The most urgent need in American education today continues to
be to remove barriers to opportunity that face poor children, particularly
children of color, children with disabilities and those with limited English
proficiency. Children living in
concentrated poverty
- who are
disproportionately African American and Latino
- continue to face the greatest obstacles. A bipartisan Congress sought to address the
needs of such children beginning in 1988 and then again in 1994, with changes
to the federal Title I program.
Although they have been slow to take hold, the 1994 reforms
- which call for high standards,
accountability for results and assistance to failing schools
- offer the best hope for addressing the
educational needs of the poor on a national scale. Across the country, schools,
districts and even entire states are demonstrating that these standards-based
reforms are sound and workable, and, when done right, can lead to substantial
improvements.
We are encouraged by the President’s determination to close the
achievement gap and to use Title I as a primary vehicle by which to do so. We support his embrace of standards and
accountability and his attention to the need to improve teacher quality. We applaud his desire to forge a
bipartisan agreement on federal education programs, and we share his desire to
move our nation forward, united in the objective of providing equal educational
opportunity to all.
We are disappointed, however, that the President has
simultaneously put forth proposals that could undermine accountability and
school improvement and thus leave even more children behind.
Most importantly, the Administration
largely disregards the lessons of the last several years
- that more resources are needed to assure
high quality teaching in high-poverty schools and that federal action is needed
to deal with the impact of state inequities in resources on poor children.
What is needed now is bold action to
strengthen and to enforce provisions in current law, as well as to ensure that
high-poverty schools and school districts have the resources (including
qualified teachers) they need to provide all children with the opportunity to
meet high standards.
Specifically, the Citizens’
Commission calls on the President, Education Secretary Rod Paige, members of
Congress, and their advisors to take into account the following recommendations
for strengthening the Title I program and improving opportunity for our nation’s
most vulnerable school children:
1.
Congress
should ratify the principles of standards-based reform contained in the 1994
amendments to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by
reauthorizing the Act for at least five more years.
2.
Congress should
take additional steps to improve the capacity of schools and school districts
in areas of concentrated poverty to meet the challenge of helping all their
students to reach high standards. In
particular, Congress should adopt measures that will:
·
Attract the
most able people to teach in high-poverty areas.
·
Improve the
skills of teachers through enhanced opportunities for professional development.
·
Direct more
resources for such critical needs as smaller class sizes and up-to-date
curriculum materials to schools with high concentrations of poverty.
3.
The President
and the Secretary of Education should announce the resolve of the
Administration to implement and enforce Title I to secure its primary purpose:
equalizing the learning opportunities available to poor and non-poor
children. To that end, they should
direct federal officials to take the following steps to resume enforcement of
provisions in current law to:
·
Ensure that
states hold all children to the same high standards and use aligned assessment tools
to measure their progress.
·
Ensure that
states and school districts make a broad and challenging curriculum available
to all children.
·
Insist that
states carry out their statutory mandate to set forth a program for assisting
local districts and schools achieve the capacity to help students meet high
standards.
·
Insist that
children with limited proficiency in English and children with disabilities be
included in assessments and be given needed accommodations.
·
Ensure that
states provide meaningful remedies for children who are trapped in failing
schools or school systems.
·
Ensure that
assessments meet the requirements of federal civil rights laws and the Office
for Civil Rights guidance and are used only for purposes for which they are
valid and reliable.
4. Governors and
state and local education leaders should heed the mandate of Title I and, in
many cases, their own state laws and policies, to ensure that poor and minority
children reap the benefits of standards-based reform. They should redouble their efforts to fully comply with Title I
and to ensure opportunity to learn for all students.