No Child Left Behind

Updated: 1/9/2008

State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster spoke at a community forum about No Child Left Behind on Tuesday at DeLong Middle School. The forum drew about 100 people, many of them involved in education.
Staff photo by Andi Stempniak

No Child called burden
Kind: Congress seeking other gauges
By Brad Bryan
Leader-Telegram staff
Most Eau Claire community members aren't aware of the burden that No Child Left Behind has placed on teachers and students in the district's schools, the president of the local teacher's union said Tuesday.

Jo Burke, of the Eau Claire Association of Educators, said the great learning environment - shown by smiling faces and upbeat attitudes - in Eau Claire schools is deceptive.

"It's kind of like the Chippewa River, mostly calm on the surface and you don't get to see the power and activity that's below," Burke said at a community forum addressing potential changes to No Child Left Behind.

The federal initiative is up for reauthorization this year. A Bush Admin- istration initiative, No Child Left Behind was designed to hold public schools accountable, measuring student achievement through reading and math testing.

Below the surface, Burke said, is the turmoil created by unfunded mandates established by No Child Left Behind.

Burke joined U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, State Superintendant Elizabeth Burmaster, UW-Eau Claire Associate Dean of Teacher Education Dwight Watson and DeLong parent Amy Kalmon at the 75-minute forum in DeLong Middle School.

The event drew about 100 people, including many from the education field.

"When No Child Left Behind came along, the testing provision alone demanded so much attention from all of our schools," Burmaster said. She added that Wisconsin now tests more than half of its students - 445,000 every year - at a cost of $10.1 million, three times the budget for testing before No Child Left Behind.

Kind said full funding of No Child Left behind has consistently fallen short since it was introduced in 2002. That means costs are passed on to local school districts and then to taxpayers.

In addition to full funding for No Child Left Behind, Kind said Congress is working on other reforms. Those include using means other than test scores alone to gauge schools' success, promoting innovation at school, increasing staff support, allowing more flexibility in evaluating individual schools, improving high schools and passing Kind's FIT (Fitness Integrated with Teaching) Kids Act that seeks to include physical education in No Child Left Behind.