HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

Washington, Sep 10, 2007 - House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today sent a letter to House Education & Labor Committee leaders commenting on a draft bill to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that has been circulated for public comment by the Committee’s staff. In the letter, Boehner expresses concern that the draft would “back away” from key education reform principles if enacted as written, and calls for changes that would:

· Expand state and local control and flexibility;

· Increase parental choice;

· Streamline duplicative federal programs;

· Encourage states to implement “performance pay” reforms that reward good teachers for raising student achievement;

· Eliminate provisions imposing new testing mandates on top of existing ones;

· Prohibit national tests, national standards, and creation of a national education database; and

· Remove loopholes that undermine accountability.

Many of the reforms and changes Boehner calls for in the letter have been introduced in legislative form already by Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the Committee’s senior Republican member.

Boehner’s letter praises provisions included in the draft that allow students in chronically underachieving public schools to have earlier access to private tutoring, as well as provisions giving states additional flexibility by allowing them to use a “growth model” in their accountability systems.

“NCLB reauthorization is an opportunity to renew our commitment to the reform principles that brought Democrats and Republicans together in 2001 – not to retreat from them, as many Washington education lobbyists advocate – and to write a better law than the one signed by President Bush in January 2002,” Boehner says in the letter.

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The text of Boehner’s letter follows.

September 10, 2007

The Honorable George Miller

The Honorable Howard P. “Buck” McKeon

House Committee on Education & Labor

2181 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear George and Buck,

Thank you for the opportunity to share my views regarding reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). I appreciate the bipartisan manner in which the Education and Labor Committee has approached this issue to date, and the open process by which you and your staff have attempted to craft a reauthorization bill. I also appreciate the enormity of the challenge the Committee faces in attempting to reauthorize, and improve upon, this law.

Six years ago, during the first session of the 107th Congress, we worked together to write the original NCLB legislation. The final product – supported by an overwhelming majority of the Congress – represented a compromise. Compromises are never perfect, and NCLB is certainly not perfect. But it has been an improvement over the laws that preceded it, because it was based on principles of reform and our shared belief that it would be unconscionable for Washington to continue spending billions of taxpayer dollars on education programs without demanding that the education bureaucracy deliver results for our children.

The original NCLB called for annual testing in the basics of reading, math, and science; expanded education choices for parents with children stuck in chronically underachieving schools; greater local control and flexibility for states and school districts in the use of federal education funds; an unprecedented emphasis on improving teacher quality; and a streamlining of federal K-12 education programs, which by 2001 had proliferated into a duplicative mess after decades of unchecked growth (NCLB actually reduced the number of federal elementary and secondary education programs by 10, from 55 to 45). I am concerned that the draft reauthorization proposal circulated by the Committee staff appears to back away from these principles in some critical areas.

In my view, NCLB reauthorization is an opportunity to renew our commitment to the reform principles that brought Democrats and Republicans together in 2001 -- not to retreat from them, as many Washington education lobbyists advocate – and to write a better law than the one signed by President Bush in January 2002. We should look at what has worked over the past six years, and use those lessons to write a law that more effectively tracks the reform principles that guided the original NCLB process. I have outlined seven key areas I believe must be addressed in NCLB reauthorization if Congress is to send the President a bill that improves upon current law.

1. FLEXIBILITY AND LOCAL CONTROL. Republicans have long believed states and local school districts should be able to gain additional flexibility in the use of federal education funds if they are willing to commit to increased student achievement. This was a key attribute of the original NCLB bill I authored and introduced in March 2001; it is also a key attribute of legislation recently introduced by Rep. McKeon (H.R. 2577, the State and Local Flexibility Improvement Act). I am a co-sponsor of this proposal, which would allow states and local school districts to transfer up to 100 percent of their funds among the various federal education funding streams and provide states with additional flexibility in the design of their accountability systems. It is simply unacceptable for us to continue to deny states and school districts this type of freedom and flexibility. By not doing so, we will needlessly create additional incentives for states and schools to resist NCLB as a whole. For this reason, any NCLB bill should include, at a minimum, the amount of additional flexibility provided in the McKeon bill. Some of our colleagues, including Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), have offered proposals that also address the need for greater local control.

2. SCHOOL CHOICE. A NCLB reauthorization bill must not restrict current education choices for parents in any way; it should expand such options.

One of the most important reforms brought to federal education policy by the 2002 No Child Left Behind law was that it guaranteed parents with children in underachieving public schools the right to use their children’s share of federal education funds to transfer their children to better schools, and/or to obtain supplemental tutoring for their children from private tutoring providers, including faith-based educational entities.

As you know, current law guarantees students in federally-subsidized schools the option of transferring to another public school of choice if their current schools do not make Adequate Yearly Progress for two consecutive years. It also guarantees students access to private tutoring, including tutoring by faith-based education providers, if their current schools do not make AYP for three consecutive years. I applaud you and your staff for proposing in your draft reauthorization proposal language that would allow schools to make tutoring options available one year earlier than under current law.

I am, however, alarmed by language elsewhere in the draft that would divide underachieving schools into two categories -- “High Priority” and “Priority” -- denying students in “Priority” schools from receiving the full range of options available to them and their parents under current law. I also have significant reservations about the draft’s apparent attempt to further direct students away from tutoring options by giving schools the ability to provide “extended learning time.” Such a concept – which would allow an underachieving school to essentially extend the school day and keep students at that school for a longer period of time, rather than encouraging them to get help from outside tutoring services – would further deny students the additional help they need and deserve. Additionally, I am concerned about the way the draft distributes Title I dollars for supplemental education services. Under current law, a school district must set-aside 20 percent of its federal Title I dollars to fund outside tutoring for eligible students. Under the Committee’s draft, individual schools must set aside the 20 percent allotment. On the surface, this may seem like only a subtle change, but it could cheat tens of thousands of students out of their right to free tutoring services if the total amount of set-aside funds is limited in this way.

Any language in the NCLB bill that ultimately weakens a student’s ability to receive better educational options under the law violates the bipartisan spirit we rallied around in 2001 when we made those options available to them in the first place. In place of the existing draft language, I would encourage the Committee to instead use legislation authored by Rep. McKeon (The Improving Supplemental Education by Ensuring Parental Awareness Act, H.R. 2203) as a model for strengthening free tutoring options currently available to students.

The NCLB law signed by President Bush unfortunately stopped short of guaranteeing parents with children in such schools the full range of choices they need. This remains one of NCLB’s most glaring flaws. However, enactment of NCLB in 2002 unquestionably paved the way for legislation in 2003 creating the D.C. school choice program. In the District of Columbia, low-income parents used data from NCLB as leverage to get the right to transfer their children out of chronically underachieving schools and into successful private and religious schools – a right they’d been seeking for years. And as a Georgetown University study earlier this year demonstrated, the program has been a blessing to thousands of low-income families in Washington, D.C. Parents in communities beyond the Beltway deserve the same education choices.

School choice initiatives such as those in the District benefit all students. They give new options to parents seeking to transfer their children to private schools, and they help students who remain in public schools by encouraging improvements and reform. We need to allow parents in similar situations in communities across America to have the same opportunities, while providing increased local control for states that are willing to commit to increasing student achievement.

Rep. McKeon has offered private school choice legislation (H.R. 1486) that would give parents with children in chronically underachieving schools the option of choosing a better school, including a private school, for their children. I am a co-sponsor and strong supporter of this legislation, which would begin the process of ensuring disadvantaged children and parents in cities across America have the same education choices the D.C. school choice program has brought to residents of Washington, D.C. I strongly urge the inclusion of this or similar legislative language in the Committee’s NCLB reauthorization bill.

3. NO NEW TESTING. I am opposed to adding any new testing mandates to NCLB that would require states to do more testing than federal law currently requires. When NCLB was originally written, we resisted calls for federal testing requirements in additional subjects and at additional grade levels, and I have seen nothing since that time to convince me that we made the wrong decision. Instead of imposing additional testing requirements on states, I believe the emphasis needs to be placed on ensuring the current system by which states measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the tests they are already required to implement is fair and effective in ensuring accountability for student achievement.

4. NO LOOPHOLES IN ACCOUNTABILITY. I commend you and your staff for including language in your draft legislation that would allow states to incorporate a growth model into their accountability systems. However, I am concerned by language elsewhere in the draft that I believe simply lets the education establishment off the hook when it comes to its responsibility to ensure taxpayer-funded education aid is being used effectively. I urge you to reject any proposal that would amount to a loophole for chronically underachieving schools to evade identification as a school in need of improvement or avoid restructuring. I also believe NCLB reauthorization should ensure all student subgroups, including English Language Learners, are meeting achievement goals as determined by state assessments in reading, math and science. Portfolios and other subjective measures will only make it easier for underachieving schools to mask the poor achievement levels of certain subgroups. Additionally, English Language Learners should not be held back from academic success by lowering expectations for the time by which these students should be able to read and understand the English language.

5. NO NATIONAL TEST OR NATIONAL DATABASE. As I did during the drafting of the original NCLB law, I oppose the inclusion of language establishing any type of national test, national standards, or national database in any NCLB reauthorization bill. Some are calling for the creation of a national education database of individual student information that would include data on assessments, school attendance, college enrollment, and other records kept by a school. Such language would be enormously problematic for me and many members of the House Republican Conference if it were to appear in a No Child Left Behind reauthorization bill. I also know that there have been calls made for national standards and national assessments. These also would be highly problematic and would represent an improper meddling of the federal government into state and local curriculum decisions.

6. TEACHER QUALITY. Good teachers deserve to be rewarded for their achievements. NCLB reauthorization should include reforms that encourage states to establish pay-for-performance systems that compensate teachers based on their performance in the classroom and how effective they are in helping students learn and succeed. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has introduced legislation (H.R. 1761, the Teacher Incentive Fund Act) that would serve as an excellent model for such reforms. I and Rep. McKeon are co-sponsors of this legislation. I would urge you to ensure any teacher merit pay proposal included in NCLB reauthorization is real reform, rather than reform in name only. Any performance-based system should be primarily based on student achievement, not other activities that may or may not make a difference in student performance.

7. STREAMLINING FEDERAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS. The original NCLB law signed by President Bush in January 2002 reduced the overall number of federal elementary and secondary education programs by 10, from 55 to 45. This was a significant event, in that the number of such programs had grown steadily since Congress initially passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the mid-1960s. However, the initial NCLB blueprint put forth by President Bush called for just 32 programs. I continue to believe further consolidation is possible, and desirable. By consolidating programs, we reduce confusion and red tape for states and local schools, enabling them to use their federal education resources with greater flexibility to address their unique challenges. Conversely, by establishing duplicative new federal programs on top of existing ones, we add confusion and red tape for states and local schools, and increase the danger that taxpayer funds will be poorly utilized. I urge you and the members of your Committee on both sides of the aisle to resist the temptation to create new programs that take money away from core education initiatives and ultimately hamper states and schools in their efforts to increase student achievement. The draft legislation circulated by the Committee creates at least three new programs within Title I -- and, if history is any guide, many Members will be lining up to seek the inclusion of many more new programs as the bill moves through the committee process. I urge you to resist this temptation and take a tough stand against the proliferation of duplicative new programs as we did successfully during the first NCLB process in 2001. NCLB reauthorization should be a vehicle for further streamlining and consolidation of federal education programs, not a vehicle for expansion of federal red tape and bureaucracy.

I appreciate your willingness to consider my views and those of our colleagues. While the challenges facing NCLB reauthorization are undeniable, I know you agree the children, teachers, parents, and principals of our country are worth the effort. I look forward to an open and ongoing dialogue with you as Congress works to address these important issues for our nation’s future.

Sincerely,

John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican Leader