Policy Research
Testimony before the House Education and Labor
Committee on the Re-Authorization of No Child Left Behind
Linda Darling-Hammond
September 10, 2007
(The following is the introduction to Darling-Hammond's testimony. To see the entire testimonial, download the pdf).
Congressman Miller, Congressman McKeon and members of the Committee. Thank you for this opportunity to testify on the draft bill to re-authorize No Child Left Behind. I am Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. I was also the founding Executive Director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and have spent many years studying policies and practices in the U.S. and around the world that support stronger curriculum, assessment, teaching and learning.
I want also to thank the Committee for its openness and commitment to the democratic process in having shared a public draft of the re-authorization bill prior to finalizing the bill. This move shows a respect and consideration for the public that is appreciated by those who care deeply about our nation’s education system.
While the very complex NCLB legislation has many elements that deserve attention and ongoing revision, I am sure you will hear about those from many others. I want to focus my testimony this morning on three key elements of the law:
- The provisions to encourage multiple measures of assessment and multiple indicators of school progress, which I believe are essential to raise standards and strengthen educational quality in ways that are internationally competitive;
- The provisions to improve the quality and distribution of the teaching force, which are also essential to our ability to reach the high goals this Congress would like to establish for our nation’s schools, and
- The means for measuring school progress from year to year, which I believe need to become more publicly comprehensible and more closely focused on evaluating continuing progress for students and schools.
To see the full document, click here.
redesigning schools
Across the nation, there is a growing consensus that schools must change in fundamental ways if they are to accomplish the goals we now have for them: teaching our very diverse student population for higher order thinking and deep understanding. The system we work in today was invented nearly 100 years ago for another time and another mission - the processing of large numbers of students for rote skills and the education of only a few for knowledge work. It was never designed to teach all children to high levels. Caring and dedicated teachers, administrators, and parents work hard every day within this system to educate our children for more ambitious thinking and performance skills - and yet their efforts are often stymied by outmoded institutional structures, most notably the large, impersonal, factory-model school.
Excerpt from Redesigning Schools: 10 Features of Effective Design
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