School Reform: A Position Paper by Anaheim Elementary Education Association

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President Obama's recent Race to the Top (RTTT) legislation is an attempt to close the achievement gap that continues to persist no matter what educators do. Although President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) plan appealed to many in theory, it has since proven to be unsuccessful in closing the gap. Without question, NCLB focused our attention and additional resources on schools serving our most needy children across the country. It also, unfortunately, placed an impossibly unrealistic goal on our nation’s superintendents, principals, and teachers to make every child in America grade-level proficient by the year 2014, despite the fact that by very definition alone, half of our students are below average. In an effort to achieve this goal to leave no child behind, educators everywhere, especially in our poorest areas, were forced to focus on a very narrow curriculum with the sole intent of showing, through the use of high-stakes tests, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the 2014 deadline.

Having made dismal progress toward the 100% proficiency goal during the Bush Administration, Obama is now replacing NCLB with RTTT and reinforcing the goal of eliminating the achievement gap. He is willing to go even further than Bush did with placing the responsibility and the accountability for achievement on the backs of teachers and schools. Evaluations tied to student achievement and merit pay are supposed to entice teachers to do their jobs. This assumes, of course, that teachers are deliberately not doing so now, so as to pressure districts to increase their pay. Restructuring schools through turnarounds, transformations, charters, and even complete closures, threaten schools and districts with the illogical and incorrect reasoning that schools can and will do their jobs if they are ultimately threatened with closure.

While the fields of science and education continue to learn more about what we can do as educators to be more effective in what we do in our classrooms and how we do it, no one denies that schools by themselves cannot possibly fix all the social ills that contribute to our educational achievement gap, no matter how hard we try. Of course, we must try, but NCLB has already proven that we cannot simply legislate the achievement gap away.

Despite this fact, we must never give up on providing a well-rounded education for all students that will enable them to become productive citizens of our democracy. As well-meaning as President Bush's NCLB was and President Obama’s RTTT is, legislating one definition of proficiency for all, one curriculum and education for all, is not the answer to closing our achievement gap. Ultimately, it fails to acknowledge the individuality of each of our children.

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