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Utah Hosts Nation’s Teachers of the Year

  Educators from throughout the United States gathered last week in Utah for the National Network of State Teachers of the Year conference. Utahn, Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, was the keynote speaker during the “Transformers: Innovating Education” conference in Salt Lake City.

 

During her opening remarks on Wednesday, EskelsenGarcía told hundreds of her fellow teacher leaders to reflect on the day as a new beginning for students and educators. She was referring to the opening day of discussions by the U.S. Senate to re-write and reauthorize the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The law became part of the Elementary and Secondary Act in 2002.

“The reauthorization took the law off track by mandating that all students hit arbitrary scores on standardized tests instead of ensuring equal opportunities,” Eskelsen Garcia said.

As president of the NEA Eskelsen Garcia leads the nation’s largest professional association of educators with three million members. She and the organization have been highly critical of what she says is a failed education law. Eskelsen Garcia said measuring student and school progress based almost exclusively on standardized test scores provides only a narrow glimpse into school and students performance.

The NEA is pushing a reauthorization plan that would include an “Opportunity Dashboard” comprised of a range of indicators including ways to measure student success, quality educators and quality schools.

“This will allow parents, educators, and leaders to hold states accountable,” Eskelsen Garcia said. “We must then have a way to take those measurements and provide students with the resources and opportunities they need to be successful.”  

Eskelsen Garcia would also like lawmakers to change the way the law encourages states to collect and report on success indicators, saying that more needs to be done to collect and report findings disaggregated by student subgroups. She said this is necessary so problems can be resolved and work can begin to remedy any gaps in the resources, support, and programs provided to students.

“Do they have access to the theater department, to an orchestra and a sports team?” Eskelsen Garcia said. “Where are we putting our resources? We have a chance now and have some hope.”

In a Washington Post February 2015 editorial, “No Child Left Behind” Has Failed, she wrote that with the re-write and reauthorization of the law, Congress has an opportunity to ensure equal opportunity and provide federal resources for states to level the playing field between schools in wealthy and poor districts.

At 14-years-old, Kerry began working as a reporter for KVEL “The Hot One” in Vernal, Utah. Her radio news interests led her to Logan where she became news director for KBLQ while attending Utah State University. She graduated USU with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and spent the next few years working for Utah Public Radio. Leaving UPR in 1993 she spent the next 14 years as the full time mother of four boys before returning in 2007. Kerry and her husband Boyd reside in Nibley.