November 2007 Archives

Since I've already updated you on the education question that did get asked during Wednesday night's Republican CNN/YouTube debate, I thought I'd put together a collection of my favorite school-related questions submitted to YouTube that were not asked. These certainly would have sparked interesting responses.

Take this one: A 14-year-old from Traverse City, Mich., who declares that teen violence is actually caused by school, and "all the crap" students have to put up with there.

Or this one, from a Florida student who is using way too many big words for his age. Did someone do his homework?

Then there's this one, from a mom in Kentucky who assures the candidates that people in her state do, indeed, read.

And finally, this one, which in all seriousness, is a very good question from an African-American student in Washington, D.C., who wants to know what the candidates will do about a significant issue in this country: education equity.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Check out Michael J. Petrilli's thoughtful piece in the National Review that sizes up the education debate in the presidential campaigns.

Petrilli, a vice president of the Fordham Foundation and a former Bush administration education official, offers an important insight at the end of his article: That perhaps education is such a yawner issue in this election not because the public doesn't care, but because the candidates aren't offering anything bold or truly new to the debate.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last night's CNN/YouTube Republican debate in Florida provided an opportunity for regular people to submit questions to the presidential questions via video through YouTube—and thousands did. As I scanned the questions beforehand, I found that hundreds dealt with education, from how the candidates would change No Child Left Behind and help students better afford college to where the candidates stand on evolution in the classroom and national standards.

But only one of the 33 questions asked during the debate even touched on the subject of education. Perhaps the producers could have swapped out the question about the Confederate flag for a weighty question about the future of K-12 education in this country.

The question that did prompt a discussion about education sparked an exchange between former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney over college tuition assistance for children of illegal immigrants. Romney, who is duking it out with Huckabee for a win in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, is trying to paint the former Arkansas governor as a liberal for supporting a proposal several years ago in Arkansas that would have given the children of illegal immigrants the same chance at academic scholarships (if they meet other residency requirements) as other students. Romney argued that children of illegal immigrants were getting a "special deal," while Huckabee countered that children shouldn't be "punished" for illegal actions of their parents. Watch their exchange below:

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:54 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

That's the opening line of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's new television ad that's running in Iowa. I question the "only" and the "bold" part of his claim.

His "bold plan," if elected president: getting rid of the No Child Left Behind Act, expanding prekindergarten, paying teachers more, and expanding math and science academies. Hardly original ideas, since most of those proposals are shared by every other Democratic candidate in the race. Webster's dictionary defines bold as "readiness to take risks, daring, fearless," and although he goes a step further than other candidates by calling for an all-out elimination of NCLB, I'd still be hesitant to call his plan bold since proposing to expand pre-K and boost teacher salaries are safe bets for a Democratic presidential candidate these days.

Still, I kept watching his ad, which further directs viewers to see what he "did" for New Mexico schools by going to www.risingschools.com.

The site details a list of education accomplishments in New Mexico, and mentions that Education Week's Quality Counts gave his state an A for assessments and accountability. I thought this merited some fact-checking.

Richardson is right, we did give New Mexico an A in 2006, and gave the state other high marks for improving teacher quality and allocating resources equitably.

However, Richardson understandably left out an important fact: More recently, in the 2007 Quality Counts, New Mexico ranked dead last among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for providing children with chances for success from cradle to career.

There is a bright side to this dismal ranking for Gov. Richardson. Christopher Swanson, the director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which produced the report, told me that New Mexico officials didn't shrink away from the story—that they instead used it to bring more attention to the importance of education and funding in their state.

Update: Check out this on-point cartoon, which appeared in the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate this year shortly after our Quality Counts report debuted. Thanks to the cartoonist, Frank Mulhearn, for his permission to reprint this here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:07 AM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend

Democrat Hillary Clinton outlined her plan to cut the dropout rate in half yesterday at a campaign stop in South Carolina, an early-voting state in the presidential primary race with one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.

Sen. Clinton, of New York, has some good ideas (which I'll get to in a minute) and is attacking a problem that is downright devastating in particular parts of the country. She announced her plan in South Carolina, which according to our latest installment of Diplomas Count (produced by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which is affiliated with Education Week), had the worst graduation rate in the nation at 53.8 percent. Overall, this nation's public schools failed to graduate 1.23 million students in the 2006-07 school year, according to Diplomas Count. The statistics are even more frightening in some of the country's urban centers, such as Detroit, which had an abysmal graduation rate of 24.9 percent.

Clearly, drastic measures are called for. While it's a lofty goal to reduce the dropout rate by half, my question for Sen. Clinton is whether she has any research to suggest that her ideas will indeed make such a dramatic dent in the problem. Are her ideas really bold enough? Can they not only improve graduation rates in the districts and states that are already doing fairly well, but also in the districts struggling the most, like Detroit, or in rural South Carolina, where many districts post graduation rates below 50 percent? She's already proposed spending $10 billion on pre-kindergarten, which she incorporates into her dropout plan. But here are her new ideas, which carry an additional $1 billion price tag (in terms of grants to states), so you be the judge:

Create more early-colllege high schools that help students obtain a high school diploma and an associate's degree at the same time, and more alternative high schools;

Support the graduation rate compact the nation's governors signed that call for every state to calculate graduation rates the same way;

Provide $500 million in financial incentives to school districts for recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. (She also makes a mention of rewarding teachers for student achievement gains—which may sound a lot like the controversial merit pay—but she attempts to allay teachers' union fears by saying any plans would be crafted in conjunction with teachers and within existing contracts);

Provide $250 million in competitve grants to low-income communities to devise local strategies for curbing the dropout rate;

And, expand home visitation programs for mothers of newborns.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

ED in ’08, a multi-million dollar campaign aimed at focusing attention on education issues in the 2008 presidential election, gathered a group of highly regarded political reporters, commentators, and operatives last evening for a forum on education and the campaign at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. But little of the discussion centered around specific candidates and their education platforms.

Instead, several commentators said education has largely remained a backburner issue in the campaign so far.

Dan Balz, a national political correspondent for The Washington Post, suggested that this year’s big domestic issues appear to be immigration, health care, and the economy. He said most of the candidates don’t seem to be inspired by the education issue.

Talking about “education is a duty and not a passion for most of these candidates,” Balz said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at Learning the Language, my colleague, Mary Ann Zehr, has a must-read about the presidential candidates' views on bilingual education.

While all of the Democratic frontrunners said they supported bilingual education, only Republican Mitt Romney and the lesser-known Tom Tancredo responded in time to the survey Mary Ann featured in her post. They came out against bilingual education.

While some may disagree with Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who supported a 2002 voter-approved initiative against bilingual education, at least he responded to the survey. And although his campaign's response was a little murky, he has staked out a clear stance against bilingual education on the campaign trail.

Update: The presidential candidates are providing a lot of fodder for EdWeek bloggers. Over at NCLB: Act II, my colleague, David Hoff, writes about how NCLB is still the candidates' favorite punching bag.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Getting young people interested in politics—and to the polls—is still a tough chore. But in this presidential race, and even in next year's governors' elections, the stakes couldn't be higher for the nation's youth, who will be affected by decisions made about education, the economy, and war.

Enter Facebook.

This hugely popular social networking site that draws millions of young people, who share thoughts, photos, and even trivia knowledge, is partnering with ABC News to bring its users political coverage. By adding the "U.S. Politics" application, Facebook users can track the political coverage and candidates through ABC News reporters, find out which presidential candidates have the most Facebook "friends" (Barack Obama is way ahead), and see what other users say their most important election-year issue is (education is ranked fourth.)

This is a brilliant idea—ABC News gets to be the official source of politics coverage for the millions of users of Facebook. And Facebook is able to offer a more engaging type of political news to an audience that's difficult to engage, through a partnership with a highly reputable news source.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:05 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Check out this blog item at The Washington Post, which details Republican Mitt Romney's brief statement of support on Sunday for student testing as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The former Massachusetts governor may not be taking the popular stance in defending standardized testing. But, he's clearly distinguishing himself in the pack of presidential candidates in both political parties who are routinely bashing the federal school accountability law.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:10 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

There's a big fight brewing over merit pay in Oregon, where an anti-union activist is taking on the teachers' unions by campaigning for a 2008 ballot initiative that would link teacher raises to "classroom performance." Read more about that here.

Voters in Oregon nixed a similar proposal when it was on the ballot in 2000. But it's eight years later, and merit pay has become a much bigger education reform topic and has spread to states like Texas and Minnesota. Merit pay is even being talked about on the presidential campaign trail. Read my earlier posts here and here.

The results from previous ballot initiatives show that issues that face strong opposition from teachers often fail. There's little doubt that Oregon teachers will get help, in terms of money and volunteers, from the National Education Association—a formidable political force.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In Sen. Barack Obama's new education plan, his ideas for reforming the teaching profession are substantial, expensive, and have the potential to result in fairly dramatic changes in the teaching profession. I discussed this with one of my colleagues on the teacher beat here at Education Week, Bess Keller, who helped me navigate my way through the Illinois Democrat's detailed plan.

Obama wants to get serious about recruiting by offering $25,000 "teaching service" scholarships to talented, high-performing teacher candidates who agree to teach in a high-need area or subject for at least four years. His $18 billion plan calls for expensive teacher residency programs, like one in Chicago, to train teachers for struggling, urban districts. He wants to keep good teachers in the classroom by giving them mentors, and by offering incentives for schools to offer paid common planning time so teacher can plan their lessons together. And, he wants to offer incentives for districts to develop "career ladder initiatives" that give teachers opportunities for advancement (and more money) by becoming mentors, acquiring more training, and boosting student learning.

While Obama's education plan is detailed and ambitious, he dances around two of the most hot-button teacher issues: merit pay based on test scores, and getting rid of failing teachers.

Obama, who promoted merit pay in a July speech to the National Education Association, alludes to merit pay in his plan by giving a nod to districts like Denver, which use student test scores as one means of evaluating teachers for salary raises. But he doesn't come out and directly say whether test scores should be part of the salary equation. Instead, he says teachers should be rewarded for their deep knowledge of subjects, additional training they receive to help high-needs students, and a "variety of contributions" they make to student learning.

Nor does Obama's plan say much about what districts should do with teachers who, despite everything, fail to help their students achieve. In his prepared remarks from the speech he gave today in Manchester, N.H., he said: "And if they’re still underperforming after that, we should find a quick and fair way to put another teacher in that classroom." Though he offers an example of using peer review and assistance plans to help underperforming teachers, it certainly won't be easy for teachers and school districts to find a "quick and fair" way to get rid of underperforming teachers.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., released a detailed education plan in New Hampshire this morning. It’s long on detail when it comes to teacher pay, early childhood education, and expanding federal college outreach … but somewhat skimpy when it comes to what is arguably the biggest education question in Congress these days: how states should be held accountable for student progress under a reauthorized No Child Left Behind Act. Obama said he wants to “reform” the law and repeats perennial Democratic criticisms about a lack of adequate funding by the Bush administration.

His most interesting proposal calls for helping states expand the use of “real time tests,” aka formative assessments. It’s tough to tell, though, whether Obama would allow states to use these tests for accountability purposes and, if so, to what degree they would “count” towards whether a state makes adequate yearly progress under the law. He also said he would like to consider measures beyond reading and math tests, presumably to demonstrate student progress towards state goals. But he doesn't provide more detail than that.

His only other major idea for adequate yearly progress? It appears to be permitting states to use “growth models,” which track individual student progress, instead of the current “status” models, which compare different cohorts of students. That’s a “me-too” proposal. The Bush administration, which is already permitting nine states to use growth models as part of a pilot project, also endorsed expanding the idea in its reauthorization blueprint, released in January.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, the panel's ranking Republican, included a proposal to expand growth models in a draft bill reauthorizing the law, released in August. Even lawmakers who don’t want to see major changes to the school improvement measure, such as Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the former chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, are in favor of growth models. In fact, it’s pretty safe to say that, right now, growth models are a given in reauthorization.

But, as an education reporter, I would have a couple more questions for Obama, who sits on the Senate education committee. Should the renewed version of the law keep the 2013-14 deadline for bringing all students to proficiency? Would he permit states to stagger testing, or continue to test every year from 3rd to 8th grades, and once in high school? Would Obama want more testing at the high school level? Would he favor offering carrots or developing sticks to get states to raise their standards so that they are better aligned with the National Assessment of Educational Progress?

Still, it’s telling that Obama bashed his main rivals for the Democratic nomination--Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina--for not supporting an amendment to NCLB that would have made the law unenforceable if it’s not fully funded. I wonder if that particular criticism of the other two frontrunners will continue to come up on the campaign trail.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the few issues in education that divides Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this presidential campaign is merit pay.

Yesterday, Sen. Clinton criticized the idea during a campaign stop at an Iowa elementary school. While the senator from New York said she supports the less controversial idea of incentives for teachers who work in high-need areas, Clinton, who won the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers in October, denounced the idea of merit pay as "demeaning and discouraging." (However, she does like the idea of school uniforms for students.)

Teachers' unions usually fiercely oppose the idea of merit pay, although some states, such as Texas and Minnesota, and districts, such as Denver Public Schools, have tried it with mixed success. Both the AFT and the National Education Association are fighting off any merit-pay ideas that may crop up during the No Child Left Behind reauthorization.

It was a politically daring Sen. Obama of Illinois who told the NEA at its July national convention that merit pay was worth pursuing. However, he softened the idea a bit by pledging to work with teachers to craft such a system and to base merit pay not just on an "arbitrary test score."

Obama is talking about merit pay in the larger context of a very tough issue: closing the achievement gap among minority and non-minority students. But the issue of merit pay has a group of formidable foes, so Clinton can continue to harp on this difference between her and one of her chief opponents, and shore up her support among public school teachers and union backers.

Update: Read more about Obama's education plan, and his ideas on teacher compensation, in my newer blog item here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:26 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

School choice has continued to be a hot political topic over the last several months, especially with the referendum that failed miserably in Utah that would have created the country's first universal voucher program.

Often, supporters of vouchers and other school choice options talk about how such efforts could help level the playing field between poorer parents, who may not be able to afford to move out of a failing school district, and wealthier parents, who have greater means to do so.

U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut exercised school choice of a different kind today, according to an Associated Press story. He moved his 6-year-old daughter, Grace, to a different school this year—one in Iowa—and staged a photo-op as he and his wife were dropping her off at kindergarten. Sen. Dodd took his daughter out of her Washington, D.C., school not because he was unhappy with it, but for political reasons. The family moved to Iowa temporarily to campaign before the Iowa caucuses. Grace will return to her kindergarten class in Washington, D.C. after the caucuses on Jan. 3.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of his spokesmen seems to think so.

Check out this story about Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri in the Providence Journal. (You have to scroll down about half-way through this story to get to the Carcieri education secretary nugget.) The Republican governor's communications director told a local talk-radio audience earlier this month that if former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wins the presidency, there's talk that Carcieri will be tapped as his secretary of education.

From the way the article reads, however, Carcieri is by no means a shoe-in for the post. After all, even though campaign season is heating up, Janaury 2009 (when we'll have a new president) is still a long way away.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:40 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has a new televsion ad up in New Hampshire that focuses on education, sprinkled with some parenting advice. (Over at the Democrats for Education Reform blog, Joe Williams writes that Obama, a Democratic presidential contender, is the first candidate in the race to hit television airwaves with an education-focused ad.)

The ad starts by getting personal, as Obama talks about his childhood—that his parents weren't rich, his Dad left when he was very young, but that he still managed to get a good education. He briefly touts his plan for expanding early childhood education and recruiting a "new generation" of teachers.

But then he makes a worthy point: that neither the president, nor the government, can completely fix the country's education ills. He says he needs parents, too. And where can parents start? By turning off the television.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In last night's Democratic debate on CNN, the seven presidential candidates were asked whether they were in favor of the very controversial issue of merit pay for teachers, which is generally fiercely opposed by some of the Democrats' biggest supporters—the teachers' unions.

None of the candidates came out in favor of the kind of merit pay in which individual teachers are paid more based on their results in the classroom. Interestingly, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who is the only Democratic candidate to openly support and talk about merit pay for individual teachers on the campaign trail, didn't jump in to tackle the issue during last night's debate. You can read the transcript here.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said she favors "school-based" merit pay, which would reward all teachers and staff members in a high-achieving school regardless of their individual abilities. That's very different than rewarding individual teachers for excelling in their jobs. "The school is a team, and I think it's important that we reward that collaboration," she said. When pressed about whether bad teachers in a school that is otherwise excelling should be given merit pay, she said those bad teachers should be "weed(ed) out." Opponents, of course, say that's easier said than done when teachers' contracts and unions make it very difficult for school districts to do just that.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, of Connecticut, the first to answer, said he would be in favor of a pay system for teachers who go into poor, rural, or difficult schools and make a difference—but didn't want a merit-pay system that rewarded teachers who taught in "better neighborhoods."

Sen. Joseph Biden, of Delaware, whose wife is a community college English instructor, said teachers should be judged and rewarded by what they do outside of the classroom — such as get advanced degrees.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson didn't really answer the question, but used his time to bash the No Child Left Behind Act and declare that he would be the next education president.

The general message from Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich is that, if he is elected, the teachers' unions would have a very good friend in the White House, which he said would be a "worker's White House." When asked whether he disagreed with the teachers' unions on any issue, he didn't name a single one.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:59 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

While most of the education fuss on Election Day last week was over the voucher referendum in Utah, there was another significant, state-level referendum, this one in Washington State where results are still, a week later, neck-and-neck.

Although many believed a referendum that would have made it easier for school districts to get property-tax levies approved by voters had failed, days later, we find out differently. As of Election Night, according to the story, the measure was trailing by a seemingly formidable 38,000 votes—what was thought to be a somewhat comfortable lead. But late votes, including mail-in ballots, have tipped the scales toward victory for referendum supporters—at least for now. You can monitor the results as the rest of the votes are tallied and later certified on the state's website.

This would count as another victory for teachers' unions, including the National Education Association, which got involved in raising money and volunteers to pass the referendum. The referendum is important to teachers because it would relax the standard for approving district property-tax levies by requiring a simple majority of votes, and not a 60 percent "super-majority." These levies, according to media reports, make up about 17 percent of district budgets -- and that's where teacher salaries come from.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The issue of immigration has been particularly divisive within the Republican Party and, today, presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, criticized his GOP opponents for backing tuition assistance for children of illegal immigrants. Usually, what this means is states give students whose parents are illegal immigrants the lower-tuition, in-state status if they meet all other residency and academic requirements.

Specifically, Romney targeted former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for providing tuition breaks for illegal immigrants at City University, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for supporting 2005 legislation in Arkansas that would have granted in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants.

Huckabee has continued to defend his support of such measures. Last month, he said on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour:

"You don't punish the child for the parents having broken the law. We don't do that. We don't say, 'OK, your parents broke a law, so we're going to punish you for it.' I just don`t understand why anybody would think that that's a good thing to do."

Policymakers and judges have been wrestling with this for years, which reminds me of the important 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Doe. In that case, the justices ruled that no, it wasn't a very good thing for Texas in the mid-1970s to deny a free public education to children of illegal immigrants.

The majority (it was a 5-4 vote) decision states that the state shouldn't have "impose[d] its discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control."

Though this is a different situation -- and college aid isn't guaranteed by any state's Constitution -- the fundamental issues are similar, even decades later. So it's still worth debating whether children of illegal immigrants should be treated differently because of choices their parents made. Should they?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:26 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

This is the kind of support—and headline—voucher proponents probably don't need:

"Two polygamous burgs back vouchers," Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 12, 2007.

Vouchers are controversial enough on their own—and certainly were during the Utah referendum—without being linked to polygamy (though associated with the Mormons, polygamy is illegal and shunned by the Mormon Church).

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:09 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

One could really question the political strategy on the part of the Indianapolis teachers' union after watching this.

At issue is the shocking loss of Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson , a Democrat, in Tuesday's election, despite outspending Republican political newcomer, Greg Ballard, by 10-1. Peterson, who is a major champion of charter schools, is known nationally for working to expand options for students in Indianapolis Public Schools' by authorizing 16 charter schools for the city. This growth had prompted IPS Superintendent Eugene White to call for a moratorium last year, declaring that the loss of students was draining money from the district and potentially forcing costly cuts.

According to the media report, many IPS teachers voted against Peterson because of his support for charter schools (which are public schools.) What's interesting is that in voting against Peterson, a pro-union Democrat, these teachers voted for a little-known Republican who also supports charter schools but has shed little light on other parts of his education agenda.

Could these IPS teachers be forgetting the great victory they won back in 2001, made possible because charter school legislation passed? I haven't, because I covered the legislative battle as a Statehouse reporter for The Indianapolis Star. To get legislative support to pass charter schools, legislators gave IPS teachers their collective bargaining rights back. Teachers lost those rights back in 1995 when a GOP-controlled legislature passed a sweeping accountability law designed to improve this struggling, urban district. It was a typical political trade-off: Republicans and other charter-school supporters got a new charter school law, while Democrats and the teachers' union got IPS teachers their collective bargaining rights.

What's more, Indiana's charter school law is friendlier to teachers' unions than a lot of other state's laws. In Indiana charter schools, teachers can form a union or negotiate salaries independently. And any public schools that convert to charters must abide by existing union contracts.

I wonder what some Indianapolis teachers were thinking in voting for Republican Ballard, and what they're in store for.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When a new governor gets elected, there's a new sheriff in town. And that's bound to mean changes, including in the education realm.

Kentucky Gov.-elect Steve Beshear, a Democrat who beat incumbent Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, already is letting the State Board of Education know who's the boss in Kentucky.

The board of education is in middle of a search for a new education commissioner to replace Gene Wilhoit, who left last year to lead the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The board had narrowed the choice to four, and was poised to name a new commissioner next week — but that was before Beshear said he wanted the board to start all over, and hire a better search firm. Read about the four finalists, which include the CEO of the Florida Association of School Administrators, here.

The board, which has sole authority to hire the new commissioner, has said it's now unsure how to proceed, according to media reports. Though Beshear has no official power to select an education commissioner, he will have influence over the board since the governor appoints 11 of the 12 members. And, Beshear will have his opportunity to put his stamp on the board in April, when four of the 11 members' four-year terms expire.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the wake of Tuesday's resounding "no" vote on vouchers in Utah, I thought I'd get some analysis from the two men responsible for financing most of the $7-million-plus political battle (which was more expensive than the state's last governor's race).

And they are: the National Education Association's Reg Weaver, and Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne.

Byrne, the Utah resident who founded and still leads the Internet shopping site, gave more than $2 million (including some contributions from his family) to the pro-voucher cause.

He had a very terse, concise answer for what might have made a difference in swinging more voters to the pro-voucher side: "A governor who stood for the things in which he claims to believe," he wrote in an e-mail to me yesterday. He's referring to the popular Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican who supports vouchers but took a much-criticized back seat during the nasty referendum campaign.

And Byrne has a fairly doomsday view of where education reform and improvement in Utah is headed: "Without change, Utah is on a 30-year course to second-world status."

Weaver, the president of the 3.2-million-member NEA, which made a successful investment by spending more than $3 million in Utah to defeat vouchers, was — predictably — in a better mood. He offered this take on the voucher outcome, drawing a parallel to the No Child Left Behind Act: "The more they know, the less they like."

But the NEA isn't going to rest on its laurels, either. "As long as you have people with megabucks, they're going to try to find a way to deny [opportunities] for children," said Weaver, who was kind enough to call me yesterday from Sweden, where he's attending a meeting of leaders from teachers' unions from across the world.

Sweden was a fitting scene for his side of the conversation since it has countrywide vouchers. Jorgen Lindholm, a leader in Sweden's national teachers' union, told me yesterday that his union opposed vouchers when they were first introduced in his country in the early 1990s, but the union has learned to adjust to them. And, worth noting, public schools — and the Swedish teachers' union — continue to thrive in Sweden despite the presence of vouchers.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, told attendees at a forum yesterday in Iowa what he thinks is the No. 1 problem facing America's schools.

Kids are bored.

He called it a "huge, stupid mistake" that schools have changed their curriculum to include so much emphasis on math, science, and other core classes at the expense of subjects such as art and music, which may keep students more engaged in school.

There's no easy fix to student boredom, especially from the president's vantage. Do you agree with Huckabee that part of the problem with schools today is that kids are bored? And is adding more music and art back to the curriculum part of the solution?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:34 AM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend

On the same day we learned that voters in Utah decisively shot down the nation's first universal private-school voucher program, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney—who has significant ties to the state—reiterated today that he will promote school choice as part of his education agenda.

So where was Romney during the voucher fight in Utah? He pretty much kept quiet, despite pleas from voucher advocates to lend his political capital to the fight. Perhaps he saw the polls, which consistently indicated vouchers as a losing issue in Utah. Or, maybe he was busy in early primary states, such as South Carolina and New Hampshire.

Yet school choice, including vouchers and charter schools, has a prominent role in his education agenda. Today in South Carolina he discussed that agenda, which also includes other hot-button issues, such as merit-pay for teachers, tax credits for home-schooling families, and changing the No Child Left Behind Act to focus more on individual student progress rather than school progress.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Utah voters decisively and loudly spoke through the ballot box and repealed what would have been the nation's first universal voucher program, according to unofficial election results. When the legislature approved the law earlier this year, the margin was by a single vote. But the opposition in the general voting public was much stronger. With nearly 97 percent of the votes counted, 62 percent voted against vouchers, 38 percent voted for, during Utah's first "citizens' veto" statewide referendum in 30 years.

This is a resounding victory for the law's biggest opponents: the teachers' unions, including the National Education Association, which fought with money and rhetoric to defeat vouchers.

I think it's clear that even though voters have spoken, no one has had the final word yet. The question now is: What's next for vouchers, and for Utah?

When I was in Utah reporting on a story previewing the election, many voucher opponents wondered if some legislators might retaliate. After all, lawmakers (who are elected by Utahns) approved the law (albeit by one vote) enacting vouchers worth up to $3,000 for every public school student to use at a private school. But some fear those legislators, stung by defeat, may not be as generous in the coming years toward public schools, or may want to restructure or sap some power away from the separately elected state board of education, which played a key role in opposing vouchers.

"We defied them," state board of education president Kim Burningham told me last month, when I was in Utah reporting on this story. He and the board, which comprises mainly voucher opponents, refused to implement the voucher program while the statewide vote was looming, despite urging from Utah's Republican attorney general.

Vouchers probably won't be back again in Utah's 2008 legislative session, but board members of the pro-voucher Parents for Choice in Education told me they'll make sure other hot-button issues will be—such as merit pay for teachers. So you can bet the NEA won't let its guard down in Utah for awhile, after having spent more than $3 million to defeat vouchers.

Meanwhile, on the national scene, advocates such as Robert Enlow, the executive director of the Indianapolis-based Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, maintain that this will not slow the momentum of vouchers. (Though it's clear that if vouchers had been approved, this would have been a gigantic victory for the school choice movement.) There are other states to pursue -- such as Louisiana, where Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal has come out in favor of vouchers.

In Utah, this was a bitter fight, and hard feelings will undoubtedly linger.

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Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, a Democrat and the only mayor in the country who has the authority to open and run charter schools, lost a tight re-election bid and has given the Hoosier State one of its biggest upsets in political history. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a native Hoosier.

Peterson, a two-term mayor who was dubbed the "Peyton Manning of Charter Schools" in a recent article in Education Next, lost to Republican Greg Ballard for reasons that don't have a lot to do with education. Rising crime and rising property taxes relegated this once-popular mayor to an election-night loser.

Peterson has spearheaded the opening and running of 16 charter schools in the city. What will be interesting, going forward, is what a new mayor — of a different political party — will do with these schools.

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Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, whose campaign was mired in a hirings-and-firings ethics scandal from earlier in his administration, did not win re-election.

With 90 percent of the votes counted, his opponent, former Attorney General Steve Beshear, unseated the incumbent and gave Democrats control of another governor's office. Beshear netted 59 percent of the vote to Fletcher's 41 percent.

Beshear doesn't have anything earth-shattering on his education agenda—the ever-popular pre-kindergarten expansion, a pledge to raise teacher salaries, and a promise to provide more dual-enrollment opportunities so students can earn college credit while going to high school.

This was a race I blogged about in September because religion in schools became an issue when Fletcher attacked Beshear for enforcing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling years ago banning the Ten Commandments from public school classrooms.

With the results of this race, and last month's governor's race in Louisiana that saw the election of Republican Bobby Jindal, the balance of power is back to where it was: 28 Democratic governors to 22 Republican governors.

Update: The other gubernatorial election, in Mississippi, saw Republican Gov. Haley Barbour win re-election over Democrat John Eaves. When you read Barbour's education agenda, he's in favor of increasing teacher salaries as a lot of other state-level politicians are, but he adds an interesting twist to it. He wants to target additional funding to the most experienced teachers -- those with more than 25 years of experience.

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Voters in several states will make decisions today that will affect the quality of schools for years to come.

The biggies:

Vouchers—The polls don't look good for supporters of statewide, universal vouchers in Utah. Voters will consider whether or not to repeal a law approved earlier this year by the legislature that would give every student a voucher worth between $500 and $3,000, depending on income.

Governors—Voters in Mississippi and Kentucky will elect their heads-of-state. Kentucky incumbent Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, is in danger of losing to Democrat Steve Beshear. In Mississippi, Republican Haley Barbour seems safe, according to the polls, against Democrat John Eaves.

Legislatures—Virginia is one of three states with legislative elections (New Jersey and Mississippi are the others), but control of the Senate in this once reliably Republican state is in play this year as Democrats seek to take control. The GOP now controls Virginia's Senate chamber by a 23-17 margin. Since legislatures play a major role in setting education policy and funding public schools, these races aren't to be underestimated.

Mayors—Several big-city mayoral seats are up for election—including in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Houston—and even if the mayor has no direct control over schools, the position can serve as a bully pulpit for education reform. In Indianapolis, for example, Democrat Mayor Bart Peterson has the authority to open charter schools and has 16 mayor-sponsored schools in the city already. He's in a tough re-election campaign.

We'll keep track of the results, and what it means for education, here and at www.edweek.org.

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Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, who is big supporter of the National Rifle Association and an opponent of gun-control measures, came out on Sunday in favor of allowing law-abiding students to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, so long as they comply with campus and state rules. The issue came up on Meet the Press, when journalist Tim Russert asked the former Tennessee senator about allowing students to carry weapons in light of the shootings in April at Virginia Tech.

He first told Russert: "I don’t think that all students need to be carrying weapons on the school campus."

Whew! Thank goodness for that!

But Thompson added that "...some thought really needs to be given as to who should be properly qualified and permitted and, and armed on campuses and other places where large [groups of] people gather."

When pressed, Thompson said "yeah", students should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

This has been an issue on college campuses since the violence at Virginia Tech, and in fact, students today at the University of Colorado at Boulder are protesting the school's ban on concealed weapons. The right to carry guns has also been an issue in public schools. A high school teacher in Oregon is suing so she can be allowed to carry a concealed weapon on her campus. In Michigan, a state lawmaker has introduced legislation to allow a teacher to have access to a registered gun on campus.

What do you think? Should law-abiding students and teachers be allowed to carry guns on college or K-12 school grounds?

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Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings might be done influencing national education policy and the No Child Left Behind Act come January 2009, when President Bush leaves office. But that doesn't mean she'll be necessarily stepping out of the limelight, or leaving politics behind.

A run for governor, or even U.S. Senator, in her home state of Texas may be in her future. This rumor has been floating around blogs for several weeks now, as people speculate where Spellings, a member of Bush's inner circle, will land once she leaves the federal government. Read more about what she may -- or may not -- do in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram story here.

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Explaining war and politics to young children is hard.

But here's how presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, a notoriously long-winded Democrat from Delaware, explained the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a group of 4th graders who asked him about the issue today in New Hampshire, according to an Associated Press story:

"Osama bin Laden set up camps there [in Afghanistan], and he was getting a lot of help from folks running that country called Afghanistan. And that's where he planned an attack on America to bring the World Trade Towers down and kill all those innocent Americans. We had a right to, and we should've gone, to Afghanistan to try to get bin Laden and those people who've done very bad things to America," Biden said.

"But the president, I think, he got a little confused," the senator continued. "I think he thought the folks in another country, way, way far away, far from here--it's also far from Afghanistan--called Iraq. He said, 'The guy in Iraq he helped bin Laden do bad things to us,' and he didn't. He wasn't a good guy, but he didn't help. So we used that kind of as an excuse to attack Iraq."

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Voters in three states will elect members of their Statehouses on Tuesday, and the ramifacations will be felt nationwide, as a story in USA Today explains.

Certainly, voters in those three states—New Jersey, Virginia, and Mississippi —should care, since state legislatures set school spending and often shape educational priorities. (Louisiana's Statehouse elections are later in November.) Check out Education Week's Election 2007 coverage here.

But these legislative elections also will determine who draws new Congressional boundaries in those states after the 2010 Census, which greatly influences whether Democrats or Republicans get elected to Congress. And, given the national interest in education policy—from expanding prekindergarten to retooling the No Child Left Behind Act—who serves in and controls Congress will likely have a big impact on public schools across the country.

Stay tuned here, and we'll keep you up-to-date on next week's elections.

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