Back to school, and back to work on education reform By Senator Russ Feingold As children around Wisconsin have headed back to school, Congress has gone back in session, with education reform as one of its most important assignments. If Senators have done their homework, they will join me in working to reform the No Child Left Behind law to promote state and local control of education, instead of supporting more federal mandates from Washington, D.C. Since NCLB’s passage in 2001, Wisconsinites have raised many concerns with me about the way NCLB focuses so heavily on testing, and how inflexible the law is when it comes to the needs of local school districts. I have heard time and again from teachers and administrators who are frustrated by the Department of Education’s implementation of the law. Every state and every school district is different, and while they all must be held accountable for academic outcomes and work to close the achievement gap, federal education law should not take a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach. My legislation, the Improving Student Testing Act, includes federal funding to help states and local districts create higher quality, authentic assessments of student performance and use those assessments in their accountability systems. Meanwhile, federal testing mandates will be reformed to allow annual large-scale assessments once in grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12, instead of in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as currently required. My bill also will help ensure that students at all academic levels will receive the attention they need to make academic progress by providing flexibility to states and local districts to design their accountability systems to better take into account the academic progress of each individual student. Reforms can only be successful if the federal government does a better job of communicating with state and local education leaders on the impact of NCLB. That is why I will also be introducing the bipartisan-supported Teachers at the Table Act to create a Volunteer Teacher Advisory Committee comprised of past or present state and national Teachers of the Year, selected through a competitive process. These teachers will annually advise Congress and the Department of Education on the impact of NCLB on students, their families, and the classroom-learning environment. NCLB was based on a flawed premise – that the way to hold schools accountable and close the achievement gap was to pile on more tests and use those tests to evaluate schools. Now, five years into the law’s implementation, we have evidence showing the need to reduce its burden on schools, and increase real support for students and teachers in our classrooms. It’s time to fix No Child Left Behind, and to get back to learning – not just testing – in our public schools.