Late last month, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten called for a moratorium on any high stakes attached to the Common Core State Standards as they are being implemented, to allow teachers more time to prepare.

This month, a majority of Washington "insiders" believe states will enact some sort of moratorium on stakes. A small portion, or 18 percent, thought the U.S. Department of Education would take such action, according to this Whiteboard Advisers survey.

To be clear, most stakes tied to the common core (or any standards) are assigned by states—penalties for schools that don't make good progress on test scores, for example. But the feds also play a role in assigning stakes. For example, federal officials require states with a waiver to eventually attach stakes to teacher evaluations tied to test scores.

So I asked Education Department press secretary Daren Briscoe about whether Arne Duncan would echo these calls for pausing stakes tied to common core, and take relevant action at the federal level. Briscoe said federal officials have heard these concerns and are "thinking them through carefully."

He wouldn't elaborate.

Sounds to me like he's not closing the door on such a pause.

And if you read Andy Smarick's Q-and-A with the Education Department, it's clear Duncan and crew realize the tough work that's ahead for common core and tests.

"...[W]e must provide teachers and principals with the resources and professional development they need to make the transition," the department says.

What's more, the department in December quietly suspended its own peer review of state assessments until further notice—a mechanism of federal review that served as a check on state tests to make sure they comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. Remember, states are still operating under their existing state testing systems while the common tests are being developed.

The department, which is revising its peer review system, told Smarick: "Once complete, all assessment systems, including PARCC, Smarter Balanced, and all other state assessment systems, will be required to demonstrate how they meet the requirements for technical quality, alignment, and other assessment best practices."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Good news for STEM fans: There's even more federal resources for science, mathematics, engineering and technology in the big, comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill making its way through the U.S. Senate.

The Senate Judiciary committee, which is holding a markup of the bill today, voted unanimously to take money collected on fees for labor certifications under the bill and direct the money towards STEM education at the U.S. Department of Education.

That could mean an additional $100 million annually for STEM education. And those resources would come on top of the roughly $100 million to $150 million in extra funding for STEM education at the National Sciences Foundation, which was already included in the bill, according to James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition, which backs the bill. Way more on that here.

The amendment, which had bipartisan backing from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as well as two Democrats: Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota would create a new STEM Education and Training Account at the Department of Education. Here's how the funds would be used:

•Seventy percent of the funds would go to help states boost STEM standards, recruit educators, bolster college completion, and revamp community college and worker training programs. The fund would be administered by governors and state education chiefs.

•Another 20 percent of the funds would go to boost STEM at minority-serving institutions of higher education, and 5 percent would go to the Department of Labor for STEM-related job training programs. Another 3 percent would help support new "American Dream Accounts" to help low-income students that want to study STEM. (Thanks to Brown and the STEM Coalition for the excellent summary.)

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is slated to introduce an amendment later this week, however, that would replace the STEM education for NSF with a fund more targeted to the educational needs of Latinos. That provision does not have the backing of the Hispanic Education Coalition, an umbrella group of more than 20 organizations that works to boost educational outcomes for Latinos. The coalition wrote in a letter sent yesterday to Judiciary Committee members that,
"Education block grants have historically not reached and sufficiently addressed the needs of Latino students, migrant students, immigrant students, and English language learners." The panel is slated to vote on the Cruz amendment as early as today.

This isn't the only interesting amendment still under consideration. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wants to see the bill include a path to citizenship for "little DREAMers" (undocumented children who aren't yet old enough to attain a high school diploma.) The provision has the backing of the Hispanic Education Coalition, which said in the letter that "these little DREAMers were brought to this country at a very young age." Much more about the amendment from my colleague, Lesli Maxwell, of Learning the Language fame.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Fewer students will take national tests in civics, history, and geography, thanks to across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.

The executive committee of the National Assessment Governing Board, on the recommendation of the National Center for Education Statistics—which administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP—voted recently to indefinitely postpone the 4th and 12th grade tests in the three subjects for 2014. The exams will continue for 8th graders.

The move will help NAEP save $6.8 million, the amount of money it lost thanks to the cuts, which hit nearly every federal agency, including the U.S. Department of Education, back in March. The cuts are slated to stay in place for the next ten years unless Brokedown Congress and the administration are able to come up with a compromise on long-term spending.

But in the meantime, almost every agency in the federal government must make cuts. In NAEP's case, the sequestration cuts hit late in the fiscal year. That meant that the board, which sets policy for NAEP, didn't have many areas to choose from, since spending for activities like data collection had already gone out the door.

"I don't think it was any particular lack of interest in social studies," on the part of the executive committee, said Jack Buckley, the NCES commissioner. Instead, he said the panel was "trying to make the best decision from a bad set of options." The executive committee kicked around other options, such as making cuts in the area of reporting and electronic dissemination, but decided none of those ideas would save enough money to be worthwhile.

The NAEP tests are voluntary, but nearly every state participates, Mr. Buckley said.

Advocates for social studies education, who had actually been hoping NAGB would expand the social studies NAEP test, are none too happy about the move. They say it will make it harder to gauge whether students are making progress in social studies, an area that some say has been overlooked in favor of reading, math, and even science.

"It's awful," said Susan Griffin, the executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies. "It's sending exactly the message that we've been complaining [about] for over a decade, ... that these subjects aren't important."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

College- and career-ready standards are intertwined in the U.S. Department of Education's most prized initiatives—No Child Left Behind Act waivers and Race to the Top.

That's why Indiana and federal officials are talking about how the Hoosier State's common core "pause" might affect its waiver. Common core per se has never been required by the feds for any grant or waiver, but it's the most direct route to proving standards are college- and career-ready. (The other approved way is to have a state's higher education institutions certify them as such.)

It seems, though, that any decision to halt, delay or otherwise impact common core implementation rises to a new level in a Race to the Top state. After all, in order to beat out other states, states had to make big promises to win a lot of money—$4 billion split among 12 winners.

Indiana is not a Race to the Top state. But Tennessee and Ohio are, and both are debating the merits of sticking with the common core. Both promised to adopt the common core and implement the standards as part of their winning applications. Certainly, Race to the Top states have made changes to their plans, but this would be fairly significant.

The common core is even more critical for the seven Round 3 "bridesmaid" winners, who shared a $200 million consolation prize for being finalists in the original 2010 contest. For these states—Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania—adopting college- and career-ready standards was an eligibility requirement for the money, not just a promise. Fights over common core are already simmering in Pennsylvania.

It bears repeating that common core isn't required for any of this, but some certified college- and career-ready standards are. So just how hard is it to get the feds to approve your standards if they're not the common core?

For Virginia, which won a waiver without adopting common core or the common tests, not very. It had already had its standards certified as career- and college-ready by its higher education institutions.

Charles Pyle, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, told me that the department "praised Virginia during the process for implementing rigorous college- and career-ready standards and corresponding assessments. We got almost no questions on this section. I don't know that our experience would speak to what might happen with a state seeking an ESEA waiver that drops the Common Core and falls back on previous state standards of lesser rigor or starts from scratch."

And his comment hints at the scramble that might take place in states that pull back on the common core without a solid fallback plan.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Employees at the U.S. Department of Education won't face furloughs due to the cuts from sequestration, according to a memo sent to staff late this afternoon. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his team think furloughing staff would make it tough to get grants to school districts, states, and universities.

Here's a snippet from the email Duncan sent to employees today:

"Beyond the obvious impact on each of you, multiple furlough days in the final months of the fiscal year could delay or prevent grants or loans; increase the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse; and make it difficult to carry out the department's mission. Therefore, cutting back on employees' work days at this time would not be in the best interest of the taxpayers, states, schools, and students who benefit from the department's programs."

So where is the department going to take the cuts? From pretty much everywhere else. Overall the department is facing $2.5 billion in sequestration cuts. The cuts will affect Title I, special education, career and technical education, and just about everything else.

And the reductions do not change rules when it comes to maintenance of effort, time periods for using funds, supplement-not-supplant rules, or required set-asides of funds (i.e. money districts in states without waivers have to hold back for choice and tutoring under No Child Left Behind.) Districts and states had been asking for flexibility with those provisions, but it sounds like that wasn't in the cards.

When it comes to competitive grants, the department will try to scale back new competitions as much as they can, rather than take money away from existing grantees for continuation grants. But reducing continuation grants could also be necessary. That could have an impact on programs including Promise Neighborhoods, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and TRIO (a college access program), all of which are funded through continuation grants.

The department has also cut back on hiring in anticipation of the cuts. The agency has lost 773 full-time and part-time staff members due to attrition and retirement since August of 2011, but has hired 437 employees to replace those folks, filling about 57 percent of the vacancies.

The department is also planning to cut back on salaries, travel, contracts, conferences, and other administrative expenses, trimming about $85 million from those areas overall, out of a budget of about $1.65 billion.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Student loan interest rates are slated to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent this summer, unless Congress and the administration do something to stop it. And there are a whole bunch of proposals out there to head off the interest rate hike (which was a big election year issue back in 2012.)

Today, U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, put forth legislation that would tie student loan interest rates to the 10-year Treasury note, plus 2.5 percent (for both subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's pretty similar to what was in President Barack Obama budget request.

Here's the big difference between the House proposal and the Obama budget: The House would set a cap of 8.5 percent on Stafford loans (which are taken out by students) to protect against the possibility of sky-rocketing interest rates, while the Obama administration is instead pushing a big expansion of Income-Based Repayment programs, so that graduates don't have to direct too much of their income towards student loans, no matter how high interest rates jump. Also, the Obama administration tacks on only 0.93 percent for subsidized Stafford loans to the ten-year Treasury note rate—so subsidized Stafford loans for students would presumably be cheaper under their proposal, at least initially. But the administration would tack 2.93 percent onto unsubsidized Stafford Loans, which could mean the rate for those loans would be a bit higher than under the House GOP proposal.

Another key difference: Under the Obama proposal, rates are set at the beginning of the academic year and stay fixed for the life of the loan. Under the House GOP proposal, rates reset each year. But upon graduation, students can package their loans together, take the weighted average of the interest rate on their loans and lock in that rate for the life of the loan, a House GOP aide explained.

Kline sees this as permanent fix to the student loan interest rate problem, which has essentially been a political football in recent years. "As I've said time and again, we've got to stop kicking the can down the road with short-term fixes to the interest rate problem," Kline said in a statement.

And a House GOP aide said that based on current rates students would pay 4.32 percent starting in July under Kline's proposal. That's obviously not as low as the current 3.4 percent rate, but it's lower than 6.8 percent. Of course, interest rates are at historic lows and are likely to jump up in the future.

But Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the committee, is not a happy camper. "This is just another classic bait-and-switch scheme: lure you in with a short-term lower rate, but then charge you higher rates in the long term. A lot more," he said in a statement. Under Miller's projections, interest rates for a freshman entering college next year may be higher upon graduation than under current law. Based on the Congressional Budget Office, Miller's staff have estimated that rates would be as high as 7.4 percent in fiscal year 2017.

Meanwhile, other congressional Democrats have come up with their own solution—and it's pretty different from both the White House proposal and the House GOP bill. Under the proposal, which was introduced this week by U.S. Senators Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Dick Durbin of Illinois, as well as Reps. John Tierney of Massachusetts and Joe Courtney of Connecticut, loans would be adjustable (not fixed) and would be tied to a different market-based rate, the 91-day Treasury bill, plus a percentage that would be determined by the U.S. Secretary of Education to cover program administration and borrower benefits.

And under the congressional Democrats' plan, interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans (which go out to the poorest students) would be capped at 6.8 percent, while rates for unsubsidized loans would be capped at 8.25 percent. Students with fixed rates could "refinance" their loans under the proposal.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have their own loan proposal, which would also be tied to the ten-year treasury rate, plus 3 percentage points. More here. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has proposed to drop student loan interest rates down below 1 percent, to the same level as government loans to banks. More here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Until recently, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate education committee, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the panel's top Republican, were in talks to see if there was any chance of getting a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the long-stalled No Child Left Behind Act together in this Congress. But now it's looking like the two lawmakers were unable to resolve fundamental disagreements, making an already very tough reauthorization process that much harder.

The reason: philosophical differences on a couple of key areas that scuttled the chance at bipartisanship between the chairman and ranking member, advocates and congressional aides say. Perhaps the biggest area of disagreement? Harkin would like to see states set goals for student achievement as they now must under the NCLB waivers granted by the U.S. Department of Education. (That's a big change from legislation he supported in the previous Congress.) Meanwhile, Alexander sees that as too much federal intrusion, advocates say.

In including a requirement that states set student-achievement goals in the bill, Harkin is hoping that he can help build on the momentum of the waivers, which are now in place in 34 states and the District of Columbia, a Senate Democratic aide said. The administration had outlined the criteria for the waivers when the committee considered the bill back in 2011, but states hadn't yet applied.

States are executing waivers on their own terms, the aide said, so the waivers are the starting point. Many states have asked for—and Harkin is hoping to craft—a bill that doesn't make states go back to the drawing board after bringing stakeholders together to develop their waiver proposals in order to get the flexibility, the Democratic aide explained.

But Republicans see the overall direction of the still-in-progress bill as carving out too much of a role for the federal government.

"It's less a question about any of the individual provisions" a Republican aide said. "The underlying question is [about] freedom. We think state and local leaders should be free to improve their schools, Democrats think only Washington is smart enough or cares enough about how to improve education."

Back in 2011, the Senate education committee approved a bill, which Alexander reluctantly supported, that essentially didn't include achievement targets—and got absolutely clobbered by business groups and the civil rights community, including groups representing students in special education, who have long seen Harkin as a champion.

Goals were a sensitive issue even during committee consideration of the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., introduced an amendment that would have called for states to set goals for student achievement that are similar to the parameters spelled out in the administration's ESEA waivers. But he then withdrew it so the bill could move forward without dealing with the super-sticky issue.

What's more, the still-under-discussion measure will likely call for states to create teacher evaluation systems based in part on student achievement, as they must now under the waivers. The goal will be to bolster teacher professional development, the Democratic aide said. The focus will be on supporting professionals in the classroom with the meaningful feedback and targeted professional development they need, the aide added.

Teacher evaluation was another major sticking point last time. When the Harkin bill was first introduced as a draft in 2011, it included a provision that would have required states and districts to craft teacher-evaluation systems based in part on student achievement. But Republicans (including Alexander) saw that provision as too much of a federal intrusion and worked to get the language out of the bill. Needless to say, the National Education Association was pretty happy about that development, and Democrats on the committee were spared from having to choose between supporting the NEA and voting with Harkin and the administration. This is an issue to watch again this time around.

The still-in-the-works measure will also include some provisions on early childhood education, but it wouldn't codify the administration's proposed prekindergarten expansion. Instead, Harkin is working separately on more ambitious prekindergarten legislation. (He wrote an op-ed in The Hill newspaper about it, which you can check out here.)

Overall, it sounds to me like the new Senate bill will be a lot closer to the administration's vision for ESEA renewal. (U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan applauded the bipartisan process back in 2011, but didn't sound too happy with much else.)

While bipartisanship is likely to be much tougher without Alexander, it's too soon to say for sure that the bill would not get some Republican support. GOP Sens. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Mark Kirk of Illinois also voted for the 2011 bill, but, like Alexander, both expressed serious misgivings about pieces of it. Plus, this in-progress measure would appear to call for a stronger federal role in some areas than the 2011 version.

Sen. Harkin plans to work with his Democratic colleagues to craft a proposal that Republicans will have an opportunity to review and contribute to, before introducing legislation, the Democratic aide said. Harkin and his staff are aiming to run an amicable process that involves working with Senators on both sides of the aisle, the aide added.

The Senate education panel is aiming to mark the bill up in June. That's roughly around the same time the House education committee, which is controlled by Republicans, may be considering its (likely Republican-only) bill.

The upshot: If the House and Senate committees do end up doing partisan bills, voters will be able to see where each party stands on K-12 issues—but because Congress is divided, states and districts won't get the reauthorization they crave. And, ultimately, the Obama administration officials will need some kind of a law in place before leaving office if they want to build on some of the changes they've helped to bring about through waivers and competitive grants.

Still, advocates aren't surprised that Harkin and Alexander weren't able to come to an agreement. Instead, at least one advocate gave the two lawmakers credit for even giving it a shot, considering how partisan and broken Congress is these days.

"They could have just walked away, but they both genuinely want to see the bill reauthorized and consider it their job," the advocate said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Will this finally be the year that Congress actually reauthorizes the No Child Left Behind Act, which has been awaiting renewal for more than six years? Most folks aren't expecting that to happen, given how difficult it is to get anything done in Congress these days. But it sounds like lawmakers on the House education committee are going to give it a shot, even though the partisan divisions that doomed the last attempt at a renewal don't seem to be going away anytime soon.

At a hearing today, U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, reiterated his criticism of the administration's plan for renewing the NCLB law, a system of waivers, which so far have been offered given to more than 30 states.

"It's time to change the law," he said. "These waivers are a short-term fix for a long-term problem and leave states and districts tied to a failing law." He said that the committee would act on reauthorization "in the coming months."

The committee is aiming to get going on the reauthorization bill and potentially move it to the floor of the House—a step that didn't happen in the last Congress—by the end of the summer, advocates say. A markup could even come as early as next month, and the bill could potentially be on the floor by the end of July. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been meeting with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the Senate education chairman, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate panel, to talk about action over in that chamber.

Rep. George Miller, the top Democrat on the House education committee, expressed optimism about the potential for reauthorization. "I believe there is a pony in there somewhere, with regard to reauthorization," he said. (Probably a reference to this well-known joke.)

Miller also expressed concerns about the waivers, which he said "stem from states wanting to adopt policies that reach back to a pre-NCLB time, such as proposing to diminish or not have subgroup accountability."

During the hearing, there was broad agreement at the very top level on issues including the need to provide states and districts flexibility to support their work and move away from the more prescriptive nature of the NCLB law. But it remained unclear whether there was a consensus on how Congress should accomplish that goal.

For instance, last year's House bill would have scrapped the School Improvement Grant program and its four controversial turnaround models altogether. It's hard to see the administration, which has been pushing the four SIG models, being too enthusiastic about that idea. And it sounds like Miller feels strongly that the feds should have some role in supporting turnarounds—that wasn't in the House bill.

"The federal government will never actually improve a school nor should it try," Miller said. "However, we must continue to support the simple idea that low-performing schools should be identified and required to improve."

A big question going forward: Will the committee include vouchers in its ESEA rewrite? That's something House Majority Leader Eric Cantor seems to want to have happen, but it could cost GOP lawmakers the support of education organizations that represent local and state leaders who endorsed the committee's previous bill.

Still, John White, Louisiana's school superintendent, who testified at the hearing and whose state recently enacted a voucher program that was just struck down by its state supreme court, seemed to think school choice was a good way to go. White also pushed for a greater role for states in defining accountability measures—something he said could help in a variety of areas, including better alignment between career and technical education and the traditional "college readiness" track. (A side note: There was surprisingly little discussion of the Common Core State Standards, unargurably the biggest thing happening in education policy right now.)

Other tidbits:

•White, whose state has chosen to combine subgroups such as English-language learners and minority students into a single "supersubgroup," told lawmakers that states should get more flexibility to set performance standards. "Out of the best of intentions, we end up confusing schools," Mr. White said. Schools, he explained, don't really think about their kids in terms of subgroups. "We need a simple system from the federal government.

•Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., asked about prekindergarten, a hot topic these days. Eric S.Gordon, the chief executive officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan School district, said pre-K can help prepare students for later success, but it has to be followed up with other supports, such as after-school programming, or its effects will be erased.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Of all of the issues StudentsFirst advocates for—from parent triggers to charter schools—common core isn't actually on the list.

Not that the organization and its founder, former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, aren't big proponents of the Common Core State Standards. They are. It's just not their issue, Rhee told me in an interview for an upcoming story for EdWeek.

But, when she travels around for her work, common core is on the minds of many.

When she was in Florida talking about her issues, Rhee said 80 percent of the questions came from legislators about the common core. The problem isn't that legislators are against the standards, the problem is they're starting to hear concerns and rumblings of opposition, she said.

Her advice to them?

Reframe the debate.

"This is being framed as, 'The federal government is trying to stick something down your throat,'" Rhee said.

"You need to reframe the debate," Rhee said she told the Florida lawmakers. "This is about China kicking our butts. Do you want China to kick our butts? No!"

She said that states and advocacy groups were able to coalesce around the common core when the effort was just getting off the ground, and now that the hard work of implementation is ongoing, those same coalitions need to stick together.

"I do think that there has to be a very strong defense of the common core," she said.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The nine California districts seeking their own version of a No Child Left Behind Act waiver plan to make significant changes to their request to increase their odds of winning this flexibility.

Armed with feedback from the U.S. Department of Education's outside peer reviewers, the districts say they will no longer only factor in test scores of the last grade in each school for accountability purposes. This was one of the more radical ideas in the proposal submitted by these "CORE" districts, which stands for California Office to Reform Education. The districts include Fresno, Los Angeles, and Sacremento.

Mostly, the peer reviewers wanted far more details about everything—from how other districts could join CORE at a later time to how the districts would identify focus and priority schools for interventions, according to CORE's synopsis of their feedback.

It's worth noting that the CORE districts are refusing to turn over the feedback letter that federal officials sent them, contrary to what most other states have done. See Education Week's story about individual state letters that many released here. Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for CORE, said the districts will share that letter when they have revised their proposal. "As you can imagine, the parties who are opposing district-level waivers are looking for any opportunity to criticize, and we worry that if we don't release the peer review and our responsive update at the same time we will face a 'death by a thousand paper cuts' situation," she wrote me in an email.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend