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End creative teaching, official says
Assistant secretary: no waivers of No Child Left Behind Act
By Victor Balta
Record Staff Writer
Published Friday, October 25, 2002
Susan Neuman said the new federal No Child Left Behind Act, if implemented
the right way, will put an end to creative and experimental teaching methods
in the nation's classrooms.
"It will stifle, and hopefully it will kill (them)," said Neuman, U.S.
assistant secretary of education. "Our children are not laboratory rats."
Neuman, who is principally responsible for implementing President Bush's No
Child Left Behind Act, was in Stockton on Thursday night to speak at
University of the Pacific's Faye Spanos Concert Hall. Earlier in the day,
she visited Clairmont Elementary School in Lodi and spoke to reporters at
Pacific.
Neuman mainly discussed the sweeping law, which is the first major federal
educational reform since President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Elementary and
Secondary Education Act.
The law aims to improve student performance by making schools accountable
and giving aid to schools that need it most. It also calls for states to
have fully credentialed teachers in every classroom by 2006 and directs
federal funding toward "research-based programs that have been proven to
help most children learn."
"I think the federal government in the past has done a little of this, a
little of that," said Neuman, who received her doctorate in reading
education from Pacific in 1977. "It seems like we were into a new trend
every other year. No Child Left Behind is a bold change in the way we do
business."
Neuman acknowledged that the federal mandate is a "complex law," but she
said state education departments already should have been doing much of what
it requires.
"They shouldn't be shocked," Neuman said, noting that her first day on the
job, she was welcomed by a stack of 18 letters from states and territories
asking for waivers on various federal education policies. "The previous
administration was waiving this and waiving that. This administration is
serious. We don't intend to waive any of the requirements."
Neuman explained that No Child Left Behind seeks to give parents
alternatives before taking action against a school. The law gives parents
the opportunity to move their children out of low-performing schools or to
have the schools pay for special tutoring or other additional help.
Sanctions include audits by the U.S. Department of Education, state
takeovers of schools and, ultimately, closing schools.
Neuman said the law is a new phenomenon in that teachers have never been
trained in terms of getting results.
"There doesn't seem to be a good grasp of accountability for our
profession," Neuman said, adding that good teachers can overcome other
historically negative circumstances, such as violent, run-down
neighborhoods.
"One of the key variables (in a student's educational environment) is good
instruction," Neuman said. "If you have good instruction, children can learn
regardless of what the neighborhood looks like."
* To reach reporter Victor Balta, phone 546-8272 or e-mail
vbalta@recordnet.com
This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.