Our stand on NCLB

With the school year well underway, I thought it would be timely to write about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill and address some of the reasons why Promise the Children continues to work toward it’s reform. I am constantly reminded how this issue really gets people going about “whose side are you on”? We are affirmatively on the side of the children who we feel are being “left behind”. I would like to use this space to further define our position. Here I go…

First, I will start with our mission statement: to empower Unitarian Universalist youth and adults to advocate for a better quality of life for our nation’s children and youth, focusing especially those in low-income families. Yes, we are a UU organization, but our work is for the benefit of all of our nation’s children, not only UU children. Promise works with UU congregations, advocacy groups and other concerned citizens to advocate for quality pre-school and public education, living wages, affordable childcare and housing, and the prevention of hunger and homelessness. Our goal is to help Unitarian Universalists articulate a social justice vision and use political strategies to achieve greater justice in their communities and nation.

A major issue that Promise has embraced in the past year is the NCLB Act. One doesn’t have to be either for or against this legislation. On the contrary, we are in favor of the theory behind the Act. In theory, every child deserves an equal education. And while we applaud the theory, there is more and more substantiated proof that this law is failing those children who need it most. Our mission with regard to NCLB is to address the area of this bill that desperately needs reform. Our goal is for quality and equity in public education for all children.

One could make the argument that NCLB has exposed the inequities in education particularly for urban children, English language learners and those with special needs. This point is well taken and as an educator, I would agree with the need to level the playing field for all children regardless geography, language barriers, or handicaps. This is, after all, public education...for all children. However, while NCLB has managed to expose the inequities, the mandates for dealing with the inequities have proved disastrous for these populations.

Time and again we have heard of children getting lost in the mandated testing cycle. Urban children are particularly at risk for failure (and ultimately dropout) as classes are overcrowded and under served to begin with. Add to that the limited resources needed to assist these challenged students in passing the mandated assessment exams and you are left with a disturbingly high failure statistic. This statistic is read as underperforming, but it actually is the children being undereducated. That is why we support reforming test mandates and to examine and accept other forms of evaluation.

This also holds true for the English language learner who does not speak the English language. How can a child be tested for assessment in a language that he or she is not proficient in? Again, this situation often presents itself in urban settings where resources are not available to adequately tutor these students to be assessed, yet they are held to the same standard as their English speaking peers. They too are being undereducated.

Finally, there is the child with learning difficulties. These problems often go undiagnosed particularly in areas where early intervention is not a priority or an option. The earlier that we get to these children the better but it often does not happen prior to mandated testing. Then we are presented with a child who cannot perform and needs diagnostic testing to determine the level of disability. Unfortunately, this child has now entered the mandated assessment cycle of continuous failure.

All of these scenarios depict children from compromised populations but they exist in every public school in America. And every public school in America must adhere to the mandates dictated by NCLB or risk losing accreditation or worse, closure. Here in Boston, the oldest high school in America, The English High School, is at risk for closure.  Low test scores and a high dropout rate are major contributors to this dilemma. It is reasonable to link these failures to the demands of NCLB. What will this do to this community? Where will these children go to be educated?

These are some of the reasons that Promise the Children so strongly supports and works toward a reexamination and reform of the NCLB Act. We also support reform for the part of teachers who are expected to give high numbers on assessments to prove how well they are educating their students. More often than not, subjects deemed of lesser importance such as the arts and physical education are put to the wayside for drill tactics used to pass the test. While we applaud these educators for their efforts to accommodate a failed system, we recognize that the system has failed and we work to have it reformed.

I know that our readers are from a myriad of professions and I also know that day by day, many of us are realizing the inequities that are evident in this Act. NCLB should be reformed. It needs to be fully funded which will include mandated money for teacher training, accessible tutoring for children with learning difficulties, and revisions in testing mandates and forms of assessments. We need to recognize that a teacher’s goal is to educate our children, not to simply help them pass a test. That is the belief of this UU organization...working for all of our nation’s children.

Abstinence Only…What Now?

I guess we could say that we let down our guard.

April 2007 brought us the long awaited Mathematica study which put a federal stamp on what we already knew: Abstinence only education does not work to change young people’s behavior. In the wake of that study, Democrats promised to pull the plug on abstinence only funding. Hooray! Finally, we thought, they get it! Not so fast. Although they did pull the funding for abstinence only under Title V, they increased the funding for Community Based Abstinence Education, (CBAE) which falls under a bill known as Labor-H.

How did this happen? Both of these programs share the same curriculum guidelines. If Title V is a waste of money, so is CBAE. Nonetheless, CBAE will get $141 million, up from $109 million in 2007.

Regarding the curriculum, federally funded abstinence programs must teach the “the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity"-regardless of whether those gains are real. Programs must also teach that “that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects”. CBAE grantees do not have the option of leaving out a core tenet if they don’t find enough evidence to support it. All eight of the core tenets must be taught and cannot be combined with any other curriculum.

So what now? The bottom line is that CBAE has been funded and those funds are difficult for states to resist. Nonetheless, ten states have resisted and turned away funding for programs that are proven to be harmful to the physical well being of our youth. We need more states to follow suit and take a stand against a policy that is putting our youth in harm’s way.

What can you do to speak out against abstinence only education? First and foremost, if you are from one of the ten states that have rejected abstinence only funding (CA, CT, OH, ME, MA, MT, NJ, RI, WA, WI), contact your Governor and thank him or her for taking a stand against this form of educational blackmail. If your state does accept this funding, contact your Governor directly and tell him or her to reject these funds based on the evidence that these programs are ineffective and harmful. Your voice makes a difference. Although Congress has disappointed us by supporting and funding this program, we can still make a difference by encouraging each individual state to reject it.

SCHIP - At What Cost?

Children’s advocates were stunned last week when President Bush downplayed the importance of health insurance for children: “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”—President George W. Bush (Cleveland, 7/10/07).

Well, yes, you could. But would that be the best solution? In fact, in 2007, researchers from BYU and Arizona State found that kids who drop out of SCHIP, (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) end up costing states more money by more frequent use of costly emergency rooms (ER). The conclusion of the study is that an attempt to limit funding for SCHIP could create a false savings because other government organizations, at the taxpayer’s expense, pay for the children with no health insurance.

This begs the question: Who is the current administration protecting? Evidently it is not the 9 million uninsured children in the United States. More likely, it is the privatized health insurance industry. What is the cost to a parent waiting in an ER for ten hours with a three year old who has a 104+ temperature?  Should we burden our ER’s with the overly costly care of colds, flu and mild allergies, rather than reserving them for those suffering acute trauma who need this special care?

There is a solution. The solution is SCHIP. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a national program designed for families who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, yet cannot afford to buy private insurance. The program was created to address the growing problem of children in the United States without health insurance. SCHIP covered 6.9 million children at some point during Federal fiscal year 2006 and every state has an approved state plan.

The current issue at hand is that SCHIP needs to be reauthorized by September 30, 2007.  While Senate Republicans and Democrats scramble to support our children by increasing the funding by $35 billion over five years, President Bush has vowed to veto the Senate compromise and a more costly expansion being contemplated in the House. “I support the initial intent of the program,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. “My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”

But our poorest children can’t afford private insurance. The fact remains that they are not covered, and the solution is....to go to the emergency room? As child advocates we need to use our voices for our youngest citizens. Tell Congress that anything less than 100% health coverage for all children is unacceptable. Send the message that you care about children and youth. Make an impact today! Tell your Senators or Representative how you feel about the reauthorization of SCHIP.