Earlier this summer I headed to the Statehouse with almost 80 Massachusetts superintendents to urge legislators, state education officials, and Federal lawmakers to curtail new education laws and reforms that we believe are getting in the way of student learning.
I join my colleagues
today in support of House Bills 459, 512, 528, and 375. It is timely and necessary to review
redundant and inconsistent laws and rules and to take a “time out” from
additional legislation, as proposed in HB 375, that has burdened schools with
both funded and unfunded mandates, eroded local control, and obstructed
educational growth and achievement.
It is has become crystal
clear that the sheer volume and dissonance of reforms, requirements, and laws
generated by the DESE, state agencies, and Federal Departments of Education,
Justice, and Agriculture are crowding out innovation, excitement, and common
sense in our schools. The growing political, economic, and social agenda
imposed on our schools has become a nightmare of confusing and burdensome
regulations and rules that are often impossible to implement. Well-meaning policies are preventing
teachers and principals from doing what they know to be in the best interest of
children and their families.
For example, new Federal
school lunch rules enforced this past school year, following on the heels of
Massachusetts DPH nutrition rules imposed only the year before, require schools
to serve the exact same number of calories at lunch to a Kindergartener as we
serve to a 5th grader.
Parents know better than that!
And the result? Students
across the Commonwealth, including in my district and no doubt around the country, are abandoning school
lunch programs.
The pace of change and
reform is grueling and unrelenting.
Teachers, school staff and principals are increasingly required to
address and attend to mandates and initiatives that leave them little time to
personalize learning experiences for the children in their charge. Educators
fill their day completing checklists, filing paperwork, recording reams of
data, and complying with numerous regulations that have minimal benefit and are
not improving schools or the student learning experience.
For example, the
Legislature wants us to have zero tolerance for bullying. Bullies and students who threaten or
jeopardize the health and safety of others have no place in our schools. However, beginning in 2014 MGL 37H and
37H1/2 stipulate specific limits on the way principals can discipline students
for egregious behavior. And there
is no new funding to pay for alternative educational programs now required by
this law.
Teachers, students, and
parents don’t know where all of the rules and regulations come from, and they
don’t care. They just know their principal is telling them they have one more
thing to do that compels them to take an unnecessary step, saps energy away
from the classroom, and stifles creativity and learning. Little time and fewer
resources are left for the principal to propose or implement educational
experiences that she knows are good for young people and necessary for them to
become capable, caring citizens and innovative contributors to the global
economy.
Of course, we recognize
you are responsible only for what happens here in the Massachusetts
Legislature, and that is why we urge you to support these bills and work with
educators to craft coherent and reasonable legislation that will enhance and
empower learning in each Massachusetts school.