David Sanchez - the first Latino president of the California Teacher's Association and a Santa Maria Native - vowed Friday to fight federal legislators over the reauthorization of the controversial No Child Left Behind bill.

Sanchez was the keynote speaker for the Association for Mexican American Educators' annual conference, which runs all weekend at the Radisson Hotel in Santa Maria.

In his address to the AMAE, Sanchez said the proposed amendments to the bill would unfairly penalize schools with large minority student populations, and he criticized the bill's intense focus on testing.

“This is a bad law,” Sanchez said, “and it must be killed before it's even written.”

Latino students now make up 48 percent of California's student population.

Thus, closing the “achievement gap” between Latinos and white students has become a hot-button issue across the political spectrum.

Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and George Miller (D-Martinez) have drafted a reauthorization of the NCLB bill, which contains several modifications from the original law.

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Some major modifications include merit pay for teachers based on test scores, and sanctions for schools and teachers that do not reach certain landmarks set by the law.

“This focus on testing forces teachers to teach for the test,” said Sanchez, “and merit pay will drive teachers away from lower-performing schools.”

The proposed rewrite of NCLB takes the wrong approach, said Sanchez. Funding, such as the Quality Education Investment Act, and not sanctions, is what is going to turn under-performing schools around, he added.

QEIA is a 2006 law that set aside more than $3.5 billion for schools that received a 2 on a scale of 10 on national and state test score rankings.

Santa Maria high School recently received more than

$16 million through the grant, which requires schools to use the money to reduce class size in core courses, provide extra professional development for staff, and have a high ratio of counselors to students.

“Our goal is to expand this kind of funding to all schools in California,” said Sanchez.

Coming from a family of educators, Sanchez is no stranger to the issues facing teachers.

His mother, Amparo Sanchez, is a former teacher of the year who retired after teaching elementary school in San Luis Obispo County for more than three decades.

Sanchez's

father, David J. Sanchez, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's ethnic studies department for 23 years, and an elementary school in Santa Maria is named after him.

“Both my parents were role models for me,” said Sanchez. “It's because of them I'm here today.”

In the end, said Sanchez, his and other educators' activism with the CTA is because of the students they serve.

“All of us create miracles in our classrooms,” he said. “What we're doing provides our students with a chance to be successful in life.”

The AMAE conference runs through Sunday.

Natalie Ragus can be reached at 347-4580 or nragus@santamariatimes.com

November 3, 2007