No Child Held Back

In the aftermath of No Child Left Behind, and nearly every state filing for a waiver, the next question on everyone’s mind is, what comes after NO Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

Recall the reason for the controversial law in the first place was the wide and desperate disparities in educational achievement for poor and minority students, as compared to their more affluent counterparts.

So what comes next? The House Education and Workforce committee has drafted a bill to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as NCLB). Highlights of the bill include:

1)  guarantees that school districts with the greatest number of low-performing schools receive priority for funds if  there is not enough money to accommodate all schools in the district

2)  all parents and students have a school choice option, not just students attending the worst 5% of schools.

The word around the web is that the new bill is better, but there is still room for improvement.  The Forum on Educational Accountability released a statement about the bill. A major concern of the FEA is the bill’s “over-reliance on testing” as an evaluation tool for all teacher.  The bill proposes “what could become a unfunded mandate for states to create extensive evaluation systems, and requires significant use of students standardized test scores in that system.”

Testing should be used a tool, not a means to an end, and not as the sole evaluation tool for teachers.  Students need help to achieve results, and teachers need help and tools to help students achieve results. No Child Held Back (NCHB) helps students, teachers, and districts achieve. How can we demand perfection from our teachers if we do not give them the tools they need to succeed? NCHB starts with teachers, and programs to increase teacher effectiveness, including methods for adjusting course materials to student’s optimal learning modalities.

Visit www.nochildheldback.org for more information, and you can download our white paper to find out more about how No Child Held Back is helping school’s achieve on their terms.

With all the talk about education reform, parents and teachers have a lot of material to analyze and debate. From legislative requirements to policy proposals to political referenda, this issue – the way we, as a society, enable children to reach their academic potential – will determine our national success.

This topic demands a shift in thinking, an embrace of student-centered learning that rewards outstanding teachers and connects schools with the communities they serve. And, while these points may seem obvious and even obligatory, the first step towards achieving that goal starts with identifying education solutions that actually work.

This spirit of innovation resonates in a powerful white paper from No Child Held Back, where readers can enjoy a wealth of detailed information – data and recommendations for the betterment of our country, our children, teachers, administrators and everyone else who has a stake in a thriving school system.

By marrying smart technology with specific achievements, and through a diversity of courses, No Child Held Back offers a clear alternative to the status quo. Let us move forward to this new environment of reform and success.

When policymakers discuss education reform the conversation often emphasizes the attempt to reduce failure rates. While this goal is admirable in theory – after all, the public has an interest in reducing poor academic performance – it overlooks a far more impactful opportunity: the ability to enable children to reach their full intellectual potential.

This subtle shift in language, from No Child Left Behind to No Child Held Back, represents a far more powerful result in practice. Meaning: when we make excellence a top priority – for students and teachers alike – we transform the way schools operate, along with the way a community partners with area teachers and administrators.

These points do not mean challenges will not arise, or that there is one guaranteed solution for the obstacles that confront us. But we clearly have a chance – a moment we must seize – to make education reform our legacy. This quest is a noble endeavor, one we can all join.

One of the benefits of entering a political season, the six- or twelve-months before an election where candidates engage in a series of debates, town hall meetings and conventions, is the opportunity to address a matter of vital importance: education reform. Regardless of one’s political beliefs, we can agree that enabling students to reach their full academic potential is a collective benefit worth pursuing. To that end, it would be worthwhile to have the candidates – to have all state and federal officials – engage in a substantive conversation about the advantages of true education reform.

No Child Held Back welcomes the chance to further that discussion, since we want every student to reach his or her potential. The rewards for the country are also great: a major shift in the way students and teachers approach specific subjects, enhanced by the introduction of other stakeholders – fellow citizens, communities, parents and mentors – who want these initiatives to succeed.

With this summons to help each other, we can make education reform a topic worthy of prolonged attention and innovation.

As the son of a former public schoolteacher, I can personally attest to the challenges, both economic and institutional, that confront educators who want to help students reach their fullest potential. Too often this goal becomes the victim of a broader campaign designed, simply and exclusively, to reduce failure rates on certain high profile exams. The problem with this approach is that it overlooks the chance for children to far exceed these modest goals.

Make no mistake, progress of any sort is good and valuable; but we need powerful education reform, the kind suited for a highly complex – and global – economy where every individual will play a role, both as workers and citizens, in the advancement of knowledge.

I write these words as someone who, as a great admirer of schoolteachers in general and my mother’s contributions as an educator in particular, wants students to flourish. The team responsible for No Child Held Back shares this sentiment, which explains this renaissance concerning innovation on behalf of teachers, students and administrators.

As my mother likes to say, “Behind every successful student is a great teacher.” That expression has added importance in today’s marketplace of ideas. That sentiment is now at the forefront of education reform and policy development.