BoardBuzz

« Sen. Kennedy addresses school board members | Main | Testing, testing: Join the online discussion tomorrow »

January 30, 2007

Secretary Spellings outlines the administration's priorities

Yesterday afternoon, at the Federal Relations Network Conference, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings outlined the administration's priorities for NCLB for nearly 1,000 school board members in attendance. You can read Spellings' complete Building on Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act here.

In her remarks, Spellings advocated for the reauthorization of NCLB. "No Child Left Behind has transformed the education enterprise. Before this law, we took for granted that our education system was meeting the needs of our students," Secretary Spellings said. "No Child Left Behind changed all that. The law brought standards, data-driven decision making and accountability to the system. And it set a historic goal of every child performing at grade-level by 2014."

BoardBuzz was happy to note that Spellings acknowledged that the law "isn't perfect," which is a change from her 99.9% pure comment in September. She also faced tough questions from school board members in the audience, including whether or not she had seen and would take the time to read the No Child Left Behind Improvements Act (which is in line with NSBA's own recommendations for the law--read more here)--that has been introduced in the House by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

Young and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) were honored yesterday by NSBA for their commitment to public education and for the legislation that each has introduced in Congress. The FRN Conference concludes today with nearly 1,000 school board members hitting Capitol Hill to lobby their members of Congress to support public education issues and sign the Pledge to America's Schoolchildren.

Posted January 30, 2007 2:05 PM | Advocacy & Legislation

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry