Dear Colleague:

In the coming weeks, lawmakers in the U.S. Congress are expected to overhaul and possibly repeal No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has profoundly impacted you and your students — mandating unprecedented testing, labeling schools as failures, and diminishing the authority of teachers as professionals.

Imagine all the improvement you and your students would see if federal lawmakers get the new legislation right. The potential is enormous for the “new NCLB,” officially known as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (ESEA).

Because the potential for improvement is enormous, we can’t sit on the sidelines.  Each of us needs to raise our voices, stand up for our students, and get public education back on the path to genuine accountability.

Please contact your federal lawmakers. Tell them that reauthorization of ESEA is an opportunity to set a new

vision of shared responsibility for a public education system that promotes opportunity, equity, and excellence for all students. In order to achieve these goals, your lawmakers should:

         Create a new system that advances opportunity and excellence for all students by developing quality school indicators—multiple measures of student growth—to support learning and target opportunity gaps.

         Make sure that all students have more time to learn and teachers have more time to teach.

         Reduce the number of federally mandated tests.

         Ensure qualified educators for all students and empower them to lead their professions.

We have a major opportunity in our hands to make serious changes to ESEA, but we have to take action and have others do the same. The House will be voting on a bill at the end of February, with full Senate action likely in March.

To contact your representative and senator, please go to http://capwiz.com/nea/issues/alert/?alertid=64033911

You also can call 866-331-7233 and tell Congress to pass a new ESEA bill that provides more opportunity for all students.

Thank you for all you have done and continue to do for children, teachers, and public education. Together we can make a better ESEA and better tomorrows for all of us.

Sincerely,

Sheila Cohen