique ID number to track the individual from ninth grade through graduation, or until that student drops out. Currently, graduation rates vary across the states, making state-by-state comparisons difficult. Secretary Spellings' proposal aims to make that process easier and more accurate within the next five years.
Read more in the Washington Post >>
Report Sees Cost in Some Academic Gains
A new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington, argues that the nation’s focus on helping students who are furthest behind may have produced a Robin Hood effect, yielding steady academic gains for low-achieving students in recent years at the expense of top students. Susan Traiman, director of education policy at the Business Roundtable, a group that represents business executives, said the challenge was to improve the ability of schools to educate students across a range of levels. She said, “We’re producing progress at the bottom, and we need to maintain that, but we need to ratchet up the performance of students at every achievement level if we’re going to be competitive.”
Read more in the New York Times >>
2 School Entrepreneurs Lead the Way on Change
Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, and her husband Richard Barth, CEO of the Knowledge Is Power Program, are a power couple in the world of education, seeking to reshape the United States’ educational landscape by creating new schools, training better principals and getting more smart young teachers into needy classrooms.
Read more in the New York Times >>