The Road Less Traveled

THE National Education Association (NEA) has been asked whether we endorse petition (see page 273) being circulated by Educator Roundtable that calls on members of U.S. Congress to vote against reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The short answer? Absolutely not. While initiators of petition are well meaning and share many of same concerns NEA has about NCLB, petition does not represent our views. For example, it calls for dismantling of NCLB and does not propose any positive changes or alternatives, such as those articulated in our own document, ESEA: It's Time for a Change: NEA's Positive Agenda for ESEA Reauthorization. The NEA agrees with many of 16 reasons articulated in petition that argue why law cannot be salvaged. However, association disagrees with petition's conclusion--that NCLB should be repealed. Instead, we believe that several substantive changes that overhaul statute would produce a far better result. In addition, there is no chance that Congress will repeal NCLB. Those who do not articulate a positive set of changes to law will simply not be at table in negotiating any improvements to it. Furthermore, NCLB is current version of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), so it's not clear what repealing NCLB would actually mean. Eliminating ESEA and its important programs such as Title I? Reverting back to 1994 version of ESEA, which would eliminate key provisions added in 2002, such as strengthened rights for homeless children? Or eliminating law's negative features, such as adequate yearly progress (AYP) and annual testing provisions? Among positive provisions mandated by NCLB is disaggregation of student data. That requirement alone has highlighted deficiencies in educational opportunities for several groups of students. In addition, NCLB has good intentions--closing achievement gaps between various groups of students, raising overall student achievement (at least as measured on statewide tests in reading and math), and ensuring that all students have highly qualified teachers. However, NEA has long argued that law's good intentions have gone seriously awry. While Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has said that NCLB is like Ivory Soap; it's 99.9% pure or something ... there's not much needed in way of change, reality is that it is not working. Among its myriad flaws and negative outcomes are a narrowing of curricula and projection that virtually all schools will eventually fail to meet its one-size-fits all, all-or-nothing AYP mandate. There is also little evidence that NCLB has directly contributed to its own major goal--raising student test scores. In addition, law has significant flaws in how it tests and counts test scores earned by both English-language learners and students with disabilities. And its regimen of consequences, sanctions, and punishments has no research base and has not been shown to help close achievement gaps. Finally, NCLB is seriously underfunded--with cumulative shortfall between amounts actually appropriated and amounts authorized in law exceeding $56 billion over six years. The NEA is not alone in calling for fundamental changes in law. A coalition of more than 129 national groups--including NAACP (National Association for Advancement of Colored People), Children's Defense Fund, National PTA, National Council of Churches, and National Alliance of Black School Educators--has called for 14 changes to law, noting that the law's emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making systemic changes that improve student achievement.(1) Let's take a look at some of these flaws and failures in more depth. …

Advocating for All Children

Control over education is a power that the Constitution reserves for the states, not the federal government. But, for the reasons Ms. McColl explains in this article, answering the question she raises in the title is not such an easy matter. THE No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has become a symbol of all things good and bad in education. While the basic concepts of the legislation -- accountability for results, research-based education programs, increased parental options, and expanded local control and flexibility -- have wide support, some critics have argued that NCLB has failed to deliver.1 Others have focused on how best to implement its provisions.2 Although this scrutiny of the requirements and outcomes of NCLB is crucial to the policy debate, the law has largely escaped a more fundamental review, and answers to the following questions are needed: Has Congress overstepped its legal authority with No Child Left Behind? Is NCLB a constitutional exercise of congressional power, or does it infringe on states' rights? What is the role of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) in addressing ambiguities in the law? Answering these questions requires a close examination of federalism as it is expressed in the U.S. Constitution and interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. call to examine the law in this light comes with a warning: reaching conclusions about whether Congress acted within the limits of its constitutional authority may cause some discomfort. Liberals may find their customary inclination to favor a more expanded role for the federal government to be in conflict with their concern about the substance of NCLB. Conservatives may similarly find their general bias in favor of states' rights to be in conflict with their support for the accountability and school-choice elements of NCLB. And if the courts ignore, as they should, both the politics surrounding NCLB and its education reform goals, the results of a legal challenge could be interesting, indeed. A conservative Supreme Court may ultimately conclude that President George W. Bush's education agenda exceeds constitutional bounds. Is There Constitutional Authority for NCLB? There is little dispute over whether NCLB represents an unprecedented level of federal involvement in the affairs of our public schools. However, there is disagreement between the law's supporters, who hail this federal intrusion into state and local education as effective national reform, and its detractors, who argue that the intrusion consists of a set of politically motivated mandates that are detrimental to our schools. language of NCLB speaks to the sweeping authority intended by its passage: The purpose of the title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments. To accomplish this, NCLB sets extensive requirements for states, including establishing an accountability system and staffing schools with high-quality professionals. This level of federal intrusion into a domain typically under state control raises legal questions because Congress must act within the limits of federal authority established by the U.S. Constitution. Constitution reflects a careful balance between the powers of the federal government and those of the states. James Madison argued, The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.3 Constitution defines this balance in the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Past court decisions, most notably San Antonio v. …

It has been several years since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was renamedthe No Child Left Behind Act. In this major expansion of the federal role in education, the No Child LeftBehind (NCLB) Act of 2001 required annual testing, specified a method for judging schooleffectiveness, set a timeline for progress, and established specific consequences in the case of failure(Wenning, 2003). The Washington Post referred to it as the "broadest rewriting of federal educationpolicy in decades"(Milbank, 2002). The effects of the overwhelming pressure to perform well on thePennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests on teachers, students, and parents hadbrought about "PSSA Panic and Paranoia." Although strides have been made in overcoming the stressand pressure created by these tests, teachers (veteran and new), parents, and students are stillshowing signs of panic and paranoia. Now, young professionals entering this challenging field ofteaching are also affected by the implementation of the NCLB legislation. The domino effect isprofoundly influencing the education profession. The government pressures the state, the statepressures the schools, the schools pressure the educators, the educators pressure the parents andstudents, parents pressure the students and teachers, and finally, the students pressure themselves.Panic as defined by Dictionary.com Unabridged is "a sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause,which produces hysterical or irrational behavior, and that often spreads quickly through a group.Paranoia is defined as "a baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others characterized bysystematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts" (Random House, 2006). Signs of this"PSSA panic and paranoia" are still present today. Dedicated educators had embraced the challengethat President Bush put before them. Just as Ronald Edmonds had lectured years ago, teachersbelieve that effective schools do have closely monitored student achievement and orderly environmentscharacterized by high expectations. Upon recognizing the positive aspects of the legislation, it isimportant to recognize what it is lacking. Two of these weaknesses attributing to the panic andparanoia are the amount of skills tested in a specified time frame and unrealistic, not high,expectations placed on teachers and students.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the policy process that led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the United States and the Bush Administration's role in this process.Design/methodology/approachThe research design is historical and archival. A description of the NCLB Act is given and the major provisions and implementation are focused upon. How the Bush Administration helped create the opportunity to pass the NCLB Act by building coalitions, and how public opinion affected the evolution of the policy process is focused upon. Finally, a description is given on how policy ideas like the concept of “accountability” shaped the policy process, and both inspired and constrained the Bush Administration.FindingsThe paper argues that the Bush Administration helped create the opportunity to pass the NCLB Act by building coalitions, and public opinion affected the evolution of the policy process. Policy ideas like the concept of “accountability” shaped the policy process, and both inspired and constrained the Bush Administration.Research limitations/implicationsThe case is limited to the United States and NCLB, although those cases are particularly important in North America and in evaluation‐based research.Practical implicationsThe paper shows how a policy designer can be limited both by political initiatives and his or her own conceptual grounding.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first to connect the policy process that guided President Bush's design of the NCLB legislation with the concept of “accountability”. Accountability is a foundational concept in the design of quality assurance systems.

This chapter seeks to examine the impact of two federal policies, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), on educators in the USA during the past decade of reform. NCLB was signed into law in 2002 and is having a profound effect on the education of all students, including students considered at risk for academic failure, such as students with disabilities, students from diverse racial and ethnic minority groups, students from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds, and students who are Limited English Proficient (LEP), better known as English Language Learners (ELLs). NCLB “moved the federal government’s role in education from being primarily a source of funding—now about 9% of every public school dollar—to being a major factor in shaping the substance of P-12 curriculum and instruction” (Lieberman, 2008: 1). The most central requirements of NCLB relate to accountability and raising academic expectations. This law mandates that all students (including those from the aforementioned groups) must make adequate yearly progress (AYP). The overall goal is that all students should be achieving reading and math at grade level by the end of the 2013–2014 school year. NCLB establishes that all students must be taught core academic content by teachers who are highly qualified. A 2007 report by the US Department of Education (USDOE) states NCLB requires states to set standards for all teachers to be considered highly qualified and districts to notify parents of students … if their child’s teacher does not meet these ­standards. The requirements apply to all teachers of core academic subjects: English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography and the requirements also apply to teachers who provide instruction in these subjects to students with limited English proficiency (LEP) and students with disabilities. (USDOE/www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/teaching/nclb/execsum.html)

Today's educators live in fear of draconian consequences of to make yearly under No Child Left Behind Act. Mr. Popham offers sage advice on how to comply with law and not get hurt. ONE OF B. F. Skinner's little-known principles of reinforcement states, If any organism, human or subhuman, discerns prospect of impending pain, that organism will attempt to avoid such This principle, often shunned by strict behaviorists because it seems corrupted by cognitive overtones, was first articulated in 1965 in an unpublished essay. The essay is known chiefly because of Skinner's concluding comment that inside every fat rat is a thin rat yearning for food pellets. Skinner's pain-avoidance principle was somewhat unimaginatively identified by Skinner as pain-avoidance principle. In referring to it, reinforcement theorists typically use its initials: PAP. Pain Potential of a Federal Law PAP, then, describes proclivity of organisms to avoid upcoming pain. And if ever there was a law that possessed enormous potential for inflicting pain, it is surely No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Signed into law in early 2002, this federal statute is thought by some analysts to be, in fact, an enormous pile of pap. The NCLB pain to be avoided, of course, is associated with formidable set of aversive consequences that kick in when a public school fails to get its students to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), as measured by improvements on approved achievement tests. At best, a school that fails to make AYP is merely regarded by public as ineffectual. However, those failing schools that receive Title I funds are placed on an improvement track that, in time, can improve a school right out of existence. In following analysis, I offer guidance to my public school colleagues who, yearning to dodge distress brought on by NCLB, sometimes operate solely on basis of PAP. First, I will identify a number of tactics currently being employed to escape pain of NCLB and then describe a set of tactics -- not yet widely in use -- that show considerable PAP potential. Following inspirational insight of Stephen Potter, who in 1947 introduced us to gamesmanship as the art of winning games without actually cheating, I shall refer to all of these tactics -- sometimes psychometric, sometimes psychological, sometimes psychotic -- as ploys. More specifically, I will dub them NCLB PAP Ploys. I won't spend much space on array of NCLB PAP Ploys that are already in widespread use. Clearly, word is getting around regarding which tactics can help evade AYP-induced failure. As more educators learn about these federally sanctioned schemes to avoid pain, we can safely predict that education profession's mimicry machine will kick into high gear. My chief purpose here is to introduce educators to a set of inchoate, innovative tactics that, if employed adroitly, will stave off a great deal of suffering. NCLB PAP Ploys Now in Use 1. Challenge chopping. Because a state's yearly NCLB tests must, by federal law, be based directly on a state's challenging goals, and because students' low scores on those tests will lead to AYP failure, some states have tried to minimize NCLB-induced casualties simply by lowering challenge levels of their state curricula. Many educators have already learned to their distress that -- from a public relations perspective -- such wholesale reductions in a state's aspirations must be labeled with consummate care. For obvious reasons, these sorts of endeavors should not be described as expectation lowering, standard softening, or dreaded dumbing down. Indeed, there is even some risk in referring to such an overhaul of state as curriculum revision. Revision, after all, could go either way. The best label for such challenge chopping currently appears to be curricular refinement. …

This year's Bracey Report begins and ends with the item that will continue to dominate education news: No Child Left Behind. TO PRODUCE last year's report required me to sift through 21/2 drawers full of materials. This year, there were 31/2 drawers. Attention is being paid to public education; much of it is not benign. On the education news front, budgets and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) dominated. Because readers certainly know the budget situation in their own states, we begin with NCLB, in two parts. NCLB: The AYP Trap Last year's report said of No Child Left Behind, [It's] a trap, a Trojan Horse . . . choose your metaphor. These days, Americans speak mostly in war images, so I now call NCLB a weapon of mass destruction targeted at the public schools in a campaign of shock and awe, which, given the incredible underreaction of educators, I must conclude is working. I first expressed that sentiment in an article that no one would publish in April 2002. (The article can be found at www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA.) No one seemed to believe it then. They do now. At the April 2003 meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), several employees of the U.S. Department of Education approached me to express dismay over NCLB and over working for an ideologically driven department. These are sad times, indeed. One career staffer declared that NCLB should be renamed: NCL-B.S. As all Kappan readers surely know by now, all schools must test all students every year in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math, with science to be added in 2006-07. Schools must demonstrate adequate yearly progress (AYP). For a school to show AYP, all ethnic groups, all major socioeconomic groups, English-language learners, and special education students must make AYP separately. Ninety-five percent of each group must be tested, and, if any one group fails to make AYP, the school as a whole fails. The official phrase is needs improvement, but headlines across the nation reveal how everyone actually thinks about it: Most Schools in Failing, Los Angeles Daily News, 24 July 2003; State Adds 544 Schools to Failing List -- for Now, Grand Rapids Press, 12 July 2003; It's Pass or Fail; All or Nothing, Raleigh News Observer, 13 July 2003. Schools must continue to make AYP until, by 2014, 100% of a school's students must score In last year's report, I contended that, while the law allowed each state to define proficient, that wouldn't last and that the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) definition of would come to rule. I claimed that this would happen even though the NAEP achievement levels have been rejected as fundamentally flawed by everyone who has ever analyzed them. This includes the General Accounting Office, the Center for Research in Evaluation, Student Standards, and Testing (CRESST), the National Academy of Education, and the National Academy of Sciences. Even so, in his presidential address to AERA, Robert Linn, co-director of CRESST at the University of Colorado and UCLA, made no attempt to provide or use any definition of proficient other than that rendered by NAEP.1 Educational researchers now assume that proficient means NAEP proficient. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has said that he will use the discrepancy between the performance on NAEP and the performance on state tests to shame schools into better performance.2 Certainly those discrepancies will be there for Paige to point to, and in many instances they will be huge. To see why, we need only look at the Princeton Review's comparisons of performance on state tests with performance on NAEP.3 Ironically, the largest discrepancy is for Texas, the home state of Secretary Paige and President Bush. Texas declared 91% of its eighth-graders proficient in math. NAEP says only 24% of Texas students reach that level. Although there are some states where the differences are small and even four states that have tougher requirements than NAEP (Arizona, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maine), the average difference is 23%, and for 22 states, the difference exceeds 30%. …

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderPolicy Analysis1 Sep 2007Reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Inches Ahead Neil Snyder Neil Snyder Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.PA2.12132007.38 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is uncertain as Congress returns from its summer break, but legislators have made a preliminary move. On Aug. 28, Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Education and Labor, released a staff discussion draft of Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The draft was developed through input received at nearly two dozen congressional hearings and from discussions with many groups, including ASHA, about re-authorization legislation. The information, along with ASHA’s comments, can be viewed on the “Take Action” Web site. Comments were due by Sept. 5. The draft focused on Title 1, the core of NCLB, which includes assessment requirements, aggregated data, and other hot-button issues. NCLB, first passed in 2002, includes 12 titles. Some reports speculate that Miller will introduce a major re-authorization bill and move it through his committee as early as this month. ASHA is promoting several NCLB reforms, including greater access to professional development opportunities for members, public disclosure of professional qualifications of teachers and school-based SLPs and audiologists, the use of multiple measurements for assessing children with disabilities, and improvements to Early Reading First and Reading First programs. Although public sentiment supports re-opening and repairing the law, politics behind it may prevent a quick resolution. Nearly a dozen members of the House and Senate are running for re-election, and thus are focused on their campaigns. It may be impossible to pass a bill through two legislative chambers for signature by the president before the current administration ends in 2008. Education Programs Update ASHA is supporting H.R. 3419, the Reducing Barriers to Learning Act of 2007, introduced by Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa). Loebsack’s bill would establish an Office of Specialized Instructional Support Services in the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and provide grants to state educational agencies to reduce barriers to learning. No position or office within the DOE is responsible for coordinating federal government efforts involving school-based professionals such as SLPs, audiologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers. In his bill, Loebsack cites “70% of children receiving services from speech-language pathologists make progress in emergent literacy skills, and 75% make progress in word recognition, an important component of literacy skills; over two-thirds of classroom teachers report that students receiving these services show improved reading skills in the classroom.” IDEA, last re-authorized in 2004, is not scheduled for another review until 2010. The Higher Education Act, already passed by the Senate, is in progress in the House. Visit the “Take Action” Web site to contact members of Congress or visit the ASHA NCLB Web site for more information. NCLB Web sites U.S. Department of Education Commission on NCLB House Education& Labor Committee, Democrats House Education & Labor Committee, Republicans Library of Congress, Thomas Legislative Information Author Notes Neil Snyder, director of federal advocacy, can be reached at at [email protected] or 800-498-2071, ext. 4257. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 12Issue 13September 2007 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Sep 1, 2007 Metrics Downloaded 58 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2007 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

The impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated state science assessment on elementary teachers’ beliefs about teaching science and their classroom practice is relatively unknown. For many years, the teaching of science has been minimized in elementary schools in favor of more emphasis on reading and mathematics. This study examines the dynamics of bringing science to the forefront of assessment in elementary schools and the resulting teacher belief and instructional shifts that take place in response to NCLB. Results indicated that teachers’ beliefs about teaching science remained unchanged despite policy changes mandated in NCLB. Teacher beliefs related to their perceptions of what their administrators and peer groups’ think they should be doing influenced their practice the most. Most teachers reported positive feelings and attitudes about science and reported that their students had positive feelings and attitudes about science; however, teachers reported teaching science less as a result of NCLB. Implications for elementary science education reform and policy are discussed.

Under Pressure: Job Security, Resource Allocation, and Productivity in Schools Under NCLB

Unintended Consequences: No Child Left Behind and the Allocation of School Leaders

WHEN EDUCATORS open their Fibber McGee's closets of past reforms, a pile of silver bullets will spill out onto the floor. For at least the past 20 years, the sense of public confidence in public education has been fed by an arsenal of such quick, often creative, but largely unsubstantiated remedies for turning schools and kids around. And the pile became much larger this fall. The highest-caliber bullet of all--the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act--landed on top of the pile. But it was not the only presumed salvation of the public schools to lose some of its luster recently. Collecting data about these failed silver bullets can often tell us more than we've known before. The first National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report on reading and math scores that fairly reflects changes under NCLB showed essentially that, so far, this silver bullet is pretty much of a dud. Reading scores were flat, and math scores were up only a bit. Despite statements by the Bush Administration that sought to put a happy face on the findings, the NAEP data showed that progress had been better before NCLB became law than it has been since it was enacted. The data also indicate something that few pundits seem willing to acknowledge. Since the passage of NCLB, about four years ago, changes in the demographics of the student population have accelerated, and schools all over the country are feeling the impact of more English-language learners than ever before. It is to the schools' credit that NAEP reading scores--in the early grades, at least --did not go down. Moreover, the very slight improvement in math scores could be attributed partially to the fact that math test items in the early grades, and even to some extent on the eighth-grade tests, do not require advanced reading skills. (Another possible explanatory factor is that the efforts of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have given us some semblance of national math standards and that these standards have been in various stages of implementation for more than 15 years.) The NAEP data also underscore the accident-of-birth unfairness built into state accountability systems. The erratic performance of students on state measures of achievement, compared to their performance on NAEP, demonstrates that students in some states are being held accountable for much higher levels of performance than students in other states. And no state has made much progress, as revealed in the NAEP scores. Some 20 states claim to have made progress on their own eighth-grade reading assessments between 2003 and 2005, but only three showed any progress at even the basic level on NAEP. And, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, only eight of 25 states that did announce progress on their own fourth-grade reading tests had more than one-third as much progress at the basic level on NAEP. As might be expected, proponents and opponents of charter schools took the very same data and came up with different analyses. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found them to be making more progress than other schools; the American Federation of Teachers found them to be making less, even after accounting for student-level racial/economic variables. Another silver bullet to land atop the pile of spent ones is the grandiose array of promises made by Edison Schools, Inc. In the immortal tradition of Edward R. Murrow's series You Are There, I was there when Tennessee entrepreneur Chris Whittle announced that he would launch a network of at least 100 new schools that would rival public schools in terms of technology and student achievement. …

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderASHA Convention Coverage1 Jan 2005Schools Forum at Convention Draws 400 Marat Moore Marat Moore Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.ACC2.10012005.2 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Members from across the nation shared challenges and brainstormed strategies on more than 40 topics in roundtable discussions at the 2004 Schools Forum. ASHA’s top leaders also addressed the group, announcing the breaking news of reauthorization for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Kathleen Whitmire, ASHA’s director of school services, served as moderator of the forum, held Nov. 18 at the ASHA Convention in Philadelphia. Leadership Reports “Schools are a priority for ASHA,” said President Larry Higdon as he welcomed the crowd. Of the 100,000 ASHA-certified SLPs, 56% are employed in the schools. Higdon outlined the Association’s ongoing program work through the 2004 Focused Initiative on school issues, including advocacy and training related to IDEA and No Child Left Behind (NCLB), ongoing literacy activities, promotion of a workload approach to caseloads, and the 2005 Schools Conference set for July 8–10 in Indianapolis. Celia Hooper, vice president for professional practices in speech-language pathology, listed the outcomes related to schools programs and services, which include: an increased number of states and districts that utilize workload models access to information on IDEA an increased number of states and districts that offer salary supplements for the CCCs support from the State Education Action Team to five targeted states consultations on workload to 25 districts and four states support to 38 districts in 14 states that gained salary supplements In the area of reimbursement, ASHA’s working group on Medicaid supervision developed a technical report and position statement on ASHA-certified SLPs providing supervision to lesser qualified personnel for Medicaid-reimbursed services in the schools. In 2005, ASHA’s focused initiatives include: personnel issues, doctoral shortage, reimbursement, and evidence-based practice. Catherine (Kate) Gottfred, vice president for governmental and social services, updated participants on IDEA reauthorization, the new schools finance committee, training materials and activities related to the No Child Left Behind Act, and the 2005 public policy agenda. President-elect Dolores E. Battle noted the “exciting time we’re in” related to the confluence of IDEA, NCLB, literacy, and workload. She spoke of the importance of accurate assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, and noted the development of new intervention models, evidence-based practice, and the ongoing personnel challenges in the schools. For CLD students, “there are issues beyond bilingualism. We all have a culture,” she said, stressing that children “need a chance to show what they can learn.” Ellen Estomin, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on Caseload Size, gave participants more background on the workload analysis approach, noting that training has been offered in more than 40 states using ASHA’s practice documents. ASHA has contacts in 25 districts and four states related to implementation of the workload approach. Former president Nancy Creaghead updated the group on literacy resources and initiatives, including practice documents, the online “ Literacy Gateway,” advocacy with the U.S. Department of Education, and other program activities in the National Office and liaison work with external organizations. Roundtable Discussions Break-out roundtable discussions drew enthusiastic responses and prompted intense discussions of dozens of topics. Those topics included: apraxia, AAC, autism, auditory processing disorder, cleft palate, cochlear implants, collaboration, assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse students, fluency, evidence-based practice, literacy, IDEA, Medicaid, NCLB, recruitment of SLPs, rural challenges, salary supplements, severe disabilities, Internet treatment materials, voice disorders, urban challenges, and workload. The discussion on eligibility and dismissal issues drew such a crowd that tables had to be combined. When the discussion turned to funding, facilitator Tom Ehren pointed out that “the most important part of money is not our paycheck, but where the money comes from.” One participant noted, “In lots of schools, there are inconsistencies among SLPs about which students qualify and which don’t. A spectrum is OK, but too many discrepancies are a problem. It sends a mixed message.” Another issue raised in the group related to parents who did not want their children dismissed. Ehren said, “We talk about dismissal from the very beginning, and we celebrate dismissal.” In the roundtable on CLD students, clinicians spoke about the challenges of dealing with multiple languages and parents who juggle jobs and are often transient. One participant said, “Don’t forget about the older kids, the adolescents who are facing more academically complex challenges.” Another participant said that their staff gives parents of young children books in their native language. Other approaches in the group include after-school programs and homework clubs, and finding interpreters in the community to assist clinicians in the schools. President-elect Battle, who acted as facilitator, noted the importance of communication with middle school students. “How do you get that level of conversation with parents to help their kids in middle school?” she asked. “Often they will drop out or end up in the criminal justice system.” The group also addressed the issue of scoring tests, and the need to take the time to do comprehensive assessments. Author Notes managing editor of The ASHA Leader, can be reached at [email protected]. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 10Issue 1January 2005 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Jan 1, 2005 Metrics Downloaded 56 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2005 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

The Federal Government passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 to enable the federal government to finance public schools (Paige, 2004). This law was signed by President Johnson and has been revised every 5 years since then (Wisconsin Education Association Council, n.d.). ESEA started the provision of Title I funding, the federal money given to a school district to assist students who are falling behind academically (Public Schools of North Carolina, n.d.). President George W. Bush signed the ESEA, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) (P.L.107-110), on January 8, 2002 (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.). This provision designated that total federal funding of $116,250 million was to be dispensed between 2002 and 2007. The Act was strongly supported by both parties: the final vote was 87 to 10 in the Senate and 381 to 41 in the House (Paige, 2004). This article will address the necessity for teacher training caused by the educational institution’s accountability imposed by No Child Left Behind, and the stronger need to assist disabled learners affirmed by the law.