October 2008 Archives

One blogger's reaction to this week's NCLB rules is the latest sign that Democrats are divided over the future of federal education policy.

Robert Blomeyer has begun a campaign against the regulations. On my.barackobama.com, he writes:

This is an obvious continuation of the same old "top down" essentialist education agenda that the Bush administration has pushed over almost eight years.

Going any further with these "rule changes," which are nothing more than an "interpretation" of what this Secretary and her politically appointed staff interpret the legislation to mean, is a waste of time and $$ that the education community in this country can't afford.

On his blog at the Democratic Party's official page, Blomeyer writes the regs "MUST BE STOPPED." See also Blomeyer's comment on my Tuesday post.

But the two Democrats who oversee the congressional education committees don't agree with him. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., seems to like the rules (see the quotes in my story). The statement from Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., includes a few swipes at the Bush administration. But one of them essentially endorses the most important section of the rules: the requirement that states use the same method of calculating graduation rates and hold schools accountable for reaching goals based on those rates. By the way, both Kennedy and Miller were early Obama endorsers.

Where does Obama and his team stand on this one? We'll find out if he's elected on Tuesday.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 2:02 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

In announcing new NCLB rules yesterday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said they “will help us build on the progress of No Child Left Behind and set the table until Congress can act on this legislation.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., more or less agreed with her.

The rules are a “significant step forward in helping schools, parents, and teachers bring new solutions to the challenges of helping every child get ahead in school,” the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement. “The new regulations will allow schools to innovate while Congress works on new legislation to improve and strengthen the No Child Left Behind law.”

(You can find both quotes in the story I wrote for edweek.org.)

But a coalition of education groups disagrees. They say the package of new regulations—which require a uniform high school graduation rate, force districts to give tutoring companies space to serve students, among many other things—are a poor substitute for congressional reauthorization. (UPDATE: You can read the letter here.)

"The regulatory rule change proposals continue a pattern of piecemeal regulation and new requirements in NCLB, placing states and localities in a continuous cycle of frustrating efforts to interpret, change policies, and implement directions from the U.S. Department of Education," the groups wrote in a letter to Congress last month. The groups are the National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Association of School Administrators, the National School Boards Association, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

They're seeking a moratorium on the enforcement of the rules. Congress will return after the election to work on an economic stimulus bill. Such a moratorium could slip through Congress during the lame-duck session.

But how easy will that be when Sen. Kennedy's statement implies he would oppose it?

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 8:30 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The NCLB rules are up on the Federal Register's site. If you want to print them, make sure your printer tray is full. The document is 441 pages long.

Here's the department's summary from the introduction:

The most far-reaching change in these regulations is in how states, LEAs, and schools are held accountable for graduating students from high school. We believe that establishing a uniform and more accurate measure of calculating graduation rate that is comparable across states is a critical and essential step forward in improving high school accountability. New requirements governing the provision of SES and public school choice will help ensure that parents and students are informed of their options in a timely and effective manner and that LEAs make effective use of their funds to provide public school choice and SES. The changes to the regulations regarding SES will also help ensure that SES providers offer high-quality services. Changes addressing the inclusion of student subgroups in school and LEA adequate yearly progress determinations will ensure greater accountability for the achievement of all groups of students. Amendments to the regulations governing restructuring of schools in improvement will help ensure that LEAs take significant reform actions to improve chronically underperforming schools, as required by the statute. Requiring the inclusion of state data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress on state and local report cards will provide parents and the public with additional important information about the performance of the students in their state.

If you want to know how the final rules differ from the proposed ones, go straight to page 6.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:17 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will announce the new NCLB rules at noon tomorrow in Columbia, S.C. You won't have to be there to hear what she has to say.

According to this announcement from the Department of Education, you can watch via the Web at this page from South Carolina ETV.

Want more? You'll be able to log on for an interactive Webcast at this page on Thursday at 1 p.m.

Now all we need is for the department to create a forum on Second Life.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 12:47 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

In the word cloud I linked to yesterday, I noted that NCLB and the issues of standards, assessment, and accountability were overlooked in Tuesday's debate between education spokeswomen for the McCain and Obama campaigns. (Here's a link to video from the debate and the panel I moderated after it.)

Two panelists in the post-debate analysis explained why.

"There's a lot of ambivalence about No Child Left Behind," said Joe Viteritti of Hunter College. "People seem to like standards, but they're not crazy about testing, and it's hard to separate them."

The debaters mentioned many of the issues in the law, said Gene Hickok, the deputy secretary of education in President Bush's first term. But neither campaign wanted to be too attached to it.

Even though the law passed with a "strong bipartisan" support in 2001, Hickok said "both parties are running away from it a bit."

You can see both of their statements in the YouTube video below.

Here's what I have to add: The candidates aren't talking about standards and accountability because they don't know what they're going to do with it. Sure, both say they would change AYP to measure students' academic growth; that's what just about everybody says. But they're not talking about national standards, how to improve struggling schools, or how much money they'll spend on the law. Those are issues to avoid in the campaign season because there's little consensus on them. And with voters not concerned about education, the candidates don't need to answer those tough questions now. But, as Viteritti says, the next president will be forced to answer them.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 2:33 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

The Education Department will release the final version of its NCLB regs on Tuesday, according to FritzWire, the daily e-mail blast from Fritz Edelstein:

"NEW -- Tuesday, October 28, at 12:00 noon ET, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will deliver remarks in Columbia, South Carolina, announcing final regulations to strengthen the No Child Left Behind Act, including specific requirements that states implement a uniform graduation rate and enhance parents' leverage in accessing public school choice and supplemental educational services options for their children. Around 12:30 p.m. ET, materials (press release, fact sheet, pamphlet, etc.) and a link to the regulations will go live at www.ed.gov."

If you want to brush up on what's in the rules, here's 26,000 words for you to read over this weekend. No time for that? Here's my cheat sheet, my story about the department's original proposals, and blog items about them (see here and here.)

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 11:46 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

One of our Web producers created a word cloud from Tuesday night's debate between Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign and Linda Darling-Hammond of Obama. To see the debate and the session I moderated after it, you can register here.

Take a look at the word cloud generated with Wordle and see what jumps out:

The words of the night were "teachers" and "kids." You have to look closely to find "No Child Left Behind," "standards," or "assessments." You need a magnifying class to see "accountability."

The word cloud captures the fact that Keegan and Darling-Hammond had their longest and sharpest exchange over teachers.

"The alternatives will become mainstream and I think they should," Keegan said about Teach for America and Troops to Teachers.

Later, as the two concluded their time to question each other, Darling-Hammond said about alternative routes: "I don't think that builds your profession."

"Why is a TFA teacher not a teacher?" Keegan responded. "Of course, they are."

No matter who is president, this debate will continue as Congress turns to reauthorizing NCLB. The question of how to recruit, prepare, pay, and retain teachers—and make sure they're in classrooms where they're most needed—will be the one that receives the most attention of lawmakers.

Note: The word cloud excludes "senator," education," and other words that came up often but don't provide much of an indication of the focus of the debate.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 1:17 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

With the political world focused on the elections and the economy, education policy wonks are busy thinking about the future of NCLB.

Tomorrow, the Century Foundation formally unveils "Improving on No Child Left Behind," a book of essays addressing the law's flaws. You can read the CliffsNotes version in Richard Kahlenberg's essay in the Oct. 15 issue of Education Week, and his extended summary on the Century Foundation Web site.

In both the Education Week essay and the summary, Century's Kahlenberg cites three problems with NCLB: inadequate funding, inconsistent standards, and a lack of options for students attending low-performing schools. Kahlenberg briefly describes how contributors to the new book propose to solve those problems.

The book has thoughtful recommendations from scholars in the field. But it doesn't address one important issue: teacher quality. One reason last year's attempt to reauthorize NCLB fell apart was because Democrats couldn't agree whether to pursue experiments with teacher pay. While it may not be the biggest policy issue in the reauthorization, it's one of the biggest political ones. The scholarly community's advice could probably help in finding a solution.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 1:05 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., set off a brief firestorm this summer when he sponsored a bill to suspend NCLB's accountability rules. The NEA, NSBA, and others lined up behind the effort to attach the bill to the fiscal 2009 appropriations bill in the House. The bill stalled once civil rights groups announced they were dead set against it.

Now, Graves is getting his reward. He is one of 22 Republicans that the NEA is endorsing in the Nov. 4 election (see the whole list at the Education Intelligence Agency), and the union gave him an 'A' on its report card for the 110th Congress.

Graves' voting record doesn't always match the NEA's agenda. The Missouri Republican voted with the union half of the time on the 20 roll call votes that it uses to evaluate House members. That's an increase over previous years. In the 208th Congress, for example, Graves voted for the NEA position as little as 30 percent of that time.

But in the current Congress, Graves voted against the NEA's position on several bread-and-butter issues (minimum wage, union rights, children's health insurance, employee protections, and school construction). He did side with the union in opposing an amendment to create a federal merit-pay plan. Of Graves' pro-NEA votes, most weren't tough choices; all but one had 270 House members supporting NEA's position.

When I last reported on the NEA's legislative scorecard, the NEA's Randy Moody told me that the union had started to look at the total work of a congressional member. Attempting to halt NCLB accountability must have counted for something.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 4:58 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

After reading my explanation about why NCLB doesn't matter—at least for now—Mike Petrilli assigns me the task deconstructing what Sarah Palin said about the law in her "October surprise" on education in Thursday's debate. (Sorry I'm late getting back to you, Mike. I took Friday off to be with my sons and go to their parent-teacher conferences.)

But I don't have much to say about Palin's statement. She thinks NCLB needs to be more flexible, and "it's not doing the job though." What politician wouldn't agree? She says standards are too low. Lots of people have said that. Mike Petrilli and his boss have been some of the loudest voices in that choir. She believes "our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving." But she doesn't say which level of government should do the ramping.

These are the type of general statements that won't matter when the next version of NCLB is written. Even if Palin is vice president when the law is reauthorized, what she said on Thursday night won't matter.

Mike, maybe I'll get back to you after Barack Obama and John McCain are done with their town hall meeting tomorrow night.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 5:55 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

Why hasn't NCLB: Act II been updated lately? I've been wondering the same thing myself.

The short answer is that I've been consumed reporting stories about the election. See my latest story and a NCLB-related entry at Campaign K-12.

The long answer is that the news about NCLB doesn't matter right now. Sure, people are talking about it. The Fordham Institute put on an entertaining debate about the law last week. See the recaps (here and here) from Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier, who argued against the law. The American Enterprise Institute held a seminar on testing that turned into a critique of NCLB. Science published a story last week stating what many people consider to be obvious: Schools won't meet the goal of universal proficiency by 2014.

But the ed policy world is thinking bigger than NCLB right now. Just look at two events on the upcoming calendar. Tomorrow the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is having an event about "the state of education in America." No mention of NCLB there. On Monday, the Center on Education Policy is holding a forum on "rethinking the federal role in elementary and secondary education." NCLB will be a prime topic, I'm sure. But the real purpose is to think beyond NCLB.

That brings me to why I haven't been feeding to this blog. There's nothing to say that will have an immediate impact. The Web at its best is a medium that tells you something that is happening right now. Nothing happening right now on NCLB is urgent. Everything is laying the groundwork for the future. Judging from recent events and the priorities of the presidential candidates, NCLB's future won't be determined for a year or so. We can speculate all we want (see Mike Petrilli's latest idea). But we won't know the parameters of the debate until we know the names of the players who will be participating in it. That includes the president, education secretary, and the lower level political appointees at the Department of Education.

So what to expect from this blog in the short term? Posting will be less frequent than the daily dose I provided from July 2007 to July 2008. The items will focus news that will matter in the immediate future. Posting probably will return to daily once election is over and the next administration is starting to take shape. Until then, you may want to opt for an e-mail subscription (enter your address in the box under the widget in the right column).

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 1:59 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)