WASHINGTON — Here's Stephen Blum's advice to Congress as lawmakers begin to take a long, hard look at the landmark No Child Left Behind school-reform law:

Forget about trying to fix the act's flaws. Just scrap it altogether.

"It is so much a piece of junk that it is beyond salvaging," said Blum, president of the Ventura Unified Education Association, a union that represents public schoolteachers in Ventura.

"Everybody who's teaching knows it's junk. And it's junk that is imposed on them. I don't know anybody who says anything good about it."

Blum knows there's virtually no chance Congress will heed his advice. The law, passed six years ago and up for renewal this year, was one of President Bush's top priorities when he came into office and is arguably the signature domestic achievement of his presidency.

But while No Child Left Behind is certain to remain on the books, even supporters concede some major parts of it are likely to be rewritten.

"We didn't get it all right when we enacted the law," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said during a recent speech in Washington.

Effective to a point'

For many teachers and other educators who say they share many of the law's goals, No Child Left Behind has been a frustrating exercise — one in which schools are forced to carry out federal mandates but have never been given the proper funding to do it.

"I think No Child Left Behind has been effective to a point," said Paul Chatman, president of the Ocean View School District board and president-elect of the California School Boards Association.

But without adequate funding and the recognition that children learn in different ways and at different levels, "it is doomed to fail for all of us," Chatman said. "It is just the wrong approach."

The law's rigid testing requirements, lack of flexibility and system of penalizing underperforming schools are among the most frequent criticisms.

But an even bigger concern for educators is that some of the law's goals are unattainable, Chatman said, citing as an example the requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

"It is just an impossibility," he said. "So right away, we are being set up for failure."

The heavy emphasis on reading and math has been a major source of frustration for educators and is one area expected to get a lot of attention from Congress as it re-examines No Child Left Behind.

One-size-fits-all testing

The law requires that students in third through eighth grades and the 10th grade be tested annually in reading and math, and schools are held accountable for how well students perform on the tests.

Schools that repeatedly don't meet their goals are penalized — their students can be permitted to transfer to other schools, for example, and failing schools can be taken over by the state.

Educators complain that the rigid "one-size-fits-all" tests don't take into account other factors that can affect student learning, such as socioeconomic status, lack of parental involvement in a child's education and limited English skills.

"It's very apparent that those who put it together really don't understand the challenges we are going through as educators and educational leaders," said David Gomez, superintendent of the Santa Paula Union High School District.

In Santa Paula, those challenges include a large percentage of students for whom English is a second language. Eighty-seven percent of students in the district are Latino, and nearly 30 percent have limited English-speaking skills, Gomez said.

No Child Left Behind allows students to take the standardized tests in their native language for up to three years. But California law requires all students to be tested in English.

Teachers are not failures'

If students with limited English skills take the test and their scores come up short, the school is penalized, even when the scores show they are actually making progress and other students have met their academic goals.

"They are treated in such a way that they are failures, and that is really sad," said Mario Contini, superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. "Those kids are not, those teachers are not failures. They are doing great things. They are overcoming great hurdles."

In response to those concerns, Miller, the House education committee chairman, has said he will propose a "growth model" that gives credit to states and schools for progress their students make over time.

Another frequent criticism is that the heavy emphasis on reading and math has caused schools to pay too much attention to those subjects — "teaching the test" as it's known — and give short shrift to other subjects, such as social studies, science and music.

At school board and faculty meetings, "all they talk about is, how do we raise our test scores?" Blum said. "They don't talk about what's in the best interests of children. They talk about how they can raise the test scores. That is all that matters, and that is a shame."

For teachers, "it has sucked the fun out of the job," Blum said.

Gauging performance

Miller has suggested that other tests or graduation rates could also be used to measure student performance. He also has said he will push for merit pay for teachers and principals as a way to reward exceptional performance — an idea teacher unions already are promising to fight.

"That's the stupidest of all of the stupid ideas they've ever come up with," Blum said.

Blum dismissed merit pay for teachers as nothing more than "brown-nose pay" because, he said, principals would determine who would get the extra money, and the criteria for rewarding the bonuses would be "who has the good students and who the principal likes."

"Everybody who has gone to school knows that, except for the knuckleheads in Congress," he said.

But Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, said merit pay could be a way to get more qualified teachers into classrooms. Besides, "people should be rewarded for success, if that success is directly related to their efforts," Gallegly said.

Gallegly said he believes any revisions to No Child Left Behind should include expanded programs for gifted and talented students, and those considered "at-risk."

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, said she agrees student improvement should be measured over time and that schools and students should be rewarded for progress they make. She said Congress needs to make sure No Child Left Behind is "fair, flexible and fully funded."