It's Time for Real Solutions
By Camille Zombro, SDEA President
and Marc Capitelli, SDEA Vice President

NCLB turns the corner next year with the pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2007. The "testing curve" becomes a mountain - and our schools, even in the most affluent areas, will start to "fail" at an alarming rate. NCLB has not improved education:

• Are our students becoming better citizens under NCLB?
• Do you teach better under NCLB?
• Are our students getting a comprehensive education under NCLB?
• Do your students take tests better under NCLB? -They sure as heck better!

But NCLB will continue to dominate public education unless all of us in public education stand up and fight to unmask this failed strategy - and to win solutions that do work for our students.

With the change in Congress, we have an opportunity we didn't have when NCLB was passed in 2001. It's time to seize that opportunity to make public education work!

NCLB was never written to improve our schools. Our American public education system was designed to empower literate citizens to make intelligent, informed decisions to keep our democracy strong. It is now being used to provide citizens whose sole purpose is to take a test and fit into the low-wage labor pool. NCLB is destroying the basis on which our democracy stands: an enlightened, informed and participating populace. The truth about NCLB is that it is a law designed to fail and thus encourage the public to abandon government's responsibility to provide quality education for all. It
is a law designed to privatize education and fatten the pocketbooks of George Bush & Company.

We must tell the truth of what is happening to all of our children under NCLB. Our children deserve P. E. to help their bodies stay healthy. They deserve Social Studies so that we all have a common language to understand our fragile democracy and the world we share. They deserve science and music and arts and all the subjects that make a well-rounded citizen.

Teacher's unions cannot stand alone in speaking out. Administrators must stand up with us. Superintendents must stand up with us. School boards must stand up with us. And most importantly, parents and the communities we serve must stand up with us. We must not let this next conversation be framed as 'teacher's unions protecting their own.' Now we must collaborate with our allies who understand what NCLB is doing to our schools and to our students. Collaboration is not an evil word, in the proper context. Collaboration provides a methodology for formerly disparate groups to work together on a common value or goal.

Tell your stories. Talk about the crippling burden of testing and un-funded mandates. Make sure your legislators understand that our working conditions are the students' learning environment, and that we have a shared obligation to provide quality public schools for every child. And tell them about the REAL solutions our students deserve - solutions like smaller class sizes, adequate funding for books and classrooms, and real democracy in decision-making at the school level.

If not us, then who? And if not now, when? Today we must collaborate to protect our students from NCLB. Tomorrow we can collaborate to build an urban school district the truly educates its students.