GOP congressmen visit Hillsborough High School government class
By:Beth Kressel
Two U.S. congressmen visited the high school Tuesday morning to talk about changes to a federal education law known as No Child Left Behind. The changes alter testing requirements for special education students.
But in a question and answer forum, Hillsborough High School students and their principal pointed to other aspects of NCLB that they said are unreasonable. For some members of the audience, it was the requirement that by 2014 all students pass standardized tests required by NCLB, or schools face government sanctions.
Student Mitch Beard wondered whether students who are "apathetic to education" and don’t perform well on tests, would pose a problem in meeting 100 percent proficiency. Mitch is a member of the Advanced Placement government class at Hillsborough High School. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-7th) responded that teachers will help their students meet these standards.
"It’s just going to require (the teachers) to rely on every talent they have," he said.
High school Principal Doug Poye questioned two other aspects of the federal education act beginning with the lack of a standard test for all 52 states. Some states are choosing easier tests then others, making the test results incomparable between states, he said.
He also questioned the idea of school vouchers.
"The vouchers for children to attend nonpublic schools makes no sense whatsoever," he said.
If a student body fails to meet testing standards for several years and a school is put on probation, parents might have the option of obtaining a voucher from the government to send their children to a private school instead, he said. But those schools, he said, are not held to the same NCLB testing standards as public schools.
"We have to have a safety valve and some opportunity for parents to pull their children out," said Rep. Ferguson.
Rep. Ferguson and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th) spoke about their support for changes to NCLB, before taking questions from the Hillsborough audience.
The changes would affect standardized testing requirements for students with learning disabilities in two ways.
Under the revisions, states could give a higher percentage of test exemptions to school districts with more special needs students. Currently, only 1 percent of a school’s entire population can take an alternate assessment.
Second, schools could obtain a waiver from the federal government allowing an even higher percentage of special education students to take an alternate assessment.
Rep. Ferguson said the changes were especially helpful in New Jersey where 10 percent of the public school population are special education students.
He said that he supports the accountability standards set by NCLB, but was troubled by the "unintended consequences" of the law that held special needs students to unfair standards and then penalized their schools when not enough students passed the test.
The congressmen spoke before Superintendent Robert Gulick, Principal Doug Poye, one class of AP government students, and members of the media, in the high school library.
Rep. Frelinghuysen said after the talk that he expects federal Department of Education Secretary Rodney Paige to approve changes to NCLB by the end of the month.