FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Murphy-Booker ESEA Accountability Amendment: An Important Step Toward Educational Opportunity for All
Today, Democrats for Education Reform’s (DFER) Policy Director, Charles Barone, released the following statement:
“This morning, Senators Chris Murphy and Cory Booker put forth an amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act that takes important steps toward ensuring that every child has a fair shot at a high-quality education. The amendment is far from perfect. It does, however, set-up an initial framework – one that can and should be improved upon as work on the bill proceeds – to resolve the highly-polarized debate on accountability between teachers’ unions and school administrators on one hand, and civil rights, advocacy, and business groups on the other.
“The Murphy-Booker amendment, co-sponsored by Senators Coons, Warren and Durbin, recognizes our national responsibility to make sure we’re preparing America’s kids to compete in tomorrow’s economy, but it does so without usurping state and local control of education. The amendment simply sets forth what we see as two non-negotiable principles that, in exchange for billions of dollars in federal aid:
1. States will assess school performance based on real and measurable results – not just for all students on average but for historically-disadvantaged groups of students including black students, Hispanic students, students from low-income families, students with disabilities and English Language Learners.
2. States or districts will intervene in schools where historically-disadvantaged groups of students consistently fail to meet state academic benchmarks.
“It’s on the second point that the underlying bill reauthorizing ESEA is most in need of improvement. Unlike the underlying bill, the Murphy amendment would not allow states and school districts to neglect schools that are chronically under-performing. It would not dictate hopelessness to parents whose children are trapped in those schools. It would not accept dropout factories that perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline.
“Because some will try and distort the debate for political reasons, it’s important to be absolutely clear on how this amendment changes current law: it does not reinstate the ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’ provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act nor does it have NCLB-like artificial deadlines or federally prescribed goals. It does not mandate one-size-fits-all interventions.
“In response to valid concerns about using tests scores – and only tests scores – to judge the success of schools, the amendment envisions state accountability systems based on multiple measures of a state’s choosing. While we agree with a multiple measures approach in principle, the amendment is an overcorrection as it allows the possibility that state systems mask low student academic performance with other indicators. This must be improved upon and corrected in conference to ensure that the ‘Every Child Achieves Act’ lives up to its name and underlying purpose.”