WHEREAS, the National Conference of State Legislatures created a special task force (Task Force) that spent ten months conducting a comprehensive, bipartisan review of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; and

WHEREAS, this review identified a number of changes that must be made to the No Child Left Behind Act for it to become a positive impetus to school improvement and ensure that young people will learn at their full potential; and

WHEREAS, the Task Force drafted forty-three recommendations outlining these necessary changes to provide useful, workable requirements for schools, many of which could be easily incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act; and

WHEREAS, the four key Task Force recommendations include: (1) removing obstacles that block state education innovations and undermine programs that were succeeding prior to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act; (2) providing the federal financial assistance necessary for states to meet No Child Left Behind Act classroom goals; (3) removing the "one-size-fits-all" student performance measurements in favor of more sophisticated systems that measure progress on an individualized basis; and (4) recognizing that individual schools face special challenges, and that significant differences exist between rural and urban schools; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, that the Hawaii State Legislature strongly urges the Congress of the United States to support the worthwhile recommendations of the National Conference of State Legislatures special task force on revisions to the No Child Left Behind Act; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Report Title:

No Child Left Behind Reform