Report Faults Bush Initiative on Education
Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform initiative that had usurped state and local control of public schools. The report, based on hearings in six cities, praised the law's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students. ... "Under N.C.L.B., the federal government's role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public education," the National Conference of State Legislatures said in the report, which was written by a panel of 16 state legislators and 6 legislative staff members. Several education experts said the panel had accurately captured the views of thousands of state lawmakers, and local educators. If that is so, the report suggests that the Bush administration could face continuing friction with states and school districts as the Department of Education seeks to carry out the law in coming months.
New York Times, Feb. 24, 2005

A School Exam's Conscientious Objector
EDINBURG, TEX. -- Macario Guajardo was one child left behind Wednesday when his classmates took the all-important Texas statewide reading test for promotion to the sixth grade. Actually, 11-year-old Macario, an unlikely crusader at 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt, left himself behind. He stayed out of school in protest against what he called "the big deal" of the testing program, which he said "keeps kids from expressing their imagination." ... Amid sharp critiques of the Texas-inspired federal education law called No Child Left Behind and its mandatory annual testing to measure school success or failure, a handful of students like Macario have taken the risky step of boycotting their tests. Some students say that the state tests, some of which predate the federal program, focus the learning process on test preparation. "The protests are very significant; I just think they're nearing the breaking point," said Angela Valenzuela, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas and the editor of a collection of critical essays, "Leaving Children Behind," published recently by the State University of New York Press.
New York Times, Feb. 24, 2005

Two-Way Language Immersion Grows in Popularity
Promising results from research on two-way language-immersion programs have pumped up the popularity of such programs in recent years. But some experts say that the three large-scale studies that compare two-way immersion with other kinds of instructional methods for English-language learners aren’t conclusive in showing that the programs are better than other options. ... “I like two-way—I would recommend it for my grandson,” Stephen D. Krashen, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Southern California and a language expert, said in an e-mail message this month. Still, he cautioned: “The research has not shown it is the best option for English-language development. We don’t have the data yet. So some claims made by advocates are exaggerated.”
Education Week, Feb. 16, 2005

Bilingual Educators Ratchet Up Criticism of NCLB Law
Speaker after speaker at the National Association for Bilingual Education’s annual conference last month urged bilingual teachers to oppose the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirements for English-language learners. That tone was reinforced by the keynote address delivered to the 7,000 educators meeting here by Alfie Kohn, a prominent education author who is a critic of standardized testing, the accountability movement, and the federal education law. Mr. Kohn listed groups of students who, in his view, are put at a disadvantage by the requirements of the law, including students of color, English-language learners, and “students who aren’t affluent.” Then he said: “We are facing nothing short of an educational ethnic cleansing in America.”
Education Week, Feb. 2, 2005

Interview with James Crawford
Q:: What are your main objectives during your tenure as NABE’s Executive Director?
A: I accepted this job because I believe NABE is an organization with enormous potential to offer leadership. First, as an advocate for educational excellence and equity for English language learners, a group of students whose needs are often misunderstood and, as a result, neglected in American schools. Second, as a professional organization that can provide far greater assistance to bilingual and ESL educators over the coming years. ... I believe NABE must return to its activist roots in advocating for policies that truly serve English language learners. While continuing to pursue legislative work on Capitol Hill, we will be placing a higher priority on grassroots approaches that will involve our stakeholders more directly. By that, I mean engaging our members in developing strategies — for example, in responding to the No Child Left Behind Act — and mobilizing the parents of English language learners in the policy struggles to come. I also mean expanding our conception of advocacy to include campaigns to educate the public
about the benefits of bilingual education.
Language Magazine, Jan. 2005

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