NCTE Members Take Literacy Education Issues to Congress
by Kent Williamson, NCTE Executive Director
May 2006 Council-Grams

April was a very active month for policy advocacy through NCTE, at the grassroots and national levels. Building on the foundation of three “firsts” for the Council -- the legislative platform approved by the Executive Committee in mid-February; a podcast from the CCCC Convention, “No Students Left Behind”; and the publication of a Policy Research Brief by the Squire Policy Research Office, NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform -- we launched four major outreach initiatives in the month:

• At the beginning of April, all NCTE members working at the college level were invited to attend hearings of the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, to study the issue briefs prepared by NCTE on the Spellings Commission agenda -- affordability, accreditation, articulation, and accountability, and to register their opinions by submitting a public comment to the Commission. NCTE/CCCC members were in attendance at both the April Spellings Commission Hearing in Indianapolis and the mid-May meeting in Washington, D.C., and widespread public criticism of discussion of mandatory testing at the college level by some commission members seems to have pushed the matter off the agenda.
  
  
• During the second week of April, Council members responded to a call to send comments to the Aspen Institute’s Commission on the Re-Authorization of No Child Left Behind, to visit their local Congressional office during the spring legislative recess, and to fill out a survey about the changes they have seen since enactment of NCLB (see results). By the end of April, more than 2,000 members had completed the survey; their moving, evocative responses will be featured in a public report to be circulated late this summer.
  
  
• On April 27, the NCTE Executive Committee and a member guest heard a series of presentations on literacy education issues before Congress from leading staffers working for the House Education and the Workforce subcommittee and the Senate HELP committee. Before making more than 25 Congressional office visits that afternoon, members discussed and reviewed a series of briefing documents developed by staff and the NCTE legislative counsel, Ellin Nolan. Among the documents available to members are the sample letter provided to legislators' offices and briefings on Striving Readers legislation and education spending in the federal budget.
  
  
• Finally, at its meeting on April 28, the Executive Committee formally adopted a position statement on The Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners. This clear and far-reaching statement is anchored by an extensive bibliography and represents the culmination of months of work by these task force members: Maria Brisk, Stephen Cary, Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings, Yu Ren Dong, Kathy Escamilla, Maria Franquiz, David Freeman, Yvonne Freeman, Paul Kei Matsuda, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, David Schwarzer, Katie Van Sluys, and Randy Bomer, EC liaison.

April 2006 may well be remembered as a milestone -- the month where the Council’s engagement with important literacy issues reached a new level of sophistication and intensity. If you would like to be notified of breaking Action Alerts in the future, please sign up here, or watch the NCTE Home Page or INBOX e-newsletter for invitations to make your views known.