To the editor:
Last week, I left my eighth-grade classroom at the Ipswich Middle School and traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for effective education policy on Capitol Hill.
From Sept. 14-16, I attended the fourth annual Leadership for Effective Policy and Practice (LEAP) Institute sponsored by the non-partisan, non-union Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). This culminated with a day on the Hill, where I went with a team of other Massachusetts educators to visit the offices of six members of our congressional delegation.
The LEAP Institute brings together educators from all over the United States with the goal of empowering them as advocates for policies that support what is best for students. ASCD members know what their students need educationally. The institute helps them bring their knowledge and expertise on education to the policy-makers in D.C. to advocate for legislation that will support the work they do in the classroom.
As a board member of ASCD's Massachusetts affiliate, I was part of a team of five Massachusetts educators who met with our members of Congress to address critical education policy issues, including those highlighted in ASCD's 2008 Legislative agenda. The MASCD team included our executive director, Mary Hayes; our president, Dennis Richards, the superintendent of the Falmouth public schools; president-elect Peter Badalament, the principal of Concord-Carlisle High School; and fellow board member Ruben Carmona, the assistant principal of Bartlett Community Partnership School in Lowell. We visited the offices of Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, as well as the offices of four Massachusetts members of the House of Representatives, John Tierney of Salem, Niki Tsongas of Lowell, Barney Frank of Newton, and Bill Delahunt of Quincy.
The priority issues discussed during these visits focused on the need for the following:
Multiple indicators of achievement, in addition to MCAS scores, to measure and track student, school, and district performance;
Resources to recruit, develop, and retain highly effective teachers and school leaders;
An improved value-added system of school improvement and accountability that helps schools meet the unique needs of every student; and
Innovative high school redesign that ensures that high school graduates become productive citizens, prepared for success in a competitive global market.
Since I am a classroom teacher, I wanted my representatives in Congress to hear about some of my students. I told them about some of the kids who come to my classroom each day carrying the additional burden of overwhelming personal challenges outside of school.
Before I can teach these kids, I first need to be sure they are ready to learn. We try to meet the unique needs of all our kids, but schools cannot do it alone. That is why I called upon members of the Massachusetts delegation to insist that any reauthorization of No Child Left Behind legislation include language that ensures programs and resources for communities and schools to work together to provide wraparound support services so that students can succeed in the classroom and in their lives.
When town budgets get tight, the guidance counselor and school resource officer are often the first positions to get cut. In Ipswich, where I have taught English for more than 11 years, we would have lost our school resource officer, as well as a half-time guidance counselor, if the citizens of Ipswich had not approved a Proposition 21âÑ2 override in May. Federal legislation that provides resources for communities to partner with schools in providing support services for students, would go a long way towards insulating towns from losing these critical positions when local revenue sources are insufficient.
The LEAP Institute was my first event as an ASCD Emerging Leader of the Class of 2008. For more information on ASCD's legislative agenda, visit the ASCD Web site at www.ascd.org/actioncenter.
Peter B. Holtz
Salem
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