After barely taking time to brush the tulip petals off of my shoes, I am in Minneapolis (from whence flour once came) for a "town hall" meeting with teachers about the impact of NCLB on the classroom. (We don't screen folks out of our meetings, and we allow them to wear t-shirts with messages too!)

I am sitting in my hotel room looking over the notes I took on butcher block paper (we union people love to use flip charts), musing over what we heard today. Looks like what the CEP found holds true for Minneapolis--teachers feel there is too much emphasis on testing and that the curriculum is being narrowed. One teacher reported having a 2 hour and 15 minute reading block (yikes) at her school.

Another common lament was the lack of appropriate tests for students with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs). One special ed teacher who works in an autism program said no tests were available for students who needed something in between the regular state assessment and the alternate assessment. A teacher who works with ELLs said that the district only makes the state test available in Somali in 3rd grade, but not in 4th or 5th grade.

Regarding the highly qualified teacher requirements, a special education teacher talked about receiving contradictory information on what she needed to do to meet the law's requirements, and then only being given two months to do so. A science teacher talked about how his department was going to have to hire partial positions because it would need "highly qualified" teachers for subjects like physics, but wouldn't need enough classes taught to warrant full time positions.

These are real stories from real teachers about the law's impact on the classroom. The tenor of the conversation was not hysterical but reflected their justifiable concerns. And these concerns are what the AFT has used to develop the beginnings of its ideas on how to change the law. It's good to get outside the Beltway and listen to teachers.