NCLB: Act II

The demand for supplemental educational services hasn't kept pace with the growth of federal dollars to pay for them, according to a new analysis from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Even though the number of districts required to offer SES under NCLB has grown in recent years, the percentage of students signing up for the free tutoring has declined, the 19-page paper says. These numbers are similar to national numbers that I collected from the U.S. Department of Education for this story three weeks ago.

"What is striking is that the increase in the number of eligible students has not translated into an increased demand for SES," writes Gail L. Sunderman, who tracked participation in 11 districts from 2002-03 through 2006-07.

Evaluations of SES have been mixed and "are not encouraging," Sunderman adds.

The future of SES is one of the top 10 issues to be addressed in NCLB reauthorization. SES providers are touting their own research that show increases in student achievement. They have a powerful ally in Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.

But this new report appears to give their opponents some evidence to counter the arguments in favor of SES.

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For the first time in months, the current issue of Education Week doesn't have an story describing the incremental progress (or lack thereof) on NCLB legislation. But the Education Week staff still managed to find several NCLB treats to share with you.

Christina A. Samuels delivers a front-page report on efforts to require "universal design for learning" in NCLB ('Universal Design' Concept Pushed for Education). A coalition of education groups wants states to create lesson plans that address a variety of learning styles. The language is in the discussion draft circulated by House members and in a bipartisan Senate bill (see this blog item).

Debra Viadero reports on a new study that suggests schools are working to improve achievement of students across the spectrum, not just those "on the bubble" of becoming proficient (Study Finds No 'Educational Triage' Driven by NCLB). Note that several researchers point out the limitations of the new study, including one scholar that has found contrary results.

New federal rules on racial reporting won't require states to change the way they categorize students' race under NCLB, Scott J. Cech reports (Ed. Dept. Holds Firm on Racial-Data Rules). States will be allowed to choose to align their racial classifications under NCLB with other reports required by the feds. But that could radically change their AYP results in racial subgroups.

On the Reading First beat, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo suggests that a new report shows that people in the field like the program (State, Local Officials Again Find 'Reading First' Useful). Despite implementation problems, she writes that "Reading First is worth preserving or expanding."

In the Commentary section, sociologist Jennifer Booher-Jennings compares the results of NCLB's accountability system with a federal program for hospitals (Closing the Measurement Gap). She points out less than 1 percent of hospitals fall under the federal accountability web, but 26 percent of public schools do. "How is it possible that education has so many more organizations on its failing list," she asks. "It's not that there is a performance gap between schools and hospitals. The trouble is the profound measurement gap between education and medicine." That ought to give lawmakers something to chew on as they work on reauthorization.

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Don't bother clicking on any of my links to the House's discussion draft over the past two months.

The House Education and Labor Committee has taken down the documents it posted on Aug. 28 and Sept. 6. Now all you get is this friendly message: "The committee has received many helpful comments regarding its NCLB discussion draft and is currently in the process of reviewing them."

The panel pulled the documents because "elements of the draft were growing outdated," Tom Kiley, a committee spokesman, told me in an e-mail. He didn't mention which parts of the proposal are no longer under consideration. But he did say that Democratic leaders are continuing to seek compromises with Republicans and education lobbyists.

As to whether this action is a sign that the NCLB is stalled and won't get reauthorized in the current Congress, I'll leave that for you to speculate. I welcome your comments.

P.S. If anyone saved electronic versions of the discussion drafts, please e-mail them to me here. All I have is paper copies. Thanks.

UPDATE: The links are not quite dead yet. The committee's Republicans still have the drafts posted here. Thanks for the readers who sent me electronic versions. They'll come in handy someday, I'm sure.

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The next version to NCLB will almost certainly use growth models to measure adequate yearly progress. The idea is in the House's discussion draft and just about every set of recommendations to improve the law (see here, here, and here).

A new report out today suggests the law should allow new forms of assessing students, too.

The report from a Delaware-based group says that NCLB should let states use computer-adaptive tests instead of grade-level tests, which are usually given with pencil and paper.

Grade-level tests, the groups says, are unable to measure progress of students who start the year either far below or far above grade level. Students at the lower end of the spectrum are going to fail a 4th grade test, even if their academic standing improves from 1st grade level to 3rd grade level. Similarly, high-achieving 4th graders will ace their tests, even if their achievement level didn't increase during the year.

The solution is computer adaptive tests, the reports says. The adaptive tests pull from a bank of test questions with a wide range of difficulty. The computer adjusts the difficulty of the questions it poses based on the students' performance on previous questions. If the student is answering questions at grade level, it gradually increases the difficulty. If he or she is struggling at grade level, the computer decreases the rigor of the questions to identify where the student performs.

In a pilot project, the Delaware group found that the adaptive tests did a better job identifying students' academic growth than grade-level tests. If the tests were used to determine schools' AYP standing, twice as many high-poverty schools would have met their AYP goals in the 2006-07 school year, the report predicts.

Computer-adaptive testing hasn't been discussed in the reauthorization debate so far. With this report, it might be. In anticipation of the report, Reps. David Wu, D-Ore., and Tom Petri, R-Wis., last week introduced a bill to allow states to use adaptive testing instead of grade-level testing last week. Both are members of the House Education and Labor Committee. Rep. Petri is the Republican member with the most seniority on the panel.

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What does the namesake of a civil-rights leader from the South Side of Chicago have in common with a Caucasian Republican from Alaska who lives seven miles north of the Arctic Circle?

They agree on how to fix No Child Left Behind.

Boardbuzz—the official blog of the National School Boards Association—announced in this item that Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., has endorsed the association's NCLB bill. The bill, H.R. 648, is sponsored by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, a former teacher.

This alliance shows how mixed up the politics of NCLB can be. Jackson's action is another sign in the split among members of the Congressional Black Caucus (which I've written about here and here). Likewise, Young's sponsorship of the NSBA plan highlights that not all Republicans fit neatly into the same NCLB camp. NCLB stalwarts want to hold the line against changes, while conservatives want to turn all of NCLB into a block grant. Yet Young and five other Republicans are aligned with a school organization that wants significant changes to accountability and other measures without block granting the bill's programs. Jackson is the third Democrat to co-sponsor NSBA bill.

The Boardbuzz item links to a helpful document that compares current law, the NSBA plan, and the House discussion draft. You can see that NSBA would get some of what it wants from the House draft. Is it enough to win the association's endorsement? In testimony and written comments to the committee, NSBA stopped short of backing the draft, saying it appreciated some of the proposals and is concerned about others.

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Since I last talked to Richard Simmons, his effort to insert physical education into the NCLB debate hasn't made much progress. The House's NCLB draft excluded the FIT Kids Act, which would require states to guarantee students have access to physical education. And the draft's list of potential multiple measures wouldn't include physical education. Both are things Simmons is lobbying for.

But he isn't giving up. The fitness star's Web site has a long entry explaining that he's excited about the progress of his proposal to add physical education requirements to NCLB.

The biggest positive sign, he says, is that Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has introduced a version of the FIT Kids Act in the Senate. The bill would require states to work towards giving elementary school students 150 minutes of P.E. every week and 225 minutes a week in the upper grades.

"IT IS STILL POSSIBLE, LOOK HOW FAR WE HAVE COME!!!!!!!!!!!!," the post says near the end. (Yes, that's 12 exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Bonus link: Kevin Carey last week had this stunning post about his own brush with Simmons. I, too, wasted away many days in my 20s, but I never was going to the mall looking for a chance to meet Simmons. I saved that for later ... in the noble pursuit of journalism.

Bonus video: Below is Simmons on the Late Show with David Letterman last week. In it, he says that the NEA is a partner in lobbying for the FIT Kids Act. He stands up on the couch and leads a chant: "P.E. in Schools. That's the Golden Rule." Letterman is speechless. I know the feeling.

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Advocates for environmental education are continuing to push their cause. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., has signed up to be the Senate's sponsor of the No Child Left Inside Act.

“The No Child Left Inside Act will help reconnect more kids with nature and restore environmental education in America’s classrooms,” Reed says in a press release from the coalition of environmental and education groups pushing the bill.

On the coalition's Web site, you'll see that it has been partially successful in its lobbying, at least in the House. In its comments on the Title I section of the House's NCLB discussion draft, the coalition notes that the draft doesn't list environmental education as a core subject. In a separate response to the Title V draft, the coalition expresses its gratitude that the draft includes several grants to support environmental education. But it suggests that those grants wouldn't work because the Title V proposal wouldn't require states applying for the money to develop "environmental literacy" plans.

Maybe the coalition will do better in the Senate. As the last paragraph of the press release points out, Reed could be an influential advocate. He is a member the committee that sets education policy and the subcommittee that oversees education spending.

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Even though lawmakers aren't making news about the future of NCLB, the current issue of Education Week includes stories that touch on the hallmarks of the law: accountability, improving reading skills of the lowest-performing students, and rewarding teachers for improving students' test scores. Throw in a commentary about narrowing the curriculum, and you've got a full plate of NCLB in front of you.

As for the news, Alyson Klein writes about the looming budget faceoff between Democrats and President Bush (Bush, Democrats Face Education Spending Showdown). I've already blogged about the story here, mentioning that it is too soon to predict the outcome.

I wrapped up many items from this blog for my story (Bush Says He Would Veto NCLB Reauthorization Bill That Lacked Key Elements). One piece of news that hadn't made the blog is the meeting between leading House Democrats and Republicans last week. I hear they plan to meet again this week. For the last week's highlights on the blog, see here, here, and here.

To check out Canadian-style accountability, Lynn Olson traveled to Ontario. "The province's education strategy focuses less on public rating and rankings of schools and more on identifying and spreading effective practices from the ground up," she reports (Ontario Pins Hopes on Practices, Not Testing, to Achieve). One key ingredient is to hire "student success teachers" to advocate for high school students. Another is to add art, music, and gym teachers to free up elementary school teachers for curricular planning.

Back in the United States, big-city districts are starting to focus their Reading First dollars on serving English-language learners (Reading Aid Seen to Lag in ELL Focus). Those efforts may be mandatory for all if Congress adopts two words currently in the House NCLB draft. The proposal would require Reading First services to be "linguistically appropriate" for students, Mary Ann Zehr reports.

"Is Reading First working," Kathleen Kennedy Manzo asks ('Reading First' Panel Awaits Program Evaluation Report). The answer may be in four forthcoming evaluations of the $1 billion-a-year program.

Vaishali Honawar points out that New York City's merit-pay plan announced last week "is based almost entirely on raising student test scores" (N.Y.C. Unveils Merit-Pay Plan for Teachers in High-Need Schools). The NEA might not be happy to hear about that, judging from previous comments.

Finally, on the Commentary page, S. Paul Reville has an answer to complaints that NCLB and other accountability measures narrow the curriculum (Stop the Narrowing of the Curriculum By 'Right-Sizing' School Time). "A reauthorized NCLB could strike a major blow for equity by breaking the barriers of our one-size-fits-all time paradigm," Reville writes. "The next phase of education reform should begin with leaders calibrating the time requirements necessary to broadly and fully educate all children to sufficiently high standards to participate, thrive, and succeed in our society."

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The California Teachers Association continues its assault on NCLB. To supplement its Web ads, it has turned to YouTube and radio ads.

The YouTube video tears at heartstrings and predicts that NCLB will lead to the end of public education as we know it.

The radio ad includes standard union criticism of the law. "Students should be judged by more than a standardized test score," CTA President David Sanchez says. Performance pay "means more teaching to the test and will make it harder to attract teachers into lower-performing schools," he adds. The ad is available in English and Spanish. You can listen to them on the CTA homepage.

Interesting to note that the radio ad doesn't refer to the Pelosi/Miller bill. The union's Web site continues to do so, though.

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Here's a quick followup on the New York City merit-pay plan announced last week. The United Federation of Teachers' blog says the union-endorsed NYC plan sends a signal to Congress that this is the best way to do performance pay.

"New York City is sending a clear message to the members of Congress considering the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind: the way to improve schools does not lie down the road of setting teacher against teacher, but of bringing teachers together in common cause and effort on behalf of their students," the UFT's blog—EdWize—says in this post.

But, as I wrote earlier, Republicans are unlikely to subject federally financed performance pay to collective bargaining.

Even so, many UFT members aren't enamored with their union's proposal. Read through the comments on EdWize, and you'll see that several members don't agree with their leadership.

"It is a de facto acceptance of the NCLB principle that test scores are the only way to measure growth," ILuvteaching writes. "I don’t get how I just got another e-mail urging me to fax a letter to Congress against merit pay in NCLB, yet here we are giving it a foot hold in our schools. Whatever happened to equal pay for equal work, the most basic principle of unionism?"

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While the NCLB reauthorization debate is almost exclusively behind closed doors right now, the fight over its funding is out in the public.

Alyson Klein's story for the next issue of Education Week (which was posted on www.edweek.org today) suggests that it's too soon to predict what might happen. More than 140 House Republicans signed a letter to the president in May saying that they would support the president if he vetoes spending bills. But some of them turned around to vote for the House's bill that appropriates money for education, labor, and other domestic programs—a bill the president almost certainly will reject.

This story from yesterday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) predicts that the president will win the funding fight. But would a budget victory cost him NCLB reauthorization? Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wis., suggests it would. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee says he won't vote for a NCLB bill if the president doesn't agree to finance the current law. Lots of Democrats may follow his lead.

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Lots of talk in the education blogosphere about New York City's merit-pay deal. (See here, here, and here.) The Swift & Change Able Charles Barone suggests that this announcement could be a turning point on the NCLB debate over teacher pay.

I see one key element in the New York City plan that could be a congressional roadblock: Union approval. In New York City's case, the United Federation of Teachers' approval was central to getting the deal done. Unions will certainly point to UFT's support as the reason why teachers are willing to experiment with merit pay.

I'm hearing House Democrats are contemplating changing their draft to require local union officials to approve any district's proposal to spend federal money for alternative pay plans. That may make it easier for Democrats to vote for the bill, but it would drive away Republicans, I've been told.

If Democrats want a bipartisan bill, they'll need to be more creative to satisfy both the unions and Republicans. Remember, if they don't get the Republican who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to agree to the bill, they'll need a lot of congressional Republicans with them on this.

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Senate aides last night circulated a discussion draft of sections of NCLB. The draft addresses issues that aren't controversial, avoiding topics such accountability and teacher pay. Both Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., the panel's senior Republican, endorsed the draft.

Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for the HELP Committee, e-mailed this response to my query about the process:

"Chairman Kennedy is pleased that progress has been made, working with committee members, on many issues related to this reauthorization. The draft legislative language released yesterday includes many improvements to current law, but much remains to be done on key issues, including accountability and teacher quality. Chairman Kennedy looks forward to working with committee members on addressing these issues and making further improvements in the coming weeks."

Sens. Kennedy and Enzi often work closely to identify areas where they agree and focus on those first, leaving the controversial stuff for later. The new draft shows that they are working together and are serious about moving a bill.

Sorry for the lack of links. The HELP Committee distributed the draft to interested parties. (I wasn't one of them.) The committee did not publish the draft online.

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In response to one member's "strong concerns" about the House's NCLB draft, two members of the Congressional Black Caucus yesterday said that they like much of the proposal. They add that the caucus—known by its acronym, CBC—hasn't taken a position on the bill.

"While a quality education for all children is certainly a priority for all members of the CBC, we respect the right of each CBC member to evaluate the specific legislation as it moves through the legislative process and to take whatever final position he or she sees fit," Reps. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Va., and Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., write in a letter to all their House colleagues. "Therefore, there is no single CBC position on this issue."

Scott and Davis are the co-chairs of the black caucus' education committee, and both are members of the House Education and Labor Committee.

They go on to write that they like much of what's in the House draft. They believe it would improve teacher quality overall and attack the achievement gap by dealing with the inequitable distribution of high-quality teachers. The draft's proposed changes to AYP, they write, would be "innovative new models that continue to hold states accountable for the achievement of all students while rewarding the progress of all students." And the draft's proposed interventions to turn around schools would distinguish between "chronically underperforming" schools and those that need a little assistance.

Scott and Davis conclude that time is of the essence, and they want an NCLB bill to pass in the current Congress.

"Five years down the road, we may realize we did not create a perfect bill; few ever are," they write. "We may not embrace every element of the bill with open arms; however, we feel it would be a disservice to our children to ignore the deficiencies that we know exist, and we believe we would be remiss if we did not take this opportunity to work together to try to correct them."

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With congressional leaders and staff working behind the scenes to hammer out differences on NCLB, the current issue of Education Week looks at some little-noticed issues in the debate over law's future.

For 'Scientific' Label in Law Stirs Debate, Debra Viadero reports on the "quiet debate" over the definition of "scientifically based research." The phrase, which appears more than 100 times in the law, currently favors randomized or experimental studies. The House's draft would allow other types of studies to fall under that definition, so long as they aim to determine whether educational interventions are effective. The Department of Education's research chief isn't "thrilled" with the proposal. Neither is the Knowledge Alliance, a coalition of education research organizations. The American Educational Research Association is endorsing it. So is the Software & Information Industry Association.

For Bush, Others Want Law to Go Beyond Basics, I focus on the words "or above," which President Bush added to his definition of NCLB's goal. As in: "Every child must learn to read and do math at, or above, grade level," he said last week. Two-thirds of Americans seem to endorse that concept, according to a poll released last week.

In the Commentary section, check out Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences by Rick Stiggins. The first myth is: "The path to school improvement is paved with standardized tests." Although Stiggins doesn't address NCLB specifically, the essay suggests he believes the law's accountability measures are invalid.

Also see Not Who But What is Left Behind. Barbara M. Stock writes that "our current overemphasis on standardized tests ... pressuring students to learn the right answer—these are major steps backward."

"In our time of 'no child left behind,' which places tremendous emphasis on standardization, I fear that the essential lessons for becoming a good American are precisely what are being left behind," Stock concludes.

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The panelists at the American Enterprise Institute today touched on accountability, national standards, and the universal proficiency goal. All of that was to be expected; the panelists were discussing on a new book addressing those issues.

But the most telling comments came when the panelists mentioned the House's draft to reauthorize NCLB.

In talking about the draft's proposal to turn around low-performing schools, Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said that the proposal incorporates some of his group's ideas. But those ideas have been combined with so many others that he's not sure the group will end up supporting it.

"Our proposals have been turned into such a rat's nest that it's not clear we can support it," Casserly told the session.

The Council proposed a way to simplify the interventions that happen in schools that fail to make AYP. The plan would give schools three years to turn themselves around, using specific instructional and research-based approaches. Under current law, schools must take a new step every year they fail to make AYP. That doesn't give any intervention time to take hold and show progress, Casserly argued in this congressional testimony (see page 6).

Even though many of the group's ideas are in the discussion draft, Casserly said, they have been combined with complex proposals to use multiple measures and differentiate consequences based on how far schools fall short of their AYP targets. The proposal would complicate a process the Council of the Great City Schools is trying to simplify.

The council's experience is similar to that of others. Take, for example, the NEA. The union wants to add measures used in calculating AYP. That's included in the House draft, but not to the degree the union would like. On the other hand, the draft also includes teacher pay proposals that the union considers a deal breaker.

The end result, as Casserly told me after the AEI session, is that "not too many people are jumping up and down in support" of the House draft.

But he declined to predict that the effort to reauthorize NCLB will fail. After working on the six previous ESEA reauthorizations, Casserly said he's given up trying to predict what Congress will do.

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President Bush today said that he would veto a version of NCLB that he doesn't like. It's the first time he's used the threat.

"Any effort to weaken No Child Left Behind Act will get a presidential veto," he said at a town hall meeting in Rogers, Ark. "I believe this piece of legislation is important, and I believe it's hopeful, and I believe it's necessary to make sure we got a educated group of students who can compete in the global economy when they get older."

Later at the event, he said he would veto appropriations bills this year. He didn't mention NCLB or any other specific program. As I've written before, it's a good bet NCLB will play a role in what the president predicts will be a "fiscal showdown."

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Chester E. Finn Jr. and Frederick M. Hess (aka Checker and Rick) keep saying that NCLB, as as its currently constructed, won't result in better schools. Their first point is always that the goal of universal proficiency needs to change.

The current goal is "noble but determinedly unrealistic," as Hess writes with Rosemary Kendrick in this Education Week commentary. In this piece for The Education Gadfly, Hess and Finn call the goal "noble yet naïve."

"The inevitable result is cynicism and frustration among educators and a 'compliance' mentality among state and local officials," they write.

The best course, they conclude in the Gadfly, is for the federal government to focus on specific tasks. Among them are setting "common standards" (aka "national standards") and "promot[ing] a clear understanding of what constitutes unacceptable school performance."

Just last week, President Bush restated his belief the NCLB's goal should remain. Secretary Spellings has defended the goal in recent speeches (see here and here). But Finn, Hess, and others are starting a drumbeat against it. Will they be able to change the debate in reauthorization?

You can hear Finn and Hess state their case at this event to promote their new book on NCLB.

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Yesterday, Republicans signaled through this news story that they don't like the House draft. Today, I found a Democrat who has his own complaints.

Rep. Albert R. Wynn, D-Md., wrote the chairman of the House education committee last week to "express my strong concerns regarding the direction we appear to be heading" in NCLB reauthorization. (Sorry, no link. The letter is not online.)

Here are a few choice quotes:

"I am deeply concerned that the draft continues to rely so heavily on measuring schools based on standardized test results .... We cannot get a true picture of student and school achievement without looking at the range of factors that go into making a successful school."

"I am also concerned that the draft does not address class size."

"I am concerned about provisions in the draft that would tie teacher pay to student test scores."

In conclusion, Wynn writes: "I fear that the path we are heading down will only exacerbate these flaws rather than correct them."

Wynn sent copies of the letter to all members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Although Wynn is not a member of the Education and Labor Committee, four members of the black caucus are. Once a bill makes it to the committee, it'll be noteworthy to hear what they're saying.

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You'll need a subscription to read this Roll Call story, but the headline tells the tale: Talks Stall on No Child Left Behind.

The principals on the House Education and Labor Committee aren't making any progress on the issues separating them, the story says. It mentions merit pay for teachers as a roadblock, but doesn't name others. Judging from past statements, the list includes multiple measures, choice and supplemental educational services, local assessments, and maybe some smaller details.

The story concludes noting that the clock is ticking. We're in mid-October, and there are two months at most left before Congress shuts down for the year. Factor in breaks around Election Day and Thanksgiving, and there's not much time left to get NCLB through the House this year.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to Alyson Klein for blogging about yesterday's NCLB meeting at the White House. Some of you know that I have a weekly appointment with a bunch of 5th grade boys on a soccer field on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. That made it hard to blog yesterday afternoon.

I wanted to follow up with a couple thoughts.

1.) The presidential bully pulpit works. A former aide to Secretary of Education Richard Riley once told me that Riley could hammer away on an issue for weeks and make little progress. But if President Clinton highlighted the issue in one speech, members of Congress and the public started to pay attention. This is President Bush's third statement on NCLB since NAEP scores came out two weeks ago. (For all three, see here, here, and here.) He may be able to focus the discussion back on the reauthorization debate.

2.) The president proposes, but Congress disposes. This summary of constitutional powers explains the limits of President Bush's power in this process. Congress will decide about the nitty-gritty details in NCLB reauthorization. The president will have a place at the table in those deliberations. But when the bill reaches his desk, he'll have two choices: Sign it or veto it.

3.) Show me the money. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's statement is a reminder that the next big NCLB fight will be over money. As this brief from the New America Foundation points out, Congress and the president are headed toward a budget showdown. NCLB will be one of the programs they fight over.

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If you want to see how NCLB dominates the K-12 landscape, look at the front page of this week's issue of Education Week. Three of the four stories on the front page are directly related to the law. The other one mentions NCLB in the fourth paragraph.

In Federal Rule Yields Hope for Science, Sean Cavanagh reminds us that states must assess students in science starting in the current school year. Note that the Department of Education has approved just five states' science tests. Also see that six states will use their science scores as the "other academic indicator" in determining AYP. The question of whether science scores will be part of the mix in the future, though, is still under debate in reauthorization. Science education groups and business groups are supporting that move.

Kathleen Kennedy Manzo culled through The Proficiency Illusion for Report Pans How States Set the Bar. She and the chart that goes with the story highlight the wide disparity in states' expectations. In Colorado, a 3rd grader has to read at approximately the 6th percentile to be considered proficient under NCLB. A 3rd grader in South Carolina, by contrast, must read at the 60th percentile.

(As a side note: New York Times columnist Bob Herbert yesterday cited the report while arguing for the end of high-stakes testing. The Fordham Foundation responded quickly. "That's like reacting to the Enron accounting scandal by calling for the end of accounting," Fordham VP Michael Petrilli wrote in a letter to the editor. "The answer is not to throw out testing, but to do testing right.")

For Provision on Tutoring Raises Renewal Issues, I spell out the questions facing the future of supplemental educational services, which are available to Title I students in schools that don't make AYP for two or more consecutive years. Providers are trying to prove the success of their programs, while school officials want to protect their Title I money for their own instructional efforts. Add this to the list of issues that must be worked out before NCLB can be reauthorized.

The final front-page story is Mobility of Native American Students Can Pose Challenges to Achievement. Students' mobility makes it difficult for schools serving Native Americans to make AYP, Mary Ann Zehr notes.

On the back page, Harold Pratt argues in Science Education's 'Overlooked Ingredient' that schools need to focus more intently on science education in the elementary school years. In his commentary, Pratt writes that educators can't wait until middle school to play "catch up" in science. By then, he argues, students lack the grounding in science that they need to succeed. Although assessing scientific knowledge under NCLB is important, he says that students need experience "in the nature of science" as part of their curriculum.

Also note this online commentary: Reauthorize the NCLB With National Standards. The essay wasn't written by a Washington think-tank type. It was written by an Advanced Placement teacher. Following up on my post from yesterday: Are we going to be hearing from more teachers that they want national standards?

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Alyson Klein

President Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings met Tuesday with civil rights leaders at the White House to “strategize” on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. In remarks to reporters after the meeting, Bush said that recent results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress demonstrate that the law is helping to close the achievement gap between low-income, minority students and their more advantaged peers.

“Our goal is to have every child reading and doing math at grade level by 2014," the president said. "That seems reasonable to me. Seems like a reasonable thing to ask, is to have every child reading at grade level by 2014, or being able to do math at grade level by 2014. So now is the time not to roll back the accountability or water down standards.”

Here's a link to the full speech.

That has more or less been the administration’s message since January’s State of the Union address. But as Congress considers renewal of the law, the White House event served as a reminder to lawmakers that the administration doesn’t want to see its core principles changed significantly in reauthorization—and that some traditional Democratic allies in the civil rights community largely support that direction.

Civil rights advocates attending the meeting included Amy Wilkins, a vice president at the Education Trust, a Washington-based organization which advocates for poor and minority children; Mike Casserly, the executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban school districts; and Janet Murguia, the president of the Washington-based National Council of La Raza.

It’s tough to say how much of an effect the statement will have on congressional education leaders, who were quick to point out that the Bush administration has had a hand in shaping the public perception of the law.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, countered that if President Bush is serious about closing the achievement gap, he would have proposed significantly more funding for the law in his annual budget requests.

“It’s regrettable that the Bush administration has made the renewal of the No Child Left Behind school reform law far more difficult by its failure to fully fund and implement it,” said Kennedy in a statement released after the speech. “The president is right that we must continue to hold schools accountable for results. But over the past five years of working with this law, we have learned more about what works and what does not work and we should take those lessons into account.”

The statement also said that Sen. Kennedy plans to introduce “reauthorization language” (not clear if that’s a draft or a bonafide bill) by the end of the month.

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Two prominent think tankers agreed to discuss their new book on turning around low-performing schools under NCLB in this edweek.org chat.

But most questions centered around standards. "Why is it obvious to just about everyone EXCEPT the people that make policy that national standards are needed?" one principal asked. "This is SUCH a no-brainer, it boggles my mind."

Chatter Chester E. Finn, Jr., agreed. But he responded that the failed efforts to establish national standards and tests in the 1990s have left members of Congress "quite allergic to this idea."

Later, in response to a question about a national test, Finn predicts the odds of that happening may increase after the 2008 elections.

Finn and his co-author, Frederick M. Hess, did get a few questions about the topic of their new book, No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB. But it's interesting that Ed Week readers—many of them front-line practioners—have national standards on their minds.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With help from their union brothers to the west, Nevada teachers are getting exercised about the pay-for-performance proposals in NCLB.

The Nevada State Education Association held a rally in Reno on Saturday to announce their opposition to proposals in the House's NCLB draft that would experiment with paying teachers based on their students' achievement. The California Teachers Association's president helped lead the rally, according to this CTA press release.

Some of the Nevada leaders plan to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week, according to this television report. Earlier this year, Reid called NCLB "vastly underfunded" and "too punitive."

Maybe Nevada will become in a key state in the Senate NCLB debate, just as California is in the House.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we start another week of waiting for legislative action, let's pause and note where NCLB fits in the larger world of presidential politics.

In the field, two candidates have called for the elimination of NCLB. (See here and here.) One is a Democrat; the other a Republican. One is a governor and a former House member; the other is a former senator who voted for NCLB in 2001.

At first blush, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the Democrat, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, the Republican, appear to be strange bedfellows. But when you align them with the the politics in Congress, you can see how they came to essentially the same position on NCLB.

Richardson is looking for the support of teachers' unions and other liberals who see the law as unworkable. Thompson is trying to reach the conservatives who see NCLB as an unnecessary intrusion on local decisions.

At the beginning of the year, Washington conventional wisdom said presidential politics would eventually interfere with NCLB reauthorization. As of now, it looks as the presidential field is reflecting the political alignment in Congress. We'll have to wait and see what happens once the field starts to narrow.

Also note: Republican Tommy Thompson had the closest connection to NCLB of all the candidates. The former Wisconsin governor had co-chaired a bipartisan commission that proposed a comprehensive list of changes to NCLB. But now he's out of the race.

Here are a couple notes on where other Democrats stand ...

Sen. Joe Biden wants Congress to wait until 2009 to reauthorize NCLB.

Even though former Sen. John Edwards says NCLB needs a "total overhaul," Sara Mead writes that his recent education proposal addresses "a glaring shortcoming" of the current law: How to fix the worst-performing schools.

Merit pay and pay for performance has entered into the NCLB debate, but Sen. Barack Obama hasn't followed up with a specific proposals after endorsing such programs in a July speech, Mead reminds us.

This spring, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told an AFT affiliate that NCLB was being implemented with a heavy hand and a small checkbook. Last week, she won