TOWN HALL JOURNAL - SPRING 2007
Secretary of Education: “No Child Will Be Left Behind”
On December 11, 2006, US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings addressed a Town Hall audience that included many local and national education advocates and experts. Attendees included Town Hall Member and former Secretary of Education Shirley M. Hufstedler, LAUSD Superintendent Admiral David L. Brewer, former LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer, LAUSD Board of Education President Marlene Cantor, education philanthropist Eli Broad, University of California Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang, Green Dot Public Schools Founder and CEO Steve Barr, California Charter Schools Association CEO and President Caprice Young, Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership organization Founder and Town Hall Member Hugh O’Brien, Advancement Project Los Angeles Co-Director Connie Rice, and Ronni Ephraim, LAUSD’s Chief Instructional Officer for elementary programs.
Spellings spoke on the No Child Left Behind law, which Congress is scheduled to consider reauthorizing this year. “It says that we ought to have high standards, that states ought to set those high standards,” she explained. “We ought to test every child in reading and math every year…we simply must hold ourselves accountable for the educational attainment for every single student.”
Signed into law by President Bush on January 8, 2002, No Child Left Behind established educational standards for schools and states, setting as its goal the elimination of achievement gaps between minority and white children, and between poor and middle-class students, by the year 2014.
The initiative has been controversial, however, as school and state officials have criticized its emphasis on standardized test scores and a lack of additional funding to help meet its requirements, pushing some states to refuse to comply with the law. In addition, because states set their own testing standards, some have adhered to No Child Left Behind by simply lowering those standards.
Spellings admitted that schools -- including those in Los Angeles -- still have a long way to go to meet the goals set by the law. “About half of the schools in Los Angeles have not met the targets of No Child Left Behind,” Spellings acknowledged. “A third of your high school students don’t graduate on time…”
Nevertheless, Spellings maintained the law has been largely successful. “Are schools better off today than they were five years ago? Absolutely they are. We have seen more progress in the last five years on our national education report card than in the entire history of our national education,” she said. “In minority achievement, test scores for African-American and Hispanic students are at all-time highs and the achievement gap is beginning to finally close.”
