NCLB: Act II

Don't overlook middle schools in NCLB reauthorization, some members of Congress are saying.

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Az., is pointing to findings buried in a recent report that show a disproportionate number of middle schools are failing to make AYP. Although 15 percent of schools in the Title I program serve the middle grades, a third of the schools in restructuring or corrective action are middle schools, the Government Accountability Office says in this report.

Rep. Grijalva is pointing to the figures as a reason to address middle schools' problems in NCLB reauthorization. He has sponsored a middle school bill, H.R. 3406. It would require states to write plans to improve their middle schools and to create a system to identify middle schoolers at risk of academic failure. The bill also would start a national clearinghouse on how to improve the academic achievement of middle schoolers.

Rep. Grijalva is a member of the House Education and Labor Committee and says he will offer his middle school bill as an amendment to the NCLB bill the committee considers. He has the support of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

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We've heard all about testing and teacher pay since the House education committee released its discussion drafts on NCLB.

Beware of another potential headache: paperwork. That's what the American Association of School Administrators says.

In two separate documents (here and here), AASA lists the new red tape the House proposal would add. Committees would need to form, studies would have to be published, and new reports would need to be filed. Under the Title I proposal, districts would be overwhelmed trying to comply with everything the draft would require in their improvement plans, AASA says. Under Title II, districts would have to collect data on teachers that they don't have right now and might not have the capacity to get, the group says.

While paperwork is an important issue for AASA, reducing it probably wouldn't change the group's opposition to the draft. "There is no relief from the prescriptive nature of the current law," Paul Houston, AASA's executive director, told the House Education and Labor Committee on Sept. 10. The group lobbied against NCLB in 2001 and looks ready to do again—unless major changes are made.

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President Bush today joined the chorus of NCLB supporters who say the law is the reason for the positive results on the National Assessment of Education Progress.

"What all this means is No Child Left Behind Act is working for all kinds of children in all kinds of schools in every part of the country," the president said in New York City this morning.

But critics aren't convinced. FairTest has released its formal response, saying that NAEP increases were "significantly greater" before NCLB (from 2000 to 2003) than after.

"That deflates the administration’s claims that federal law is driving school improvement," Monty Neill, a co-executive director of FairTest, said in this news release.

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Last week lacked the breaking news on the NCLB beat common in recent months. But the stories in this week's issue of Education Week dig below the surface of some significant developments. Throw in a couple of commentaries, and this issue has a lot to offer on the NCLB front.

In Law's Timeline on Proficiency Under Debate, I explain where key lawmakers and leading lobbyists stand on the deadline for universal proficiency by 2014. The goal once appeared sacrosanct, but it may not be now. Although I didn't have a fresh quote on this topic from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, here's one I can add from a speech she gave Monday: The goal is not to be "doing nuclear physics or advanced calculus, but reading on grade level and doing math on grade level." And here's one from Monday that she has said before: "If someone told me I had to wait until 2014 for my daughter to read on grade level, I'd ask: 'Why not now?'"

For On Senate Panel, a Different Dynamic for NCLB Renewal, Alyson Klein surveyed bills introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and discussed the political dynamics of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The upshot is that in the Senate NCLB is going to have some tough sledding—or kayaking, depending on which metaphor you prefer.

In State, Local Officials Press Special Education Concerns, Christina A. Samuels explains that people who have to implement NCLB aren't satisfied with the House's discussion draft for NCLB renewal.

In the Commentary section, Anthony P. Carnevale argues in No Child Gets Ahead that the current NCLB "doesn't help high-performing students in general, and may actually hurt high-performing students from working families." The solution, he says, is to create a system of "individualized standards" that are "tied to persistence and improvement in the educational performance on individual students."

And in Too Many Remedies?, Frederick M. Hess and Rosemary Kendrick propose a new formula for turning around schools that miss AYP. Give the schools the chance to fix the problem themselves, they write. If that doesn't work, follow up with "swift and sure sanction," they conclude. And don't miss their comparison of NCLB to the Wizard of Oz. I've heard NCLB likened to Russian novels, college football, and a host of other things. But never the wonderful wizard.

Finally, take a peek at the Federal File about the Department of Education's headquarters being renamed for Lyndon B. Johnson. I took the policy angle, talking about how LBJ would be disappointed that the federal government doesn't provide a greater share of the nation's K-12 money. But the human interest story behind the renaming also is a good one. The force behind the name change is named Lyndon K. Boozer, a lobbyist for AT&T. His first name is no coincidence. His mother was LBJ's executive assistant in the Senate, at the White House, and in retirement. LBJ offered her an extended maternity leave if she changed his name from Kyle Lyndon Boozer to Lyndon Kyle Boozer. He remains close to the Johnson family today.

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NCLB supporters are bragging today that the law's focus on student achievement is the main reason for the rise in reading and mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Here's this press release from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings: “No Child Left Behind is working. It’s doable, reasonable, and necessary. Any efforts to weaken accountability would fly in the face of rising achievement."

Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., says the scores show that NCLB should be reauthorized with its key ingredients in place. "They are also a stark reminder that we cannot and must not back away from the accountability, flexibility, and parental choice that are at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act," says the statement from the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the committee's chairman, suggests that student achievement would rise even faster if the law were rewritten to be easier to implement and if Congress provided increases in funding for it. "With an improved law and better funding, I believe that we will see much stronger achievement gains among all students," he said in his statement.

But NCLB isn't the only major policy that may affect a state's NAEP scores. Take a look at New Jersey. The state showed statistically significant increases in 4th grade and 8th grade math, as well as 4th grade reading. Its 8th grade reading results grew too, but not by a statistically significant amount. Its scale score rose by a higher number than most other gainers. The achievement gap in 4th grade narrowed in both subjects. (Read the state's press release here.)

Are NCLB's accountability pressures the reason for those gains? Or was the biggest factor the state's investments in preschool and facilities, all of it done under a state court order?

You could probably look at every state and ask such questions.

UPDATE: In an e-mail blast to reporters, FairTest's Bob Schaeffer says that the National Assessment Governing Board's press release has two points that undermine the argument that NCLB is having a positive impact. One says that gains between 2003 and 2007 aren't as as large as other periods in NAEP's history. The other notes that although 8th grade reading scores are up compared to 2005, they are below those of 2002. Schaeffer promises more when he's done a more thorough analysis.

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This morning, NEA President Reg Weaver and other NEA staff members explained the union's stance on NCLB reauthorization to a dozen or so education writers. They outlined what the union doesn't like about growth models, teacher-pay provisions, and other issues addressed in the House education committee's discussion draft.

Much of the policy discussion had been covered in documents previously released by the NEA. (See here, here, and here.) But the political discussion was news to me.

At the end, Weaver was asked whether the NEA would bend in its opposition to merit pay and pay for performance linked to students' test scores or whether those ideas were deal breakers, Weaver didn't hesitate. "Deal breaker," he said.

Other things of note, NEA is working with other unions to oppose the teacher-pay measures on the grounds that they would violate local unions' right to collective bargaining. "This would be a very dangerous precedent," said Karen White, NEA's director of campaigns and elections.

And White added that union is working hard to win over freshmen Democrats. On the House Education and Labor Committee, five out of the 10 first-term Democrats won close races. In fact, their margin of victory was less than the number of NEA members in their districts.

"When you win by less votes than the number of our members in your district, you're going to pay attention," White said.

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John Edwards' presidential campaign said today that the former senator would "totally overhaul" NCLB.

"No Child Left Behind used cheap standardized tests to measure our children's learning, failed to accurately identify struggling schools, and mandated unproven cookie-cutter solutions for our schools' problems," the campaign said in a paper outlining Mr. Edwards' education platform.

Edwards would create a School Success Fund, which would sent teams of experienced educators into low-performing schools.

He also weighs in on the teacher pay debate, offering to pad the salaries of teachers in high-poverty schools. The teachers would get an extra $15,000 if their students perform well.

You can read more about the Edwards campaign's education plan at Campaign K-12, Education Week's new blog tracking campaign news.

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All month, key lawmakers have said they would take significant legislative action on NCLB in September. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has said he wants to get a bill out of the Education and Labor Committee, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chamber's education chairman, has been promising to introduce an NCLB bill.

Since Monday is the beginning of the last full week of September, Alyson Klein and I asked around about what might happen next week.

The House Education and Labor Committee will not mark up a NCLB bill next week.

Sen. Kennedy may introduce his NCLB bill or publish a discussion draft next week.

It's looking as if Rep. Miller will miss his goal, and Sen. Kennedy still has a chance to meet his. Check back here next week for the latest updates.

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I—and just about everyone else—missed this Sept. 10 letter from House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, to the leaders of the House education committee.

In his "Dear George and Buck" letter, Rep. Boehner praises the bipartisan process that produced the House's NCLB discussion draft. Then he criticizes many key sections of it.

In summary, Rep. Boehner says the draft would fail to give students the option of choosing private schools, would cut back tutoring and other supplemental services, wouldn't support enough pay-for-performance and merit-pay plans for teachers, and would create new loopholes in the accountability system. He also cautions that he and other Republicans would oppose any policies that might lead to national tests or standards.

He never comes out and says he'll oppose the bill, but he does offer a long list of changes he'd like to see. Most of them are bills that Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., has introduced.

Rep. Boehner was chairman of the House education committee when Congress passed NCLB in 2001 and played a significant role in shaping the law then. This letter reminds us that he'll probably have some say in what the next NCLB looks like, too.

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Last week, NEA announced its opposition to the House's NCLB discussion draft. Its California chapter launched an online advertising campaign against the draft. This week, it's clear they haven't changed their minds.

Yesterday, NEA sent out this "action alert" urging members to contact their members of Congress about the bill.

The overall message is to tell Congress to "slow down," the alert says.

It concludes: "Instead of rushing to pass legislation that will offer more bureaucracy, more mandates, and less help for students and educators, Congress should take the time to craft a bill that will truly help ensure great public schools for every child!"

The alert also lists the things the union doesn't like in the draft. Its accountability plan relies "overwhelmingly on just two (reading and math) low-quality statewide standardized tests." It includes pay for performance for teachers. It doesn't include class-size reduction. And more.

In San Francisco today, the California Teachers Association will hold a news conference outside the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The NEA affiliate will unveil a postcard opposing the House draft that 1,000 California teachers signed. The news advisory, which is not online, says the postcard is the size of a garage door. The CTA has its own legislative alert.

This is quite a public display of the union's power, and it's over a discussion draft. What's going to be next?

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Last week was full of NCLB news, and you can read it in the current issue of Education Week.

For Unions Assail Teacher Ideas in NCLB Draft, Alyson Klein and I give the highlights of the Sept. 10 hearing and the fallout from it. (Much of that was covered in the blog here, here, and here.) Take note of comments from Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon's spokeswoman and from Amanda L. Farris at the Department of Education. They both want pay-for-performance projects included in the reauthorized NCLB.

In Draft Proposal Seeks to Equalize School Resources, Bess Keller explains how one small change in Title I could make a dramatic difference in the ways schools are financed.

And while we're talking about teacher pay, Houston approved a pay-for-performance plan last week, according to Houston Board OKs Revamped Performance-Pay Plan.

Finally, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee says in this commentary that the Department of Education has made it too easy for states to make accountability targets. Later, Rep. McKeon responded here. You can read my comments on the exchange here and here.

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Democrats for Education Reform marked its Washington debut on Monday night. The New York-based PAC says it wants to be a player in the NCLB debate. Elizabeth Rich, an online editor for the section of edweek.org serving teachers, attended and filed this report:

With a perfect view of the Washington and Jefferson Monuments and the sun setting behind the White House, the Democrats for Education Reform held their organization launch. DFER is angling to get party support behind education issues--as they see them.

On the unions, his response was mitigated, “Our goal is not to battle with the unions, but to try and get other voices into the discussion—parents, students, communities, business people also have a stake in this and should be able to take part in the discussion.”

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Enough single-issue items for now. It's time to look at the big picture.

Today at noon I'll be moderating a discussion at the Cato Institute. The focus of the event is a new book by Neal P. McCluskey, a Cato policy analyst. As you might expect from a libertarian, McCluskey argues against NCLB and any other significant federal involvement in K-12 education. The title of his book sums up his position: Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education.

"It is clear that 40 years of expensive federal intervention in our schools has been a failure," McCluskey writes. "Yet the flow of money keeps increasing and federal meddling keeps spreading."

McCluskey explains that NCLB runs afoul of basic conservative tenets. It has increased the federal government's say in curricular and testing decisions, while also dramatically increasing federal K-12 spending. He digs up a quote from Rep. David Souder, R-Ind., from the day the House passed NCLB in 2001: "We wouldn't have passed this plan under Bill Clinton. It's more money than we would have given Clinton, and we would have never given him a national test."

After McCluskey's presentation, Mike Petrilli will respond. Petrilli has had his own love-hate affair with NCLB. He helped implement it from the Department of Education during President Bush's first term. As recently as 2005, he extolled the law as a way to make affluent schools pay attention to their neediest kids. Earlier this year, he turned against NCLB, although he "still likes its zeitgeist." And he has dismissed the House's discussion draft on Title I as "The Suburban Schools Relief Act."

My question for McCluskey and Petrilli will be this: Judging by their combination of disgust with and ambivalence about NCLB, how can President Bush expect to generate enough support among Republicans to support its renewal?

This page on the Cato Web site tells you how you can tune in.

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I closed my last post asking if testing and accountability would be the issues of the week. The next moment, my colleague, Alyson Klein, sends me a copy of this release.

I guess the answer is yes.

Today, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced the Improving Student Testing Act of 2007. The bill would dramatically scale back the amount of testing and the types of assessments given under NCLB.

"There are a number of other issues that we need to address in the NCLB reauthorization," Sen. Feingold said in his statement when introducing the bill in the Senate. "My bill seeks to address some of the top concerns I have heard about from constituents around the state related to testing."

According to this summary, here's how testing would change under the bill:

States would assess students for accountability purposes three times in their K-12 career, once during three separate grade spans (grades 3-5, grades 6-9, and grades 10-12). That compares to every year in grades 3-8 and once in high school under current law.

New grants would help states build testing systems that don't rely on multiple-choice tests. The new tests would support accountability systems that "take into account the diverse academic needs of all students," the summary says.

The bill would postpone the deadline for universal proficiency until Congress fully finances NCLB's Title I program. The current deadline is the end of the 2013-14 school year.

The press release says several education groups support the bill, including the National Education Association, the American Association of School Administrators, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Wisconsin groups representing teachers, principals, and superintendents also have endorsed it.

Sen. Feingold, who voted against NCLB in 2001, said that he would like to make other changes to NCLB. In his speech, he listed two: how NCLB addresses the needs of special education students and English-language learners and how NCLB intervenes in schools that fail to make AYP.

Maybe one of those issues will take over this blog some week. But this week looks as if its going to be about testing and accountability.

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Last week, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., decried existing loopholes in the NCLB accountability rules, blaming Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings for letting states off the hook.

Now, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., comes to the secretary's defense. More importantly, the senior Republican on the education committee hints he's not committed to several key elements of the Title I discussion draft that he and Chairman Miller released last month.

"Rather than blaming the U.S. secretary of education, I believe our time would be better spent focusing on the future of the law, not its past implementation," Rep. McKeon writes in this online commentary, which was prompted by Rep. Miller's own commentary. "But even more than that, I strongly disagree that the solution to our accountability challenges is to close some loopholes while opening others."

Rep. McKeon says that he believes the Title I draft's proposals to add so-called multiple measures under NCLB accountability would create problems of their own. Allowing states to use test scores on subjects other than reading and math would take away the law's current focus on those core subjects. Adding such tests goes against the public outcry against the amount of testing that NCLB currently requires, he writes. Overall, the new measures would be "mechanisms that could lead us down a slippery slope of complexity and confusion," he says.

Three points:

1.) Ever since the first of the discussion drafts came out Aug. 28, I've wondered how open Rep. Miller and Rep. McKeon would be to changes. Rep. McKeon's essay suggests that he would be happy to ditch the multiple measures.

2.) After making his points about accountability, Rep. McKeon lists his "grave concerns" about access to tutoring and choice. Under the plan, students would be guaranteed such help only if they attend a school that fails to make AYP in almost every subgroup of students. "I cannot lend my support to any bill that significantly diminishes existing options for parents," he writes. "I think we should be doing more to offer meaningful educational choices, not less." So he isn't very enthusiastic about this section of the draft, either.

3.) Two weeks ago, the big issue appeared to be accountability. Last week, it was teachers. Will it be accountability again? Or will something else rise to the surface?

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A few things to note as I clean out my inbox and notebook at the end of the week:

1.) I've neglected to mention the extent of NEA's presence at the House hearing on Monday. The union had at least one of its members from every congressional district represented on the Education and Labor Committee. The union brigade stood out with their red-and-white stickers that said: "A Child is More Than a Test Score." I saw them talking to several members of the committee in the hallway. You can read Joe Williams' take on it at his blog for Democrats for Education Reform.

2.) If you're like Sherman Dorn and just have to read all of the testimony from Monday's hearing, here's the link for you. It looks as if all the statements are up.

3.) Americans for the Arts unveiled its NCLB recommendations Thursday at a wine-and-cheese reception at the Kennedy Center in Washington. They would like schools to use federal funds to ensure disadvantaged students have access to arts education and a national effort to improve assessments of kids' artistic abilities. You can read all of the background here.

4.) James Kohlmoos of the Knowledge Alliance has this essay comparing Sept. 10, 2001 and Sept. 10, 2007. On both days, he notes important events where he and others tried to create the perfect accountability system. He also notes on both days that, as important as the NCLB issues are, our country faces defense questions that trump them.

5.) To call me Andy Rotherham's "beloved" is just plain silly. My relationship with Andy is like ones I have with dozens of sources in the 16 years I've written about education policy. It's often friendly, sometimes confrontational, and always respectful. Those dynamics weren't apparent when I wrote only for print. Now that I'm blogging, it's transparent. And that's all for the good, I think.

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Last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said the House NCLB draft would create "big loopholes" in the law's accountability rules.

This week, Rep. George Miller responds, saying that the secretary has diluted the power of existing rules with her administrative decisions.

In this commentary published on edweek.org today, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee says that the secretary has approved statistical games that make accountability easier for schools.

He points out the department has let states use 'n' sizes of up to 200 students. That means a school that has less than 200 students in any subgroup isn't held accountable for that subgroup. "This is an outrage," he writes. "It runs completely counter to the integrity of the law."

The department also has approved lenient confidence intervals—a statistical technique he compares to margins of error used in opinion polling. Half the states are allowed to use a confidence interval of 99 percent. He says that's "the highest possible" such interval.

Rep. Miller writes the discussion draft would get tough by capping 'n' sizes at 30 and confidence intervals at 95 percent.

"When the Bush administration tries to cast the current reauthorization debate in terms of more vs. less accountability, don’t buy the spin," he concludes. "What we should aim for is a smart system of accountability—one that doesn’t needlessly exclude millions of children across the country."

The secretary and the chairman are scheduled to appear together Monday at a ceremony renaming the Department of Education headquarters in honor Lyndon Johnson, the man who signed the original ESEA. I look forward to hearing what they have to say there.

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If you search the House education committee's NCLB draft, you won't find the phrase "persistently dangerous schools."

The current law requires states to identify any school that fits their definition of persistently dangerous. Districts must allow students to transfer out of those schools. For the most part, states have avoided implementing this section. In 2003, states labeled a total of 54 schools as persistently dangerous.

Under the draft, the "persistently dangerous" section would morph into a new "challenge schools" grant.

A challenge school would be one "that is determined not to have a safe climate for academic achievement," the draft says. Districts would need to inform parents if their child is attending such a school. States would be required to report the number of challenge schools and the number of students who transfered out of them.

States would be required give their challenge schools a portion of their Safe and Drug-Free Schools grants. The draft suggests 20 percent. Since that number is in brackets, that means the committee is open to changing it.

To see the legislative language, read page 13 and pages 21-24 of the draft of Title III and the rest of the bill.

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The NCLB stories in the current issue of Education Week focus on the news of last week in Washington, but a couple of others will give you a glimpse of issues out in the field.

When the House Education and Labor Committee posted discussion drafts of Title II and other sections of NCLB at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, several of us collaborated to get the news out before the paper went to press at noon on Friday. We didn't have time to find reaction to the draft itself. I dug through the NEA Web site to find Reg Weaver's quote supporting the TEACH Act. The union president had a chance to revise and extend his remarks on Monday.

While we haven't heard how Margaret Spellings feels about the drafts released Thursday, my story explains some of the reasons why the secretary of education is "deeply troubled" by changes proposed in the Title I proposal.

In an enterprising story, Vaishali Honawar finds that schools may be cutting corners on NCLB by hiring substitutes who aren't required to meet the law's highly qualified teacher rules. More than half of states don't require subs to have more than a high school degree.

While it doesn't address NCLB directly, educators will be interested in new research examining the "4th grade slump" in reading test scores. The National Institutes of Health has given $30 million to researchers studying the issue, Christina Samuels reports.

Finally, the Federal File column reports on a new Government Accountability Office report on lax efforts to turn around the schools that haven't met AYP for 4 or more years.

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Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has responded to the California Teachers Association's Web ad proclaiming the current draft of NCLB "imposes new federal mandates that undermine local control and employee rights."

In a statement e-mailed to me by the press secretary of the House Education and Labor Committee, the chairman says the teachers union got it wrong.

Here's an extended excerpt:

"The CTA claimed today that the legislation would judge teachers’ performance solely on the basis of their students’ achievement gains, even though the organization knows this isn’t true. Contrary to the CTA’s assertions, the legislation would consider achievement gains along with other measures, like principal and master teacher evaluations. The CTA also wrongly implies that I don’t support things like class size reduction, teacher professional development, and mentoring programs for teachers. I do support those things, which is why they are included in the bipartisan discussion draft of NCLB reauthorization legislation that we have circulated. From the very beginning, I sought the input of teacher organizations to craft the legislation."

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Just after I posted this item on a teacher union's opposition to the House's NCLB draft, the subject of merit pay and performance pay came up in today's marathon House Education and Labor Committee hearing.

Toward the end of the almost seven-hour session, NEA President Reg Weaver and AFT Executive Vice President Antonia Cortese objected to proposed alternative pay programs for teachers, which are included in the section addressing teacher quality.

In the Q&A that followed, Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., reminded the union reps that that the pay proposals came from the Teacher Excellence for All Children Act, which the unions endorsed after extensive talks with Rep. Miller and a host of education groups.

"This language was mutually arrived at by various parties," Rep. Miller said.

Ms. Cortese reminded the chairman that AFT reserved the right to object about teacher pay questions when it endorsed the original bill.

"We do have specific concerns about a provision that would use test scores to evaluate teachers," Ms. Cortese said.

This isn't the last we'll hear on this issue, I'm sure.

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The House Education and Labor Committee invited more than 40 people to speak at today's hearing on their draft bill to reauthorize NCLB.

But today's most important NCLB statement may be on this Web page. In it, the California Teachers Association says:

"NCLB is again now up for reauthorization. And the proposal by California Congressman George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does nothing to improve the law. California teachers are calling on Congress to vote NO on the Miller/Pelosi NCLB reauthorization plan."

The CTA doesn't like many proposals in the drafts (see here, here, and here) issued by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif. They oppose the experiments with pay-for-performance, merit pay, and other things they say would violate their collective bargaining rights, Dean E. Vogel, CTA's vice president, told me in the hall outside of House hearing room. Vogel led a contingent of six CTA members to lobby against the bill. "We're ready in California to go to war," Vogel told me.

I have three points to make here, all political:

1.) CTA, traditionally an ally of Democrats, is taking on the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic chairman of the House education committee. That doesn't happen very often.

2.) Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Miller, and Rep. McKeon are all from California. That makes it the most important state in the debate in the House.

3.) To promote it's campaign, CTA took out a premium ad on the Daily Kos. The union is clearly trying to drum up opposition to NCLB among the Netroots Democrats.

Bonus link:

Here's the CTA press release given out at a press conference in Burlingame, Calif. In it, CTA president David A. Sanchez said: "Unfortunately, the Miller/Pelosi reauthorization plan would only make the law worse."

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As we wrap up this week where people are debating NCLB's future, I'd like to ask you to think about the past.

In "No Child Left Behind: What Would Al Say?" published in the Sept. 5 Education Week, Richard D. Kahlenberg draws on his research for his new biography of Albert Shanker. He suggests that the late president of the American Federation of Teachers wouldn't have liked several elements of NCLB.

Even though Shanker was one of the biggest proponents of standards-based reforms in the 1990s, he had a different vision than what emerged from Congress in 2002.The four key differences that Kahlenberg identifies are:

1.) NCLB sets a goal that all students are expected to reach. Shanker wanted a variety of goals that give each student a challenging but reachable goal.

2.) NCLB creates consequences for poor student achievement on adults, but not students. Shanker said that any testing system had to give incentives for students.

3.) NCLB lets all states set their own content standards; Shanker advocated for a single set of national standards.

4.) States have relied mostly on multiple-choice testing to comply with NCLB's enormous testing burden. That went against Shanker's desire for high-quality assessments that give reliable, valid, and useful information.

Kahlenberg suggests that NCLB would have been a better piece of legislation if Shanker had been alive. I'm interested in hearing from you about what you think. I'd especially like comments from those of you who knew and worked with Shanker.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you interested what the House committee is proposing in the rest of NCLB, you can read a summary and legislative language at the House Education and Labor Committee's Web site.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I wait for the House education committee to post the next installment of its NCLB proposal, I've had the chance to review what groups are saying about the Title I draft.

Here's a quick summary of a few responses sent to the House Education and Labor Committee:

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings writes that she is "deeply troubled" by many of the draft's accountability proposals. (But if you heard her speech yesterday, you already knew that.)

"We could easily lose simple transparency about whether schools are teaching students to read and do math on grade level, and obscure what's actually going on schools under this new approach," she writes.

The Council of Chief State School Officers, by contrast, would like to see a broader definition of multiple measures. The bill needs to "recognize that there are additional valid indicators of school performance, and more being developed and collected over time," the chiefs write. The chiefs want state officials to be able to identify their own indicators and use them with the permission of the secretary of education.

The American Federation of Teachers believes that the growth models proposed in the bill do not "fully give credit for the gains in student achievement that schools are making." In the union's letter, it suggests that growth models should "set achievable growth standards, and help schools demonstrate that they are making progress, including those that do not have the capacity to measure individual student progress and therefore cannot implement a growth model."

The Forum on Educational Accountability likes the way the draft would allow for local assessments, but says the draft doesn't go far enough, the coalition's letter says. It wants to give more weight to test in subjects other than reading and math. It also would like to eliminate the goal of universal proficiency by 2014. Instead, the group advocates "an accountability approach based on implementing systemic changes that will improve teaching and learning and on demonstrating steady progress in learning results consistent with the rates of improvement at the nation’s better Title I schools."

More to come, I'm sure.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In his remarks this morning, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said he was working closely with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on NCLB reauthorization.

But in his conference call with reporters this afternoon, he made it clear that they don't see eye-to-eye on some key sections of the bill.

Twice, he referred to the secretary's assertion last year that the law is "99.9 percent pure."

"There's no evidence on the street that that's the case," he said.

The chairman of the House education committee also responded to Secretary Spellings' speech today, in which she criticized the several elements of the House education committee's discussion draft. The accountability proposal, she said, would take away the focus from reading and mathematics.

He said that states would need to prove that all new measures would accurately gauge student achievement in other subjects. The accountability system still would emphasize reading and math, but the tests in other subjects would be an additional indicator of a school's success or failure.

"We think this gives a more accurate measure of schools, students, and teachers," he said, "rather than deciding that all three would be measured on one test on one day."

About the secretary's assertion that 250,000 students would lose access to tutoring from outside providers, he countered that schools could chose to provide that tutoring from a roster of interventions.

The secretary spelled out all of her concerns about the draft in a letter to Rep. Miller and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif.

Oh, and one more thing: Rep. Miller said that tomorrow the House committee would post its discussion draft for the rest of the bill. That includes Reading First, teacher quality, and a whole bunch of other programs.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In her speech this morning, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made it clear she doesn't like the House committee's NCLB draft. In her prepared remarks and comments to reporters afterword, she focused her criticism on accountability and supplemental services.

The proposal to add alternative measures to the accountability system would complicate it and could "water down" the focus on reading and mathematics, she said. According to her estimates, there would be a 75 percent reduction in the number of Utah schools identified as failing to make adequate yearly progress.

And the section creating a