A coalition of school, civil rights, and child-advocacy groups handed a list of 14 recommendations for changing the federal No Child Left Behind Act to congressional staff members at the U.S. Capitol early January 2006, just a day after President Bush vigorously defended the law on its fourth anniversary. Consequences of the law demand these "critical changes," Reggie Felton, the director of federal relations at the National School Boards Association, said on January 10, 2006 to more than 30 congressional staff members. The coalition aiming to alter the law hopes to influence Congress, although eliminating the law outright is not among its recommendations. "It is not a question of saying 'No' [to NCLB]," said one of the coalition's leaders, Monty Neill, the executive director of FairTest, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group that is formally known as the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. The group is critical of the law's use of standardized tests as its fundamental measure of progress. The joint effort is called the Forum on Educational Accountability, and 67 groups have signed on to its agenda, including the National Education Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Mr. Neill said the groups want to reverse NLCB-era trends toward "narrowing the curriculum, [and] school systems pushing out students from schools in order to boost test scores."