October 2008 Archives

The Center for Education Reform has a new voter's guide out just for you. The Center is a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for expanding school choice, so they're obvious cheerleaders for charters and vouchers. They also give lawmakers high marks for supporting accountability, including No Child Left Behind.

Whether you agree with the Center's agenda, or thoroughly disagree with it, their guide is worth looking at. It examines the candidates' views on charters, vouchers, teacher pay-for-performance, and NCLB. And it explores what each campaign's team of advisers says about the candidate.

I found their take on charters particularly interesting. They draw a pretty sharp distinction between the two contenders' proposals, saying that Obama's plan to double funding for charter schools does not necessarily mean good news for charter schools.

Senator Obama has not said he supports such laws. He says he supports doubling federal funding for "responsible charters", but whether that definition depends on local input of unions or school board approval remains to be seen. We know many in the Obama camp believe in strong laws, but they are not the ones whose views have prevailed in this campaign. The one bill he voted for as a state senator increased the cap, but also imposed union and additional regulations on charter schools.

The official website says that an Obama-Biden administration would provide expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing failing schools. The reality is that every strong law in the nation has such processes in place and they are working, but they rely on authorizers and not on traditional state bureaucracies, which is what the Obama language would do once such a requirement is made at the federal level.

In the center's view, McCain's plan is a better since it focuses on using parental choice and high standards to drive the charter movement. And, the center says, his plan would put states, not the federal government, in the "driver's seat" when it comes to charters.

The group is also pretty skeptical of Obama's pay-for-performance for teachers. It is worried about some of the folks Obama has put on his education policy team, namely, Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford education professor.

When it comes to the people who surround these two candidates, many reformers—even Obama insiders—are highly critical of Obama's chief education advisor, Linda Darling-Hammond. While they disregard the criticism and suggest that it's Obama in the end who'll make the decision, it's clear that on every issue relating to education, Darling-Hammond is far from a reformer. She has a clear and proud record of supporting the existing track for training and paying teachers, and believes governance changes—like charter schools—are a side issue.

Yes, there are young, wise and fresh people who also have been invited in from time to time to speak on Obama's behalf, and to show people in the know that he does have an open mind outside of the establishment.

The Center seems to think that folks like Darling-Hammond are likely to have more pull in a Obama administration than others he has advising his campaign. "It is the party insiders and those who have held the titles that make the most difference," the voter's guide says.

A lot people would disagree. Sure, Obama's advisers are Dems from across a broad spectrum of education policy, and its tough to tell exactly where he stands on education from just looking at the line-up.

But I don't think anyone can say for sure which advisers would serve in his administration—and which issues each would dominate on. Optimistic Democrats think this group will be able to bridge the divides within the party on education policy.

The Center's report is much more supportive of McCain's circle of advisers, the most visible of which is Lisa Graham Keegan, the former Arizona schools chief. They say the McCain group is made up of people "who unequivocally know what good laws look like and how people can influence a candidate."

You can also check out the Center's guides on the Senate and gubernatorial races. The guides give the candidates' scores and star the ones they consider "real reformers." Although their presidential analysis seems to lean towards McCain, the other guides give high (and low) marks to members of both parties.You can download it here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:43 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Over at On Special Education, Christina Samuels takes a look at the implication of vice-presidential candidate's Sarah Palin's proposal for centers for special needs parents. Like parts of McCain's Head Start proposal, it seems that some of this may already be law.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:00 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign sent out a press release touting the support of some New Hampshire Republican activists. Two of them cited displeasure with Sen. John McCain's education agenda as a top reason for supporting his opponent.

Fred Bramante is the past chairman and a current member of the New Hampshire State Board of Education.

I believe that America is at a critical point and that how our nation addresses the issue of education redesign will hold the key to America's future. Barack Obama is committed to reforming our public schools instead of abandoning them. To my disappointment, Senator McCain continues to support the use of vouchers, a divisive approach to education which has gotten us nowhere for decades and will not ensure that our children will live their lives in another American century.

Bramante was an alternate delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention and the co-chairman of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's New Hampshire campaign. Huckabee, if you'll remember, was the only Republican to speak before the 3.2 million-member National Education Association. He was rewarded with the union's New Hampshire affiliate.

The campaign also quoted Barry Schuster, another New Hampshire Republican who served on the Lebanon School Board.

As a lifelong Republican and father of two, I believe Obama is the best choice for the future of our country. ... I know improving education policy will be critical to the senator because of his own experiences and the value he places on reforming the system.

Obviously not all Republicans are disappointed in McCain's education proposals. When I was at the Republican convention in St. Paul, McCain's lines on school choice and getting rid of "bad" teachers got some of the loudest applause of any in his acceptance speech.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:00 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Sen. Barack Obama's half-hour "special" featured the education snippet from his Denver acceptance speech, praise for reform at a Colorado high school, and a coupon-clipping educator who works an extra job to support her teaching habit.

Obama didn't provide any new details of his education plan in the ad, which aired on several TV networks. And he didn't mention his $18 billion spending plan for education, or even his $10 billion pre-K proposal. But the Democratic presidential nominee did highlight his plan to offer tuition tax credits to college students in exchange for community or national service. Check out a transcript of the ad here.

Obama's message in the ad trod the same fine line on education policy he's walked the entire campaign: lauding teachers for their hard work while embracing education redesign, standards, and accountability.

New Mexico teacher and single mom Juliana Sanchez is portrayed as a sort of heroine/American Everywoman struggling to make ends meet on a teacher's salary. Says Sanchez:

Financially, the pressure is just to keep your head above water. So, you don’t feel like you’re drowning all the time. Health care, food, electric, gas—it takes out so much out of my pay check. You go buy a gallon of milk and you’re like going ok—is it a gallon or half gallon? What can I afford? You feel like you can’t breathe even though you need to breathe.

In the ad, Obama praises Sanchez's dedication to her job and her willingness to constantly improve her craft by showing her taking professional development courses.

And he also mentioned the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Colo., the site of Obama's most comprehensive speech on education during the campaign. The school is run by Obama education adviser Mike Johnston, who helped start New Leaders For New Schools, which helps train principals for high-need, urban districts.

We can create schools that work, because I’ve seen them. Three years ago, only half the high school seniors at the Mapleton School in Thornton, Colorado, were accepted into college. But after a rigorous school reform program, this year all 44 seniors were accepted.

You can watch the education portion of the ad here:

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

David Hoff and I answered questions about funding for education, the future of the No Child Left Behind Act, teacher quality, the next secretary of education, and other issues in this afternoon's chat on education in the 2008 campaign. Check out the chat transcript here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sen. Barack Obama has proposed $18 billion annually in new spending on education. But, if elected, will he actually be able to increase spending substantially in tough economic times?

Tonight's prime-time 30-minute ad may offer a clue as to whether education policy would be a high priority in an Obama administration. The Democratic presidential nominee is scheduled to address the nation on the FOX, NBC and CBS networks during prime-time to deliver his "closing arguments" speech.

Neither presidential candidate has talked much about education on the campaign trail. And some inside-the-Beltway folks I've talked to think that means schools may have to play second fiddle to other domestic spending priorities, particularly energy and health-care, at a time when the federal government - and the rest of the nation - is strapped for cash.

Many people in Washington think it's unlikely Obama would really be able to increase spending by $18 billlion - the money just isn't going to be available. But, if Obama makes a point of promising a huge new investment in such a high-profile forum, even after the economic meltdown and the $700 billion financial assistance plan for Wall Street, it would be a sign that he's serious about seeking an increase in education spending. At the very least, it would give education voters something to hold him accountable to if he wins and his very first budget, released early next year, doesn't deliver the goods.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Still curious about Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers? Wondering which candidate is more likely to increase funding for education? Have other burning questions about the candidates' education positions before you enter the voting booth next week?

Please join my colleague David Hoff and me tomorrow at noon Eastern time for an online chat on the 2008 election and we'll do our best to answer your questions. You can even submit questions in advance here. You don't need any special equipment, just Internet access.

Here's the link. Looking forward to chatting with you!

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From Dakarai Aarons, Education Week staff writer:

Superintendents and board members representing several of the nation’s urban school districts grilled education advisers for the presidential campaigns of Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

The panel at the Council of the Great City Schools’ annual conference on Friday, featured McCain senior education adviser Lisa Graham Keegan, a former Arizona state superintendent and Obama education adviser Jonathan H. Schnur, a co-founder of urban principal training group New Leaders for New Schools.

The session, held in Houston, Texas, was designed to make sure the nation’s urban school leaders got a chance to share their views directly with the two major campaigns, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Washington-based council, which is made up of 66 school districts.

Keegan praised the council for releasing an open letter to the next president earlier in the week, saying it had the most detailed plans sent to the campaigns.

McCain defines public education more broadly, Keegan said, to include charter schools and voucher programs, as long as they are open to all students and publicly report academic progress.

Improving education can’t succeed “by defining education only as what we did yesterday,” she said. “The issue we face is the civil rights issue of our times. There is no question."

Keegan issued a challenge to the group, saying that if the group of urban superintendents could get their states to agree on a set of voluntary standards, a President McCain would support their efforts.McCain doesn’t believe in the creation of national education standards but is supportive of the efforts of the American Diploma Project, which has joined 33 states to work on a common set of standards for high school graduates.

Abelardo Saavedra, superintendent of the Houston independent school district, said he supports national standards, especially in light of the far reach the federal No Child Left Behind law has in the operation of local schools.

“I don’t believe we can have a federal accountability system without some kind of national standards," he said.

Schnur said Sen. Obama also favors having governors and states work together on assessments. He also took the time to highlight Obama’s focus on teacher quality, parental responsibility, and money to help students go to college.

When moderator and veteran journalist Dan Rather gave school board members and superintendents on the panel a chance to respond, they said they agreed with elements of the proposals of both campaigns. But like others in the audience, they were concerned about how it would be paid for in the midst of a global financial crisis.

Eileen Cooper Reid, a member of the Cincinnati school board, said candidates need to make sure funding follows federal education mandates.

“Don’t come to us with standards and don’t come to us with accountability if you aren’t going to come to us with the resources to do it. “

“The only way we are going to bail ourselves out in the long-term is to teach and learn our way out,” Schnur said. “Sen. Obama sees this as an investment, not just as an expenditure."

Keegan said that McCain sees education as a top priority, but is also being cautious in light of the serious economic conditions. She also reminded her fellow educators that federal education spending had increased significantly over the last six years, and that they should challenge their respective states to provide more adequate funding for classrooms and aging facilities.

You can watch the full exchange from the town hall meeting later this week at the council’s Web site

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This weekend in Colorado, Sen. Barack Obama again gave a version of his stump speeech that criticizes Sen. John McCain for having "no plan to invest in college affordability."

My opponent's top economic adviser actually said that they have no plan to invest in college affordability because we can't have a giveaway to every special interest. Well I don't think the young people of America are a special interest—they are the future of this country.

That line was an apparent reference to a statement by McCain's most visible surrogate on the economy, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told the Associated Press this month that

We don't have any new college proposals in terms of massive expansions of funding. There is a budgetary reality; we have enormous spending pressures already. It would be irresponsible to go to every interest group and promise them lots of money. The other campaign does that. We don't."

Check out CNN's fact check of the statement.

This wasn't the first time Obama has hit on college costs—or slammed Holtz-Eakin's remarks—in speaking to swing state voters. He also mentioned the issue in an Oct. 16 speech in New Hampshire, another important battleground in which college students' votes just might make the difference.

But, as the CNN fact checkers mentioned, McCain actually does have a higher education plan, in which he does call for simplifying higher education tax benefits to help families pay for college.

But, as I look at the Web site, there aren't many details on the plan - or any new money for higher education.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave a speech today on special eduction. You can read more about it over on my colleague, Christina Samuels' On Special Education Blog.

Palin advocated, among other things, for full funding of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. I wonder how that will square with Sen. John McCain's plan to freeze most spending—including for education programs—until he can conduct a top-to-bottom review of all federal programs.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Think you've mastered the policy positions of Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain? Could you match the right education quote with the right candidate? Find out by playing this new interactive, online game created by our web gurus here at EdWeek.

And while you're at it, EdWeek also has broken down the 90-minute debate on Oct. 21 between the candidates' education advisers, and the post-debate analysis afterwards, into shorter video clips that you can find here. This multimedia page also features a transcript of the debate.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

That's the question my colleague, David Hoff, asked a panel of education experts after a debate between advisers for both major presidential campaigns presented by Teachers College in New York City and webcast by Education Week and edweek.org. You can watch the panel discussion here.

The question referred to Sen. Barack Obama's plan to boost education spending by $18 billion a year, including $10 billion for pre-K.

Nearly all the participants agreed that early childhood education is a good place to invest, although all made the point that it's unlikely that an Obama administration—or a McCain administration, for that matter—will have that kind of spare cash lying around.

Lucy Calkins, a professor at Teachers College, said she couldn't think of a better place in education to significantly ramp up federal spending, since pre-K programs can put at-risk students on the right track before they even start school.

Eugene Hickok, who held a high-ranking position in the U.S. Department of Education under the current President Bush, said the government should track whether federal dollars improve outcomes for students. He said that was more important than targeting the money towards specific policies.

Hoff also asked what had been missing from the discussion between the advisers, Linda Darling-Hammond on behalf of the Obama campaign and the ubiquitous Lisa Graham Keegan, on behalf of the McCain camp.

Nearly all the participants agreed the answer was pretty obvious: Neither candidate talked much about the No Child Left Behind Act, which was due for reauthorization last year.

"I came here expecting to hear a lot of talk about NCLB," Calkins said. "It's becoming more clear that NCLB hasn't done the job of making sure no kids are left behind." She said the discussion didn't touch much on the "failures" of the law and how to fix them.

Hickok said he heard a lot of talk about policies that are encompassed under the federal law. "Politically, it's a tough issue," he said. "I can understand why neither of them had a full throttle endorsement of NCLB."

For more on the candidates' position on specific issues, check out this chart, which ran in this week's edition of Edweek.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The respected and conservative free-market thinker Alan Greenspan, the revered former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, declared today he was "partially" wrong in thinking the free-market system could regulate itself.

He told Congress today: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

Does this economic crisis—and more specifically Greenspan's admission that there may be flaws in the free-market system—have implications for the debate over vouchers, and the theory that competition and free markets will improve public education?

(UPDATE: In fact, the Cato Institute's Andrew J. Coulson takes an in-depth look at this question in a September 2008 policy analysis titled "Markets vs. Monopolies in Education: A Global Review of the Evidence.")

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:02 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

As my colleague Vaishali Honawar reports over at the Teacher Beat blog:

During the debate at Teachers College on Tuesday night, which was webcast by Education Week and edweek.org, Linda Darling-Hammond, an adviser for Sen. Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, Sen. John McCain's top education adviser sparred over whether alternative teacher-preparation programs, such as Teach for America, are a good way to recruit prospective teachers, or whether universities are still the best place to train educators. And they had a substantive discussion of other recruitment and retention issues, such as career ladders vs. merit pay.

Check it out...she's even got video!

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger David J. Hoff

At the end of last night's debate at Teachers College between presidential education advisers, moderator Susan Fuhrman asked the question everyone loves to talk about: Do you want to be the next U.S. secretary of education? (To watch the whole debate, register here. UPDATE: Watch the exchange in the YouTube video embedded below.)

Both Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign and Linda Darling-Hammond of the Obama camp ducked the question. But that won't stop everyone's tongues from wagging or bloggers' fingers from flying across their keyboard. Somebody's going to parse the answers and say that both wanted to say: "I hope it's me."

To which, I'd like to add: Stop.

Self-appointed pundits and journalists look through a list of smart, committed, and connected people. Then they make arguments about whose got the inside track. (See examples here and here.) Others raise potential candidates based on one small news events. American Spectator seems to think DC schools' chancellor Michelle Rhee would be a great education secretary based on the mentions of her at the end of last week's presidential debate. Rhee isn't so sure, she told Fast Company.

But none of this considers what the president-elect will need to take into account in selecting his education secretary. The choice won't be made until after other Cabinet selections have been announced. At that point, the makeup of the Cabinet becomes a balancing act. If there are several governors on board, it makes it tougher for a candidate like Jim Hunt or Mike Huckabee. Too many pals from back home? Obama's hoops partner Arne Duncan or Keegan might be left out. No African-American women? The transition team might be looking for one. Until we know who the president-elect is and who he has chosen for the four most important Cabinet posts (State, Treasury, Justice, and Defense), we won't know the type of person he wants to be education secretary.

So, everyone, take a deep breath, and wait a month or so. When the transition team is narrowing in on picking an education secretary, the Campaign K12 team will be reporting the news as it happens. Until then, we'll be focusing on who wins the presidential election and other races that are relevant to the future of education.

Posted by at 4:29 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Regardless of whether Sen. Barack Obama really thinks portfolios should be part of student assessments, the issue has sparked quite a bit of discussion in the blogsphere.

Over at Learning the Language, my colleague Mary Ann Zehr points out that portfolios have been tried as a method of evaluating English language learners, with mixed success.

On the Teacher Beat blog, colleague Stephen Sawchuk wonders what teachers would think of using student portfolios, which can be very time consuming, as part of the assessment mix. (Sawchuk dubs this dust-up "Portfoliogate.")

The Core Knowledge blog declares about "Portfauxlios": "Say it Ain't So, O."

And Mike Petrilli, who kicked off the debate about portfolios with his blog post (which appeared to send the Obama campaign into a mini-tizzy), thinks the Obama campaign has continued to muddy the waters on assessment issues.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Barack Obama spokeswoman Melody Barnes' statements today on NPR about her candidate's support of student portfolios as a method of assessment have caused quite the dust-up. It even came up at tonight's debate between the education advisers to the campaigns—Lisa Graham Keegan for John McCain and Linda Darling-Hammond for Obama.

Though there were pleas today for the Obama campaign to clarify the Democratic presidential nominee's stance on the use of portfolios to gauge student achievement, I'm not sure that's been accomplished.

In an e-mail to me before the debate, Obama campaign domestic-policy director Neera Tanden said: "Senator Obama has said he supports testing but wants to make sure our tests are better and smarter. He does not support replacing the current structure of NCLB with portfolios and to suggest otherwise is a willful misreading of his comprehensive agenda on education."

Not sure what exactly she means by not supporting "replacing the current structure of NCLB with portfolios." (I don't think anyone thought he would replace the entire structure of the law.) What this does indicate is that NCLB and testing are very complex issues, and neither Obama nor McCain have been very specific on how exactly they would change the law as president.

During tonight's 90-minute debate at Teachers College, Columbia University, Keegan brought up the portfolio issue, noting: "The problem with backing off of assessments and turning them into portfolios that are more subjective is that we can't compare kids. That's where we were before we had accountability."

Keegan, who is McCain's chief education adviser, emphasized that "state standards and the assessments have got to stay in place."

Darling-Hammond, one of several education advisers to Obama, said quite a lot about assessment: "If you look at other countries, their assessments include relatively few multiple-choice items and in some cases none. Their kids are doing science inquiries, research papers, technology products. Those are part of the examination system." (Are those examples part of a broadly defined "portfolio"?)

Darling-Hammond addressed what Barnes said—and didn't say—on NPR directly:

She said in addition to standardized tests we need to look at other assessments. She did mention portfolios. They are used in the charter school she is on the board. ... And we have to get knowledgeable about what does go on in other countries. ... They routinely include elements like research products, they are scored, they are scored in consistent and reliable and valid ways.

In general, tonight's debate, co-sponsored by Education Week and its Web site, edweek.org, was vigorous, and pointed at times, and covered many of the same topics that have been chronicled here or discussed on the stump. (The archived Webcast should be available for viewing here as of noon Wednesday.)

The two advisers talked about teacher quality, the need for more research, whether money matters, and even whether either of them would like to be their nominee's secretary of education. (They each ducked that question).

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:21 PM | Permalink | 6 Comments | Recommend

Mike Petrilli at Flypaper gets overly excited about his breaking news and declares that the "Obama campaign wants to dump NCLB testing, use portfolios instead."

Before teachers and school districts and other test-skeptics start celebrating, that's not what I heard from the Obama campaign on today's Diane Rehm show.

Today's segment on the syndicated National Public Radio program based out of WAMU in Washington featured Petrilli, Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee, USA Today reporter Greg Toppo, John McCain education adviser Lisa Graham Keegan, and Barack Obama spokeswoman Melody Barnes.

The panel got talking about NCLB, and specifically testing, and Barnes reiterated Obama's call to improve assessments.

Here's my own transcription of what she said (and you can listen to the full show here, with the portfolio discussion around minute 22): "We have to deploy and employ the proper kinds of assessments...portfolios for example and other forms of assessments that may be a little bit more expensive but they are allowing us to make sure children are getting the proper analytic kinds of tools." Asked to clarify what she means by portfolios, Barnes says: "we're talking about tests that require children to assess their entire year ... to put together through writing and through speaking...we're looking at language skills as well as writing skills to get a sense of how well they've learned their lessons."

My reading of this isn't that Obama wants to "dump" testing, but to reform it and include alternative ways of testing kids, such as portfolios.

Petrilli writes: "Portfolios? ... this was news." (He and Toppo also made that point on the air.)

Not so much. We've heard Obama's campaign talk about portfolios before, and in August, Obama himself at a campiagn event in Virginia said: "We should come up with teachers, what are the best ways to assess performance. You know, peer review, portfolios, or a mix of things that help us evaluate. And are we measuring progress during the course of a year." In November during one of his first big education policy speeches in New Hampshire, he held up one school district's use of "digital portfolios" as a model of how to reform assessments. And here, the American Prospect blog makes mention of Obama's support for student portfolios.

Now, we can certainly argue about the merits of portfolios, but I don't think there's any claim here that Obama wants to ditch testing altogether.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:00 PM | Permalink | 10 Comments | Recommend

From EdWeek reporter and guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

The Council of the Great City Schools has joined the fray over the upcoming election.

The Washington-based organization that represents 66 of the nation’s largest urban school districts has written an open letter to the next American president, asking the nation’s next leader to commit to making American urban education the world’s best.

The council, which will hold its annual conference this week in Houston, gave the future president 10 areas to focus on. Michael D. Casserly, the council’s executive director, plans to discuss the letter during a Wednesday press conference. Veteran journalist Dan Rather will moderate a Friday panel during the council’s conference on education and the next president that will include Lisa Graham Keegan, senior education adviser to Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, and Pedro Noguera, one of the many education advisers to Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

Among the priorities in the letter are a national set of education standards that are globally competitive. A “positive tone” is also sought in discussing public education, because the council says urban schools are often singled out with “divisive and destructive rhetoric,” rather than constructive attempts to find solutions.

The council’s members are lobbying for changes to the federal No Child Left Behind Act—a law the council supports—to include more funding and better research about what works to accompany the focus on accountability.

“No Child Left Behind was an important effort ... but it devolved into a poorly calibrated exercise in compliance with overly rigid and punitive measures that failed to take academic progress or growth into account and ultimately had little to do with raising achievement or narrowing achievement gaps,” the council's letter says.

Part of that funding should go to helping school districts attract and retain high-quality teachers to meet the goals of NCLB provisions that govern teacher quality, the council writes.
The letter also urges federal support for boosting early childhood education options, research on finding strategies to reduce high school dropout rates, and giving federal dollars to school districts to help replace “crumbling” school facilities.

A President McCain or Obama should also spend more federal dollars on educating poor students, English-language learners, and special education students, the council says. Urban schools tend to educate more of these students than their suburban peers, yet tend to have less funding with which to work with such high-need populations, the letter says.

The new president should also make U.S. Department of Education appointments that include educators with experience in urban school districts as well with ethnic and cultural diversity that reflects the changing demographics of many American schools. The letter goes on to say:

The Great City Schools are on record in support of raising student achievement, closing achievement gaps, and being accountable for results. We will continue to support these priorities, even when the challenges appear immense and success seems out of reach. We do so because we have seen these schools make progress and know that more is possible. It is vital that we succeed, given that our fortunes are tied inextricably with those of the nation and our urban children. We ask you, as the next president of the United States, to work with us to make urban public education the best in the world. Thank you and best wishes as you assume the mantle of leadership as the 44th president of the United States of America.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger and EdWeek reporter Dakarai I. Aarons:

The controversy over Vietnam-era-radical-turned-education professor William Ayers shows no signs of dying down. Administrators at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (alma mater of this guest blogger) canceled a long-planned Nov. 15 appearance by Ayers to speak to education faculty at a research conference after a furor erupted over the event.

Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has become a central figure in the presidential campaign because of his ties to Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic nominee. Obama served as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform project for which Ayers was one of the key writers of the proposal funded by the Annenberg Foundation. Ayers worked with Obama on a number of occasions during the project’s run from 1995 to 2001. The pair also served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago together from 2000 to 2002.

Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, brought up the relationship between the two men during last week’s presidential debate and has aired commercials raising questions about their ties.

Ayers had been selected by a faculty committee at Nebraska to speak about education reform and smaller class sizes. He co-founded the Small Schools Workshop at his Chicago university, one of the first to look at reducing class size and school size to boost student achievement.

Nebraska's governor and attorney general (both Republicans) and both U.S. senators (one a Democrat and the other a Republican) spoke out over the selection of Ayers, saying the university should not be associated with his radical past. And a foundation that contributed millions to the university announced it would not give any more money unless Ayers’ appearance was canceled, according to media reports.

In a press release announcing that Ayers’ talk was being canceled, university officials said they made the decision after its “threat assessment group” identified a number of e-mails sent to the university containing threats regarding Ayers.

Harvey Perlman, the university’s chancellor, said at a press conference today that his decision was not the result of political pressure but out of concern for student safety.

"Let me be clear: I believe that the invitation to Professor Ayers was appropriate," Perlman said at the press conference. "He is an expert in his field and during the time in February when the invitation was extended, he was not the central figure of a presidential debate."

Perlman, who was the university’s longtime law school dean, said he would have resigned if he’d been ordered by University of Nebraska System President J.B. Milliken to rescind the invitation.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:27 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

In September alone, Sen. Barack Obama raised a mind-boggling $150 million—which has allowed him to the airwaves with a vengeance. Included in the barrage of television ads from the Obama campaign is a new spot titled "Turn it Off," which refers to his plea that parents help schools do their jobs by shutting off the TV at home. (For more, see this recent Ed Week story.)

The ad, which you can watch below, hits on classic Obama education themes: parental responsibility, the link between education and a kid's dreams, and the need to expand early education, recruit new teachers, and pay them better.

"It's not just about their future, it's about ours," he says.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served under President Bush from 2001-2005, announced on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that he was endorsing Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president.

But first, interviewer Tom Brokaw asked him what wasn't on the American radar screen that should be. The answer: Education. And specifically, Powell highlighted the high dropout rate, especially among the minority populations. (Is Powell headed for a high-profile education policy position in an Obama White House? UPDATED: To read about Powell's existing work on the dropout crisis through his America's Promise Alliance, click here.)

In explaining his endorsement of Obama, Powell said he was disappointed in McCain's exploitation of the Bill Ayers controversy, declaring that the rhetoric and the robocalls have gone "too far."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:04 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Well ... this just isn't going away, not even a little bit.

Sen. John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee have started using robocalls--prerecorded phone messages for voters--to continue to highlight Sen. Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers, the education professor who was once a member of the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground.

Media accounts--including Education Week's--have found that the association between the two men was basically limited to work on Chicago's portion of the Annenberg Challenge, a national school reform effort and the fact they live in the same Chicago neighborhood. Ayers once threw a fundraiser for Obama early in his political career.

But, listening to the robocalls, a voter who hadn't been following the issues might come to the conclusion that they bombed buildings together or something. Here's the text of the call:

Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500

The thing is, if the RNC and McCain campaign really wanted to get voters thinking about what the Democratic nominee's work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge might say about a potential Obama administration, there's plenty of much more substantial ammunition.

For instance, the project has been criticized for not having much of an effect on student achievement. From Education Week's story:

In the end, a 2003 study conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research concluded that the Annenberg project “did not achieve an overall effect on student outcomes.”

“[W]hile the challenge contributed to the improvement of a number of Annenberg schools, there is little evidence of an overall Annenberg school improvement ‘effect.’ Any improvements were much like those occuring in demographically similar non-Annenberg schools,” the report said.

I guess a robocall saying that voters should be aware Obama helped lead a school reform project that doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on student outcomes just isn't as sexy.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:38 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

During last night's debate, Barack Obama and John McCain held up the poor performance of the District of Columbia public schools to illustrate why education reform is needed. But they differed on whether vouchers are the answer—and they also differed on whether D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee thinks vouchers are the answer.

McCain said Rhee supports vouchers. Obama said she supports charters.

So which is it?

Last night, she and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty issued this statement to the D.C. City Paper, which doesn't appear overly enthusiastic about vouchers:

Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee strongly believe that all families in the District of Columbia must have access to excellent public school options, and are committed to ensuring that students in every ward are afforded this opportunity. While Chancellor Rhee hasn’t taken a formal position on vouchers, she disagrees with the notion that vouchers are the remedy for repairing the city’s school system.

UPDATE: Rhee expands on her statement here, in an interview with Fast Company.

Both candidates took other liberties on the subject of education, too.

—Obama took too much credit for doubling the number of charter schools in Illinois, "despite some reservations from teachers' unions." The legislation he's referring to increased the cap on charter schools in Chicago, not Illinois. And my knowledge of government indicates that a lone state senator can't single-handedly do much of anything. What's more, the charter school cap was doubled only after the teachers' unions succeeded in getting many new restrictions on these nontraditional public schools.

—During the squabble over Bill Ayers, Obama pointed out that he served on an "education reform board" (the Chicago Annenberg Challenge) funded by "one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors." While Walter Annenberg and his wife were close friends of the Reagans, it was actually during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon that Mr. Annenberg served as the British Ambassador. His wife, Leonore, who has endorsed McCain, served in the Reagan White House where she was commissioned as an ambassador because of her role at the U.S. State Department.

—McCain declared that No Child Left Behind was "the first time we had looked at the issue of education in America from a nationwide perspective." Hardly. NCLB is the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which dates back to 1965.

—Over at the Teacher Beat blog, my colleague Vaishali Honawar points out McCain's double-speak on teacher certification and bad teachers.

—And, at On Special Education, Christina Samuels sheds some light whether McCain is really confusing Down syndrome, which his running mate Sarah Palin's son has, and autism.

Meanwhile, Flypaper declares that the real debate winner is...drumroll please...

ED in '08!

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

For the first time in the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain and Barack Obama engaged in a sustained, serious discussion about education--something they've done via press releases, or through their advisers, but never face to face.

But even after moderator Bob Schieffer devoted the last question of the third and final presidential debate, at Hofstra University, to how to improve education, voters still don't have much of an idea of what either candidate would do with the central K-12 education policy of the federal government: the No Child Left Behind Act.

Instead, the two candidates hit highlights from their stump speeches. Obama talked of his support for early childhood education, a $4,000 college tuition tax credit, and parental responsibility. McCain talked about the importance of choice and competition, and the need for more alternative teacher-recruitment programs such as Teach for America.

You can read the transcript of their exchange here, including some brief references to NCLB. (Obama reiterated a popular phrase that it was the money "left behind," while McCain said it was a "great first beginning." He also said the law should be reauthorized.)

Some other highlights of their education answers:

--McCain focused mostly on his support for charter schools as he argued for school choice, and brought up private school vouchers only after Obama did. (McCain's school choice proposal is to expand the federal voucher program in the District of Columbia by $7 million.)

--The subject of vouchers elicited one of Obama's strongest lines: "The centerpiece of Sen. McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots. That leaves all of you who live in the other 50 states without an education reform policy from Sen. McCain."

--McCain emphasized his support of Head Start, saying "Let's reform it and fund it." His early education plan, though, is fairly limited and includes a Head Start provision that's already in law.

--Washington Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is not the most popular with the teachers' union in the nation's capital right now for her support of a pay-for-performance plan, has a fan in Obama, who called her a wonderful, new superintendent. McCain said that Rhee supports the federal voucher program for her city, too.

--McCain talked a lot in the debate about autism awareness, emphasizing that his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, knows about that issue "better than most." But Palin's infant son, Trig, has Down syndrome, not autism.

--The premise of Schieffer's question deserves perspective. He talked of the country spending more than any other on education, but it's worth pointing out that many other countries have government health care, which means schools don't have to pay those costs on behalf of their teachers. If U.S. school districts didn't have to pay for escalating health care costs of their teachers, then funding comparisons might look different.

This question wasn't the only time during the debate that the candidates touched on education.

Earlier, the two squared off face-to-face about Bill Ayers, the Chicago education professor and 1960s-era radical whom the McCain campaign has sought to tie to Obama.

As promised, McCain engaged Obama in a verbal skirmish over the Ayers controversy. McCain reiterated that he doesn’t care about an “old, washed-up terrorist,” but said he does care about how forthcoming Obama has been about the facts. So Obama explained the facts this way:

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg. Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of the Chicago Tribune, a Republican-leaning newspaper. Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.

Perhaps more surprising is that Obama made his most high-profile statement yet in support of pay-for-performance for teachers. He invoked pay-for-performance (without specifying whether he would pay based on student test scores) as he tried to give examples of how he’s bucked his own party.

“I support charter schools and pay for performance for teachers. Doesn't make me popular with the teachers' union," Obama said.

The thing is, Obama and his advisers have consistently said he would support teacher-pay programs developed with teachers, and not imposed on them. That’s not exactly bucking his party. Also, while some Democratic interest groups may still oppose charter schools, there are a lot of Democratic leaders who embrace such independent public schools.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:43 PM | Permalink | 17 Comments | Recommend

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, state Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick, equated Bill Ayers to Osama Bin Laden, telling McCain supporters that both Sen. Barack Obama and bin Laden "have friends who bombed the Pentagon." The paper's editorial board took Frederick to task for the statement.

But over at Flypaper, the Fordham Institute's Checker Finn makes a somewhat similar point in criticizing an online petition in support of Ayers, the 1960s-radical-turned-education professor who worked with Obama on Chicago's portion of the Annenberg Challenge, a national school reform effort. Finn asks whether the petitioners would also sign onto a "support Osama bin Laden" statement.

Others had a more muted—but still critical—reaction to the petition. Over at Edweek's own Bridging Differences blog, Diane Ravitch asks her co-blogger, Deborah Meier to explain why she signed onto the statement, which equates Ayers' activities in the '60s with the protests of the civil rights movement. Meier answers here.

No matter what, it looks like the Ayers issue has steeped seeped into the consciousness of the electorate. A New York Times/CBS News poll published yesterday asks participants how much they had heard about Bill Ayers. Thirty-three percent said they had heard "a lot" while another 31 percent said they'd heard "some." The story published with the poll suggests McCain's strategy of attacking Obama on Ayers and other matters may have backfired.

And 9 percent of respondents said they were bothered by Obama's past association with Ayers. Compare that to 11 percent who said they were bothered by Rev. Jeremiah Wright and 12 percent for McCain's "first marriage." It doesn't look as if the public is equating Ayers and bin Laden.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:12 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

If you want an in-depth look at the types of teacher preparation programs Sen. Barack Obama has proposed in his education plan and highlighted in his stump speeches, check out my colleague, Vaishali Honawar's story this week on Boston's teacher residency programs. Under the residency model, private teacher preparation groups or university-based teacher programs partner with high-needs school districts to offer beefed-up field experiences to prospective teachers.

The Democratic presidential nominee helped get language steering funds for federal teacher programs into the latest version of the Higher Education Act, passed this summer. His education plan calls for funding 200 such programs that would each prepare about 150 candidates per year. Under Obama's plan, prospective teachers would receive a living stipend during the year-long residency, and would be obligated to teach in the district for at least three years. The programs would be partly funded by federal grants.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Barack Obama offers his most comprehensive response yet to the Bill Ayers controversy with this radio ad that hit the airwaves this morning, in at least the state of Wisconsin (a key battleground state.)

The Democratic presidential nominee's ad correctly points out that William C. Ayers is an education professor, who served on an education-reform board with ties to GOP nominee John McCain. The ad reiterates that Ayers has no ties to Obama's campaign. (Of course, the ad leaves out the "radical" part of Ayers' past.)

This won't be the end of it, though. McCain's campaign had explicitly made it an issue through TV, web, and radio ads, but he didn't bring up the Ayers controversy in the second presidential debate. After, Obama practically dared him to, essentially declaring that if McCain had something to say, he should say it to his face. McCain, who squares off against Obama in tomorrow night's final debate, is now saying he'll gladly oblige.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If kids could vote, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois would be the next President, according to the Scholastic Presidential Election Poll for Kids, which was released today. Obama got 57 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain's 39 percent.

Four percent of kids chose to vote for someone else. The poll had the highest percentage of write-in votes ever, with kids overlooking the major party's nominees to vote for everyone from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Leonardo DiCaprio to Stephen Colbert to "my dad."

There doesn't seem to have been much of a "Sarah Palin" effect - a majority of girls voted for Obama, 57% to 39%. McCain was more competitive among boys, he took 46% of their vote to Obama's 49%.

Even though most of the participants won't be able to cast real ballots next month, the Obama and McCain campaigns may want to take a serious look at the results. The non-scientific Scholastic Poll has predicted the winner of the White House in almost every election since 1940. The exceptions came in 1948, when kids picked Thomas Dewey over Harry S. Truman, and in 1960, when they chose Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy. In 2000, kids voted for George W. Bush, who won a majority in the electoral college, but didn't win the popular vote.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you needed any more proof that education has been an afterthought this election year, check out the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, which was released today.

Registered voters were asked which single issue is most important to them. (Question number 6). Just 1 percent said education, while about 53 percent chose the economy/jobs, 7 percent picked health care, and 6 percent selected the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Education was actually polling just a little bit higher - 2 percent - until last month, when problems in the economy really began to escalate.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The New York City teachers' union thinks so.

Read more about a lawsuit filed against the New York City school district over a policy forbidding teachers from wearing campaign buttons at school, at edweek.org's Teacher Beat blog.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:19 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

In John McCain's newest Web ad, he attacks Barack Obama for supporting a "radical education foundation" that gave millions to "idealogical allies" that resulted in scant improvement in the quality of public schools.

He was referring to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, detailed by my colleagues in this EdWeek story and this sidebar story.

McCain, who has criticized Obama for his ties to William Ayers, one of the founders of Chicago's Annenberg project, is now associating with the very foundation that funded the "radical" work.

His campaign sent out a press release listing all of the former U.S. ambassadors who support him.

On his supporters' list: Leonore Annenberg, 90, who was chief of protocol in the Reagan White House and is the president and chairman of the Pennsylvania-based Annenberg Foundation. She is the widow of Walter H. Annenberg, the late publisher, philanthropist, ambassador, and founder of the Annenberg Challenge.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:46 PM | Permalink | 9 Comments | Recommend

The Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign are pouncing on the Obama-Ayers controversy with two new television ads that link Sen. Barack Obama with the Vietnam War-era radical, William Ayers, now an education professor. Until now, the Obama-Ayers link has been the subject of ads by third-party groups, or run exclusively on the Web. This marks a significant change in tenor as the GOP seeks to turn up the volume of attacks against Obama.

For background on the education ties that link Ayers and Obama, read EdWeek's new story here.

The McCain ad states: "When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers. When discovered, he lied. Obama. Blind ambition. Bad judgment." The campaign said the ads will be broadcast nationally.

ThE RNC ad, which identifies Ayers as the leader of a "terrorist group" and says Obama's first campaign was launched in his home, will run in Indiana and Wisconsin:

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:30 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Sen. John McCain's campaign has elevated its attacks against Barack Obama from the campaign trail to an official, one-minute and 40-second Web ad that's the most detailed yet about the Democrat's ties to Weather Underground member William Ayers.

What's next? A paid TV ad on major channels, according to Politico's Mike Allen.

The Web ad, posted below, not only attacks Obama for associating with the "domestic terrorist" Ayers, it accuses the two of running a "radical" education foundation that distributed $100 million to "ideological allies" with "no discernable improvement in education."

Obama and Ayers didn't run a foundation. They were both involved in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which received money from the Annenberg Foundation, as did sites across the country, for school improvement work in the city.

My colleague, Dakarai I. Aarons, offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in a story debuting today on edweek.org.

Prominent Chicagoans involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge say those claiming the project pushed radicalism are wrong.

“I think one thing that’s gotten lost is that this was very much an establishment group,” Adele S. Simmons told Dakarai. Simmons at the time was president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which had pledged $40 million to the Chicago public schools at the same time. “This was very much a group of people in the mainstream leadership in Chicago working together for ed reform.”

While funding did go to groups like the controversial ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the biggest chunk of money went to run-of-the-mill education groups like the Chicago Comer School Network and the Lakeview Education and Arts Partnership.

As for its effectiveness, a 2003 study conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research concluded that the Chicago Annenberg project “did not achieve an overall effect on student outcomes.”

Ken Rolling, who served as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's executive director, told Dakarai that the project was about many, many more people than just Obama and Ayers.

“The impression, which is coming from a set of bloggers who want to make a conspiracy theory, is that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was an Obama-Ayers thing,” he said. “That is so far from the truth, and I think it so insults so many other people in this city who were so deeply engaged in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was owned by 100 people.”

You can read more about the Annenberg Challenge, including letters to and from Ayers, here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:50 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

From guest blogger David J. Hoff:

Now I know what people at "Georgetown cocktail parties" are talking about.

At the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, education's man-about-town Rick Hess said the chattering class is wondering which of Sen. Barack Obama's many education advisers gives the true portrait of what the Democratic presidential candidate would do on education. The most glaring example, he said, is that the Obama team includes many supporters of Teach for America, but also Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor who has been critical of the program.

Michael Johnston, who was at AEI on behalf of the Obama campaign for a forum on the presidential candidates' ideas on social entrepreneurship, acknowledged that Rick asked a good question.

Obama's modus operandi is to seek advice from people with differing points of view, said Johnston, the principal of Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts near Denver and a former TFAer.

"At the end of the day, he makes decisions based on what he thinks is important," said Johnston, who helped start New Leaders for New Schools with Jonathan Schnur—one of Obama's team.

In particular, Johnston pointed to Obama's Sept. 9 speech on education in Riverside, Ohio. The Democrat went to a state where charter schools have been controversial, particularly among teachers' unions, and stated that he would double federal funding for charter schools, Johnston said.

The answer didn't satisfy Lisa Graham Keegan, who has been the primary spokeswoman on education for the McCain campaign.

"I've had the opportunity to debate about seven different people," said Keegan, the former Arizona schools chief said. (I counted at least six.) In particular, Darling-Hammond's message hasn't been consistent with other advisers on whether Obama supports linking teacher pay to students' test scores.

"I'm going to tell you right now, she's not going to say what you're saying unless you all have had a come to Jesus moment," Keegan told Johnston.

What matters, Johnston said, is what Sen. Obama has said.

"The proof of that is in the words of the senator and the platform," he said.

With all of that in mind, I encourage you to watch an Oct. 21 debate between Keegan and Darling-Hammond, which edweek.org will Webcast live from Teachers College in New York City. We all can meet in a Georgetown bar on Oct. 22 and talk about it.

Posted by at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

William C. Ayers' name has been coming up time and time again in the presidential race, as Sen. John McCain's campaign tries to use his links to Sen. Barack Obama to cast doubts on the Democratic nominee's character.

But very few folks are talking about Ayers' views on education - or asking whether Obama shares those ideas.

Ayers, a former member of The Weather Underground, a radical 1960's organization, is now an education professor and worked with Obama on Chicago's portion of the Annenberg Challenge, a national school reform effort.

Although it makes for a better sound bite to link Ayers to “terrorism,” Stephen F. Diamond, a Santa Clara University law professor who is a prolific blogger on this issue, says the Republican campaign is missing the bigger point.

He told my co-blogger, Michele McNeil, that what’s more disturbing are Ayers’ views on education, which Diamond says include support of small schools, social justice approaches to teaching, and “race-based” approaches to curriculum.

“Obama and Ayers share these similar views on education. That’s not a sexy or toxic topic,” Diamond said. “But it’s the fundamental issue.”

Diamond told Michele that he’s been surprised that the Obama campaign hasn’t done more to make a clear, unequivocal break from Ayers’ views on education.

But now, Ayers' education views are finally getting some attention.

Back in April, Sol Stern, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, wrote this piece on Ayers' ideas on social justice teaching. It's now getting a renewed life; the piece was posted this week on the Web site realclearpolitics, a go-to site for political junkies.

Stern said that no one knows whether Obama agrees with those views.

The next time Obama—the candidate who purports to be our next “education president”—discusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbor’s vision for turning the nation’s schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Indeed, it’s an appropriate question for all the presidential candidates.

Last month, a group of educators (including New York University's Deborah Meier)signed on to a statement defending Ayers. Kevin Carey of Education Sector was unimpressed with the effort.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:41 PM | Permalink | 6 Comments | Recommend

None of the undecided voters from Tennessee, nor moderator Tom Brokaw, using questions submitted over the Internet, chose to ask John McCain and Barack Obama about education during Tuesday night's town hall-style debate.

Obama did sneak in a mention of schools in a question from Brokaw about how his administration would prioritize energy, health care, or entitlement spending on Social Security and Medicare in its first two years. The Illinois senator and Democratic presidential nominee put energy first, health care second, and ignored the entitlement issue in favor of education.

"We've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy," Obama said during the 90-minute session at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.

On the same question, McCain, the Arizona senator and Republican nominee, said he thought that "you can work on all three at once," meaning energy, health care, and entitlements, not necessarily education.

Obama linked the troubled economy to college costs. He mentioned paying for tuition as one worry facing cash-strapped families.

"A lot of you I think are worried about your jobs, your pensions, your retirement accounts, your ability to send your child or your grandchild to college," he said.

And, in response to a question from the audience about whether voters can trust their leaders to deal with the shaken economy, Obama mentioned college affordability as one area that the government must in invest in.

McCain never raised education as an issue, as Obama did. Nor did the Republican use the debate to raise concerns about Obama's association with William Ayers, the Chicago education professor and member of the 1960s-era radical group the Weather Underground. Ayers and Obama worked together on a school reform project in their home city, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Ties between Ayers and the Democratic nominee have been highlighted in the past week by McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and some expected McCain to raise the issue. But the town hall format wasn't very conducive to such an attack.

Maybe a very illuminating question that would have gotten each candidate to give a detailed, insightful answer on education policy got cut for time?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Maybe tonight's presidential debate will finally be the one where school issues make more than a cameo appearance.

The format will be a town hall meeting at Belmont University, near Nashville. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will field questions from undecided voters, mostly hailing from the surrounding area, although some questions will be submitted via the internet. The moderator is Tom Brokaw of NBC News.

Tennessee, which includes urban school districts such as Memphis and Nashville, as well as lots of small, rural districts, has grappled with education funding, curriculum issues, and implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act over the past year. (Thanks to my colleague, Dakarai I. Aarons, for filling me in on the issues in play there).

Just today, the largest newspaper in the state, The Tennessean, ran this story , which details how leadership issues helped spur a partial state takeover of the Metro Nashville school district. Neither candidate has been too specific about how his administration would help schools and districts that have continually failed to meet the achievement targets of the NCLB law. Tonight would be a good time to find out.

And earlier this year, the Tennessee state board of education voted for new high school graduation requirements that will get rid of current math and reading tests and replace them with end-of-course exams.

Both presidential candidates have voiced support for standards and accountability, but neither has talked much about whether they would seek a real change in the rigor of standards that states set for high school graduation. Again, something that undecided voters in Tennessee might want to press them on.

And Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, had hoped to boost spending for pre-kindergarten programs in the state, but the cloudy fiscal forecast has made that increasingly difficult.

Sen. Obama has said he'd like to spend $10 billion more a year on pre-kindergarten, some of it to help states develop programs for kids from birth to age 5. Sen. McCain hasn't talked about funding levels but he has said that he'd like to bring salaries for pre-K teachers closer in line with their K-12 counterparts. He hasn't said whether the federal government would help foot the bill.

Let's hope that at least one of these undecided voters is interested in hearing McCain and Obama address these questions.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger David J. Hoff:

Last week, Democrats for Education Reform raised $50,000 for Barack Obama in a minute. Pretty impressive, but is it enough to guarantee an invitation to a skybox at the 2012 Democratic Convention?

The political action committee isn't stopping there. It's holding a fundraiser next week in Baltimore featuring Obama advisers and continues to solicit online donations.

Posted by at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

So even the National Education Association doesn't seem to be focusing much on the presidential candidates' records or ideas on schools as the main mechanism for mobilizing its members in swing states.

A recent press release on the union's on-the-ground campaign efforts mostly emphasizes health care over education issues, even though Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, has made it clear he would seek to freeze education spending if he is elected to the White House. (The NEA has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee).

The union last week launched a get-out-the-vote effort in 10 states: Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. (No Florida?)

The campaign apparently includes a mailer about McCain’s "wrongheaded prescription plan for what ails America’s health care system" and a link to a new Web site, www.mccainhealthcaretax.com, that criticizes the plan. But there wasn't any mention of any education-related materials, at least in the press release.

A statement from NEA President Dennis Van Roekel in the release also emphasizes health care and doesn't say anything about education.

“Sen. McCain’s plan is further evidence that he still doesn’t understand the needs of working Americans,” Van Roekel says in the statement. “In the midst of the worst economic crisis America has seen since the Great Depression, he fails to grasp the urgency with which we need to provide more health-care coverage for the 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. To top it all off, his plan would pull the rug out from under employers that try to do right by their employees by paying some or all of their health care premiums.”

The release links health care costs to the economy and ultimately to schools, saying that districts have seen an uptick in the number of homeless kids and those qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches.

Still, it's telling that even the union's campaign efforts appear to stress economic issues over school policy, especially considering that the next president will very likely preside over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, which the NEA has vehemently criticized.

Karen White, NEA's political director, said last month that the union's 3.2 million members placed the economy above education when listing the issues they are most concerned about.

"Education is not 'typically' behind the economy, but given gas prices, energy concerns, and economic concerns – it’s not surprising," White wrote in an e-mail.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

To know which way the McCain campaign is hoping the political wind will blow, when it comes to the story of the Obama-Ayers connection.

Sen. John McCain's campaign is still hoping that Obama's connections with William Ayers, an education professor and the co-founder of a radical 60's underground organization, the Weathermen, will make voters think twice about putting Obama in the White House. But recent news accounts show that critics' accounts of their connection are greatly exaggerated.

In case you missed it, the New York Times this weekend published a front page story that basically says that Sen. Barack Obama and Ayers worked together on Chicago's portion of the Annenberg Challenge, a national school reform initiative financed by the late philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg. But Ayers hasn't been a mentor, patron, or policy adviser to Obama.

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

But that doesn't mean the McCain campaign is letting the story die.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's running mate, said this weekend that Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

CNN did a fact check of the statement and came up with this:

Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

If the campaigns spent as much time discussing actual, relevant education issues as they have been spent so far talking about Ayers, we might actually have a really clear idea of where the candidates planned to take education policy if they were elected to the White House.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:24 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin used yesterday's vice presidential debate to stress her expertise with energy. But it seems she has an energy crisis back home that's hitting rural, and urban, schools particularly hard.

Earlier this week, the superintendent of Anchorage's school district and the city's mayor sent a letter to Gov. Palin, urging her not to "stand by and tolerate the deterioration of rural Alaska." Residents of Alaska's small villages and cities are fleeing their rural communities—and their schools—for urban Anchorage, where gas, heating fuel, and food are cheaper and social services are easier to get. In some rural areas, gas has hit $11 a gallon. In the nearly two months since the school year began, this exodus has resulted in an additional 500 Native Alaskan students for the Anchorage school district, which has had to hire an additional 18 teachers. Unexpected, mid-year growth like this is tough for school districts, which build their budgets months before school starts and have little recourse to gain additional money during the school year.

At the same time, Alaskan schools serving those rural communities are seeing their enrollments plummet. The Sept. 29 letter points out that Bristol Bay School District has seen its enrollment drop by about 20 percent and has reached a 20-year low this year of just 140 students.

Anchorage's superintendent and mayor urge Gov. Palin to set up a local, state, and federal task force to address this issue. On a national stage, this is an opportunity for Gov. Palin to call attention to the plight of rural America and its schools—which are so often at the center of small town America.

UPDATED 10/9: In an Oct. 8 letter of response, Palin said she would direct her rural sub-cabinet to more closely examine the issue. Her letter indicated that while high fuel prices have not been found be to be a definite cause of migration, that “they could be a signficiant factor.” She added that her energy coordinator was working on a plan to help Alaskans cope with high energy costs.

Rural schools, in particular, struggle with low graduation rates, recruiting teachers in hard-to-staff subjects, and offering their students a wide range of courses, especially at the high school level. Even though about 22 percent of the nation's public school students attend schools in communities with populations less than 2,500, problems facing rural schools have been largely overlooked by the presidential candidates, a fact that hasn't escaped advocates for rural education.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There wasn’t a single question on education during the vice presidential debate, but Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware managed to get some of their views on schools on the table anyway–-including a surprise comment from Palin saying that she wants to increase education funding.(UPDATE: Read the transcript here.)

“Our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding,” Palin said during the debate at Washington University in St. Louis. “Teachers need to be paid more.” And she said that states’ education standards have been “a little bit lax” and need to be raised.

That might be news to her running mate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has said that he wants to freeze most domestic discretionary spending, including for education, until he can conduct a top-to-bottom review of all federal programs.

Palin also gave voters a sense of where she stands on the No Child Left Behind Act, which neither presidential candidate has addressed much on the campaign trail. Palin said the law needs more “flexibility,” although she did not elaborate on what that would look like.

And she bemoaned the lack of attention education has received. “It’s near and dear to my heart,” she said.

But Biden pointed out that McCain hasn’t proposed increasing education spending. McCain has said he wants to freeze discretionary spending for most domestic programs, including education, until he can conduct a top-to-bottom review of all federal programs.

Biden cited lack of money as a reason that NCLB law hasn’t been a success.

“The reason No Child Left Behind was left behind, the money was left behind, we didn't fund it,” he said.

Biden said that he and his running mate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, would not scale back their $18 billion education spending plan, despite the recent economic turmoil and a possible $700 billion federal assistance plan for the financial sector.

“We won’t slow up on education because that’s the engine that’s going to give us the economic growth and competitiveness we need,” Biden said.

Palin also gave a nod to the educators in her family – her father and brother are both teachers.

"I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her," Palin said to Biden. "Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education … I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad, who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher of the year. And here's a shout-out to all those 3rd graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate."

Biden and Palin weren’t given the opportunity to criticize their opponents’ records on schools, but Biden did get in a quick dig at Sen. McCain on the issue, saying that “he has not been a maverick when it comes to education.”

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:36 PM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend

If moderator Gwen Ifill doesn't ask Republican Sarah Palin or Democrat Joe Biden a question about education during tonight's must-watch debate at 9 p.m., it won't be because no one tried.

The Education Equality Project folks are making their pitch to the debate honchos to ask an education question. A letter to the moderator, signed by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and ED in '08 leaders, makes the case that the amount of time devoted to education during the presidential campaign has been "shockingly small." The letter goes on to say:

In fact, of 653 questions at 30 debates, only 20 questions addressed education—just 3%. The infrequency with which education is discussed at the debates can't be attributed to a focus on the economy and foreign policy. In the last Democratic debate in Cleveland, for instance, Senators Obama and Clinton spent more than 15 minutes discussing health care; no education questions were asked.

Meanwhile, late this afternoon a rally was scheduled at Washington University in St. Louis, where tonight's debate is to be held, to urge the candidates to focus on children's issues. Sponsored by the Every Child Matters Education Fund, the rally was expected to include children, parents, educators and child advocates in hopes of drawing the candidates' attention to education and social issues facing children.

Already, the National Education Association is weighing in on the debate, even before the first words are exchanged. In a press release that just hit my inbox, NEA Vice President Lily Eskelsen said: “Unless Gov. Palin offers a distinctly different vision from Sen. McCain on improving our nation’s public schools, she’s just more of the same. So far, she’s failed to do anything but offer blind support for the same bad policies of the past eight years." (UPDATE: I suddenly remembered that the NEA was far more impressed with Palin a few weeks ago when her selection was announced.)

It's entirely possible education will be an issue in the debate. Both Biden and Palin have teachers in their families. But even if it's not, you can get the kids' perspective on the debate by following the Scholastic Kids Press Corps here on Twitter.

If you’d like to do your own prep work before the debate, you can read up on Palin’s views on evolution vs. creationism and her record on special education funding in Alaska.

Regarding Joe Biden, read about his views on NCLB, merit pay, prekindergarten, and his education plan when he was running for president.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It seems Sen. John McCain is not backing away from his widely debunked education ad attacking Sen. Barack Obama's record on education.

The Republican presidential nominee told National Public Radio yesterday that the ad was accurate. Here's the exchange:

NPR: Have you come back to your advisers at any point and said — for example, the ad that ran with your name on it saying that Barack Obama supported comprehensive sex education for primary school students, something that factcheck.org said was wrong. Have you ever gone to your staff and said, "Take that ad off. It's not right"?

McCain: It's factually correct. It's absolutely factually correct, and you can go on my Web site and you can see the exact language of the bill that Senator Obama sponsored. ... And if someone named factcheck.org or anybody else doesn't agree with it, I respectfully disagree with their conclusions.

Here's a link to Edweek's analysis of the ad, and to the bill itself.

The long and short of it is that the Democratic nominee was not the main sponsor of the measure, although he did vote to support it. The bill, which ultimately did not pass, would have authorized comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education for students in grades K-12. Parents could opt out of that instruction. Obama said during his U.S. Senate race that the lessons for kindergartners would have been aimed at helping kids avoid sexual predators.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Two weeks before the election, edweek.org will broadcast a debate between top education advisers to Barack Obama and John McCain. Register now.

The live debate on Oct. 21 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time from Teachers College, Columbia University, will pit Linda Darling-Hammond, on behalf of Obama, against Lisa Graham Keegan, on behalf of McCain.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:30 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

After more than a year and a half and around $25 million, the Gates and Broad Foundations aren't going to be providing any additional funding for ED in 08, the venture that was designed to put education front-and-center in the presidential campaign, according to this story in the Puget Sound Business Journal. (Hat tip to Alexander Russo's thisweekineducation)

Chris Williams, a program officer at the Gates Foundation, said the organization, has funded ED in '08 through March 2009 and that the project always had a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end, pegged to the election. The foundations had originally pledged up to $60 million for the effort, according to this story by my colleague Erik Robelen.

"The money that's gone into it is the money that we think we need to get the job done," Williams told me. He said it is a credit to the organization's efforts that his foundation didn't need to spend more.

Still, by just about any objective measure, there has been very little discussion of education issues in the campaign. It's tough to say if that was because the economy, two wars, and "lip-stick-on-a-pig" comments drowned out some of the wonkier ideas that ED in '08 worked to get on the radar screen. (We never did see voters take to the streets to clamor for more rigorous, uniform, but not necessarily national, education standards), or whether it is just hard to run a campaign for an "issue."

Karen Denne, a Broad Foundation spokeswoman, said that while education hasn't been the top issue this year, there's been more discussion of it than there would have been because of ED in '08's efforts.

"What we realize is that, given the current landscape, education is competing with some very signficant issues both for the candidates' attention and the public's attention," she told me. "Education has been discussed to the degree that it has been because of Strong American Schools. ED in '08 has absolutely done a tremendous job in getting education addressed by the presidential candidates." Strong American Schools is the non-profit organization that administers the campaign.

And Shannon Murphy, a spokeswoman for Strong American Schools, said that both presidential candidates have expressed support for at least two of the organization's three main policy ideas: alternative pay for teachers, high standards, and extended learning time.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 6:54 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

As part of a series of interviews on the "CBS Evening News," anchor Katie Couric asked Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin last night about whether evolution should be taught in schools.

Here's the exchange:

Couric: Do you believe evolution should be taught as an accepted scientific principle or as one of several theories?

Palin: Oh, I think it should be taught as an accepted principle. And, as you know, I say that also as the daughter of a school teacher, a science teacher, who has really instilled in me a respect for science. It should be taught in our schools. And I won't deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is Earth. But that is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught in science class.

Scientists across the country were likely heartened to hear Palin shift her position on the teaching of evolution in schools. Addressing the issue of teaching evolution and creationism during a televised debate during her 2006 campaign for governor of Alaska, she said: "Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is important, and I am a proponent of teaching both.”

If you want to watch the video below, the evolution exchange is around minute 7:30.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:09 AM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend

From guest blogger David Hoff:

If you're determined to vote for a presidential candidate who opposes the No Child Left Behind Act, you have options.

Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are saying that they would keep much of the law's architecture of standards, testing, and accountability. (For more on that, see my story in this week's issue of Education Week and FairTest's overview of where the candidates stand on NCLB.)

But there are three candidates for president who oppose the law: Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader. All three want to repeal it.

Here's a sampling of their views:

Ralph Nader, who is running as an independent, says "federal policy needs to be transformed from one that uses punishments to control schools, to one that supports teachers and students; from one that relies primarily on standardized tests, to one that encourages high-quality assessments. Broader measures of student learning are needed that include reliance of classroom-based assessments along with testing."

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate, writes: "Turning education over to the federal government, as through such legislation as the No Child Left Behind Act has not worked. Trying to fix failing schools with more money and regulations also has failed to do anything other than waste taxpayer money without results." He proposes ending the federal government's role in education and turning decisions back to state and local governments.

The Green Party, which has nominated Cynthia McKinney to be its candidate, writes in its draft platform that "the federal Act titled No Child Left Behind punishes where it should assist and hinders its own declared purpose. It should be repealed or greatly redesigned." The federal government's roles should be limited to ensuring students across states have a "level playing field," the platform says.

McKinney, a former Democrat, and Barr, a former Republican, don't mention relevant details from their experiences representing different Georgia districts in the U.S. House of Representatives. Back in 2001, both voted for NCLB twice, once when the House passed its bill and again when the House approved the House-Senate compromise sent to President Bush.

Posted by at 7:31 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend