February 2009 Archives

On the campaign trail, President Obama pledged: "You don’t reform our schools by opposing efforts to fully fund No Child Left Behind." He said that in his biggest education speech of the general election campaign.

The economic stimulus package was a down payment on fulfilling that promise. Under the law, the Title I grants to districts for the education of disadvantaged students will receive $10 billion, split over fiscal years 2009 and 2010. The money makes up almost half of the difference between the program's fiscal 2008 appropriation ($13.8 billion) and what NCLB advocates consider full funding for fiscal 2007 (the final year for which the law set authorization levels).

But once the stimulus money runs out, will Congress and Obama have the money to replace it? That's a big question, especially if you look at the fiscal 2009 appropriations bill under consideration in the House.

Under that bill, funding for school districts under Title I would rise to $14.5 billion—a 4.3 percent jump. That would leave a steep climb for the program to receive $25 billion in fiscal 2011.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 3:23 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

At the National Governors Association's winter meeting this weekend, most news organizations focused on some governors' reluctance to take portions of the stimulus money. (For examples of the coverage, see here and here.)

But the NGA took one significant vote that went unnoticed elsewhere. Its members approved a policy statement that could lead to a set of national standards.

The statement hasn't been released to the public yet. But governors told me that it advocates putting state leaders in charge of a national effort to establish a "common core" of standards defining what students should know.

The statement dovetails with the report released in December by the NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve Inc., a group of governors and business leaders. That report called for a process of benchmarking the standards of high-achieving countries to determine what content they consider most important.

"We want states to improve their standards, and one way to look at that is through international benchmarking," Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, told me.

But he insisted that the process shouldn't "federalize education."

The setting of standards has "got to be done by the state and local governments," he said.

While the NGA statement is no surprise, given the organization's work with the CCSSO and Achieve. But it is noteworthy because:

1.) It adds momentum to the move toward national standards. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been saying national standards will be a priority for the Obama administration. "What I want to do is be the catalyst," Duncan said on C-SPAN this weekend on an interview show with my colleague Michele McNeil and Libby Quaid of the Associated Press. "I want to take all of the hard work and make it happen." Also last week, AFT President Randi Weingarten endorsed national standards in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

2.) The policy sailed through the NGA without any controversy or significant debate. Thirteen years ago at a summit of governors and business leaders, the biggest debate was whether states should volunteer to set their own standards. (See the Ed Week story on the meeting.) Now, all governors are willing to endorse a project that could lead to national standards.

After the NGA adjourned, I walked over to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for a panel featuring former Secretary of Education Rod Paige, former Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, historian and commentator Diane Ravitch, and Bruno Manno of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. They were convened to comment on Fordham's recent report documenting variability in states' expectations under NCLB's accountability rules. The panelists disagreed on exactly how to fix the accountability system. But they all agreed that our country should have national standards.

But don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the consensus, Fordham President Checker Finn told me afterword. If you scratch "a millimeter below the surface" on national standards, significant differences emerge on who should set the standards, what should be in them, and other hot-button issues.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 6:34 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Over at Swift & Changable, Charlie Barone hands over the blog to MargoMom, a frequent commenter here and elsewhere.

Charlie's headline (Margot/Mom on "Becoming a Part of the 'Reformy Crowd'") tells the story. But a better one might have been: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love NCLB."

With a nod to Dr. Strangelove, of course.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 11:33 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a thought experiment:

As a parent, I know that my son's elementary school in a "leafy green" suburb of Washington made AYP last year. But what if that school had needed to make AYP as it's defined in South Carolina, where the proficiency levels are notoriously higher? Or California, which has set low annual targets until the 2014 goal of universal proficiency begins to loom? Or Maryland, which has the smallest "n" size of any state—a fact that makes it more difficult to make AYP across all of the subgroups of students?

My son's school might not have made AYP status under the rules of those states.

The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute decided to run that experiment for 36 schools and produced a report on the results. The conclusion: A school's geography matters in determining whether it makes AYP. Here's a quote from the conclusion of the executive summary:

One of the adages of the NCLB era is that a child’s ZIP code shouldn’t determine her life chances. Indeed. But neither should a school’s ZIP code determine whether or not it makes AYP. Yet regrettably it often does. And so the success or failure of a given school under NCLB is driven as much by the way the law is implemented by its home state as it is by the performance of its students and the amount of progress they’ve made over the course of a year.

You can read the rest by clicking on the links in the page dedicated to the report.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:21 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Rep. George Miller told my colleague Alyson Klein that the economic stimulus package would make it easier to reauthorize NCLB. By putting money on the table for schools, President Obama has demonstrated that he is going to be serious about fully funding the law, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee argued.

What he didn't mention is that the short-term financing measure will require that states and districts to prove that they are meeting important goals and providing significant supports required under NCLB. As Charlie Barone says, states have some "real work" to do.

To qualify for a share of the $53.6 billion fiscal stabilization fund, a state will have to describe what it's doing to:

1.) Increase the number of students meeting the state's definition of proficiency;
2.) Comply with the rules requiring a uniform graduation rate, which the Bush administration published back in October (and which many education groups would like to see put on hold);
3.) Close the achievement gap between whites and minorities with historically low achievement.

But wait, there's more. A state also would need to promise that it will:

1.) Address the inequitable distribution of highly qualified teachers (as defined by NCLB) to assure that students in high-poverty schools have equal access to high-quality instruction;
2.) Improve the quality of tests used under NCLB;
3.) Support schools struggling to make NCLB's achievement goals.

The details are on page 433 of the bill.

Districts interested in money from the stimulus law's $650 million innovation fund will need to:

1.) Prove that they have "significantly closed" the achievement gap cited in NCLB;
2.) Have met their AYP goals for two consecutive years or show overall increases in student achievement;
3.) Demonstrate that they've made "significant progress" in recruiting highly qualified teachers, improving graduation rates, and other undefined measures.

You can read the list starting on page 438 of the bill.

These requirements mean that the NCLB law's important goals and accountability measures will continue—at least for the two years that the stimulus money is flowing to district..

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 5:04 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

After the economic-stimulus bill left the U.S. House of Representatives, education programs lost money. Except for one.

Funding for the "school improvement grant" program under NCLB's Title I fell to $1 billion in the Senate bill from $2 billion in the House bill. But in the final version, it's up to $3 billion. For a complete breakdown, see page 168 of the bill language on the House Appropriations Committee Web site.

The additional money for school improvement came at the expense of Title I grants to districts. Funding for those grants fell by $1 billion, to $10 billion in the final deal from $11 billion in the House bill.

The $3 billion for school improvement will be spread over fiscal years 2009 and 2010. The money marks a huge increase over what was available in the Bush years. The program received $125 million in fiscal 2007 and $491 million in fiscal 2008.

If you want to see how the money will be spent, you can read the NCLB law for yourself, starting at Section 1003.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 12:38 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spent this morning at a Northern Virginia school promoting the need for school construction money in the economic stimulus package. Yesterday, though, he spoke to the American Council on Education's annual meeting and discussed an issue that may be important for the next version of the NCLB.

If we accomplish one thing in the coming years—it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.

I know that talking about standards can make people nervous—but the notion that we have 50 different goal posts is absolutely ridiculous.

A high school diploma needs to mean something—no matter where it's from.

We need standards that are college-ready and career-ready, and benchmarked against challenging international standards.

Earlier, Duncan told my colleague Alyson Klein that he would use stimulus money under his discretion to support efforts to increase the rigor of a state's standards. But his comments to ACE suggests he'll be pushing the issue in any reauthorization that happens under his watch.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 11:27 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

One inquiring mind asked me this week why this blog has been dark for three weeks. The simple answer is: NCLB hasn't been in the news. Everything has been about the stimulus. Until last Thursday.

At the American Enterprise Institute, Rick Hess and Mike Petrilli held an event discussing a paper on NCLB. Their thesis is that George Bush compromised his conservative principles by including liberal ideas in NCLB. As Yogi Petrilli helped us envision in a guided meditation (you had to be there), the public response to the law would have been completely different if it hadn't set the 2014 deadline for universal proficiency; hadn't included subgroups for racial categories or special education students in the accountability system; and hadn't required all teachers to be highly qualified. NCLB included each element, Petrilli and Hess argue, because liberal groups (e.g., the Education Trust) and liberals in Congress (e.g., Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.) wanted them. To win bipartisan support, Hess and Petrilli say, Bush compromised his ideals and created a bill that looked more like the liberal Great Society than his "compassionate conservatism."

The paper is a decent primer explaining the unique coalition that formed to support the law. The NEA, many education groups, and small-government Republicans oppose it, while the Education Trust and big business leaders support it.

But at yesterday's event, commenters weren't buying Hess and Petrilli's thesis that Bush was hoodwinked. "He knew full well what he was buying in to," said Andy Rotherham, a moderate Democrat who worked in the Clinton White House and may work in the Obama administration (as Hess pointed out). Bush and other Republican supporters backed the 2014 goal because they understood that states wouldn't have set aggressive achievement goals without it, said Dianne Piche of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights. Even a Bush appointee criticized the paper. The goal of 100 percent proficiency may seem insurmountable, but some schools serving predominantly minority communities are showing they can do it, said Williamson Evers, who was the Education Department's policy and planning chief before returning his perch at the conservative Hoover Institution last month.

Here's what no one talked about: The politics of NCLB reauthorization will be different in the Obama administration. President Bush had narrow Republican majorities in Congress. President Obama has larger Democratic majorities. How will he assemble a coalition to support his vision of what NCLB should become?

P.S. I am not the "national education reporter" whom Rotherham overheard complaining about the lack of cookies. Who's going to 'fess up?

UPDATE: You can watch or listen to the event at this page on AEI's site. You'll find the video and audio feeds in the box headlined "Event Materials" in the upper right corner.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 11:10 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)