Tell Congress ESEA reauthorization must provide more opportunity for students to learn. Take action! The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee focused on the critically important issue of assessment and accountability in its first education hearing of the 114th Congress, held Jan. 21. NEA is urging the Committee to focus on three core goals for reauthorization: Creating a new generation accountability system that includes an “opportunity dashboard” Giving students more time to learn by reducing the number of federally-mandated tests, Ensuring qualified educators and empowering them to lead February will be heavy with ESEA action. The HELP Committee will hold a second hearing next Tuesday on teachers and school leaders, with a third ESEA hearing planned for the first week in February. We expect the committee to mark up an ESEA bill before the end of February with floor debate and votes following in March. The House is expected to bring ESEA to its committee in February and be on the floor before the end of February. The same day the Senate was debating testing, Reps. Chris Gibson (D-NY)and Kyrsten Sinema (R-AZ) reintroduced the bipartisan Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act (H.R. 452) to give teachers more one-on-one time with students, especially those most in need of extra time and help. NEA strongly supports the bill, which would lower the number of federally-mandated tests in reading and math from 14 to 6. “Reducing the number of federally-mandated tests by more than half would free up time and resources, diminish ‘teaching to the test,’ and allow educators to focus on what is most important: instilling a love of learning in their students,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. Redefining “full-time” would hurt students, families, educators In conjunction with the HELP Committee’s Jan. 22 hearing, “Examining Job-Based Health Insurance and Defining Full-Time Work,” NEA urged senators to VOTE NO on the Forty Hours Is Full Time Act of 2015 (S. 30) because it would lead to a greater disincentive for employers to provide health-care coverage. By doing so, the bill would adversely affect employer-sponsored health insurance and harm families, children, and educators in need of health-care coverage. President Barack Obama used his Jan. 20 State of the Union address to lay out a forward-looking agenda that focuses on American families, students, and workers. NEA President Lily Eskelsen García applauded Obama’s “common sense” proposals for more opportunities and his emphasis on education. “We are encouraged that the president again chose to shine a spotlight on education,” she said. “We agree with him that education is an economic priority, and elevating the issue before Congress is an explicit acknowledgement that the road to the middle class runs directly through our nation’s schools regardless of the zip code in which students live.” Representatives Chris Gibson (D-NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (R-AZ) for reintroducing the NEA-supported Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act, and the 15 original co-sponsors of the bill: Reps. David Joyce (R-OH), Patrick Meehan (R-PA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Albio Sires (D-NJ), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Fred Upton (R-MI), Dina Titus (D-NV), David Valadao (R-CA), Richard Nolan (D-MN), John Katko (R-NY), Mark Takano (D-CA), Glenn Thompson (R-PA), Tom Reed (R-NY), and Mike Simpson (R-ID). Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for this observation at the HELP Committee’s hearing on testing and accountability: “There are two worlds. [One is] contractors, consultants, academics and experts and plenty of officials at the federal and state level. And the other world is of principals and teachers who are actually providing education to students. And what I’m hearing from the second world is that the footprint of the first world has become way too big in their lives.” Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Ryan Costello (R-PA) and Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) for introducing the NEA-supported SMART Act (H.R. 408/S. 197) to help identify and eliminate low-quality and redundant tests. Senator Patty Murray at the HELP Committee’s hearing on job-based health insurance for noting that changing the definition of “full-time employee” to 40 hours per week would cause hundreds of thousands of workers to lose access to coverage.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 01:33:11 +0000
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