April 2009 Archives

So now Eduland has had almost more than 12 whole hours to digest the news that Tony Miller will be deputy education secretary. So far, it sounds like some folks are glad the department is bringing in someone with a background in management.

"With the added responsibilities that come with all this stimulus funding, we're pleased to see the secretary bring in someone to ensure that the department engine doesn't just run, but that it runs efficiently," said Amy Wilkins, a lobbyist for the Education Trust, an organization in Washington that advocates for low-income and minority kids.

Over at This Week in Education, Alexander Russo wins the Headline of the Day award by asking the question on lots of people's minds.

And you can expect Flypaper’s Mike Petrilli to place the Miller appointment close to neutral on his trademark Reform-O-Meter. He tells Politics K-12 that having a standard COO-type as the No. 2 means the real power center on policy will rest somewhere else—maybe with the chief of staff, or the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, or some other person.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:45 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Tony Miller, who has been a key player in managing the stimulus money, has been tapped as the deputy education secretary, the White House announced today. Miller has been advising Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seemingly from the beginning. As the new No. 2 at the department, he seems likely to play a heavy management role—the guy who is supposed to make the department run like a well-oiled machine.

According to the White House press release, Miller has spent his career "realizing opportunities for growth, operating efficiencies, and innovation," which sounds pretty much in line with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's agenda.

Miller has an extensive business background. He recently served as director of Silver Lake, a leading private investment firm with over $15 billion in capital. And he spent 10 years with McKinsey & Company, where he was a partner specializing in performance improvement and cost cutting, and company restructuring.

Miller has also worked quite a bit with the Los Angeles Unified School District, developing student-achievement goals and aligning budgets and operating plans, as well as creating processes for monitoring districtwide performance, according to the White House bio. He did similar work for the Santa Monica-Malibu School District.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:37 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Posted by educationweekly at 10:15 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

I'm sure you want to hang on to every word of the House Education and Labor committee hearing tomorrow on common standards, featuring an all-star line up.

Politics K-12 is going to experiment with brand-new software that will allow us to "live-blog" the event, meaning that I'll be bringing you the latest and greatest as fast as I can type it.

See you back here tomorrow.

UPDATE: Check out my live-blogging here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In a story for our latest issue of Education Week, I raised some red flags about transparency in spending stimulus money. I pointed out that the U.S. Department of Education had not posted online communications between lobbyists and agency officials as required by a March 20 directive from President Obama.

Now it has.

You'll see two files (only one link seems to be working right now) detailing these communications. (UPDATE: A tech-savvy reader of the blog discovered the correct link for the one that doesn't work, so click here.) Props to Education Department officials for the level of detail in the April 23 document, which details a call or meeting of some sort between five Education Department officials and four lobbyists (representing ACT, the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Knowledge Alliance, and the National Staff Development Council.) It's unclear whether there were non-lobbyists involved in this discussion, but regardless, they all discussed the state stabilization fund and the data metrics that the Education Department wants in exchange for the remaining one-third of the stabilization-fund money.

And, I'm not sure if we've heard this before, but the Education Department plans to require states to provide the data—or their plans to make the data available within the next two years—by September 30, 2009.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., said yesterday that a system of national standards and assessments is "worthy of consideration" - an idea I'm sure he's likely to expand upon in tomorrow's hearing on the topic.

Castle, a key member of the House Education and Labor Committee, made his remarks yesterday at a forum on the GOP and education. He was careful to make it clear that he's not 100 percent sold on the idea of national standards and tests, just that he wants to look into it.

And, in a quick interview after the forum, he said that, even if he decides to support such a policy, he wouldn't expect it to come to fruition for at least another five years. On the congressional time clock, that's actually pretty quick turnaround for a bold policy idea. (Congressional time moves only slightly faster than geological time.)

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, another leading GOP lawmaker on education, also participated in the discussion, as did Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Alexander straddled the line on national standards, saying that many tend to think the term means that Washington would write those standards. (Check out Fordham vice-president Mike Petrilli's excellent live blogging here, here, and here).

In the last Congress, DeMint introduced a bill that would allow states to opt out of the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. He's planning to sponsor it again and talked a lot about the need for Congress to step back and let states do their thing.

And he didn't seem too keen on national assessments.

"The thing about a national, standardized test is that it's going to be antiquated before it's even implemented," he said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Common standards is the twitter, the Wii, and the Twilight book series of education policy right now -- the latest, hottest thing that everyone (President Obama, Arne Duncan, state leaders) can't stop talking about.

Well, next week the House Education and Labor Committee is getting in on the action. On Wednesday, they'll be holding a hearing on common (not national!) standards.

The witness list, which was put together with committee Republicans, will feature some major players.

It includes: James B. Hunt, Jr. of the Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy in Durham, N.C. Hunt, a Democrat, served as the governor of the Tar Heel state, and is respected by folks in both parties on education issues. Also testifying will be Ken James, commissioner of education in Arkansas and president of the Council of Chief State School Officers; Greg Jones, the chair of the California Business for Excellence in Education in Sacramento; Dave Levin, a co-founder of KIPP: Knowledge Is Power Program, a network of charter schools based in New York City, and Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. Weingarten has editorialized before about national standards.

And (maybe interestingly?) there's no one from the education department, signaling, possibly, that Congress doesn't want to be seen as taking a top-down, we-do-this-to-you approach to a topic that runs right into local control issues.

My guess is that there will be a lot of talk about the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund, which Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the committee chairman, championed in the stimulus package.

So ... do you think Congress has an important role to play in keeping up the momentum on common standards so that it doesn't falter, yet again? Or is it better if they stay away and let states do their thing, since the train already seems to be leaving the station?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:55 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Curious as to why the changes to Title I made by new Secretary Arne Duncan weren't more sweeping, and instead only nibbled around the edges at the controversial No Child Left Behind law?

The answer, spelled out at a meeting I attended yesterday in Washington, is simple: Pure political strategy.

Steven Robinson, a special adviser to Duncan on science, technology, engineering, and math issues and a former adviser to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, essentially told superintendents gathered yesterday at the American Association of School Administrators' legislative conference that if the department started to make NCLB more workable, then there would be less motivation in Congress to reauthorize it.

And, Robinson said, the administration wants to reauthorize and fix the fundamental issues in NCLB (or whatever name it becomes), and sooner rather than later.

That was a bit much for one superintendent in the audience, who loudly commented that in the meantime, kids and districts are suffering.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:17 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin:

Several big names in ed reform, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan and New York City School Chancellor Joel I. Klein gathered today to discuss a new McKinsey & Company report about the achievement gap’s impact on the economy.

Although much of what was said about low-income and minority students lagging behind in achievement was old hat, the report did back up the cost of the gaps with estimated dollar signs.

The researchers spoke of racial, income, and system-wide gaps, but emphasized that the international gap, which places the U.S. behind 24 other nations in math and 23 in science, affects all students and is most detrimental to the country. According to the research, if the U.S. had closed the international achievement gap by 1998, the GDP would be between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher than it is today. “Between $3- and $5 billion a day is being lost because of the achievement gap,” noted researcher Byron Auguste.

With the economic crisis still unfolding, it’s clear that the researchers and reform advocates hope such numbers will get people’s heads turning. Secretary Duncan weighed in that the report “calls for radical and fundamental change with a huge sense of urgency. . . If we don’t do this now, I don’t know if we’re ever going to do it.”

Rev. Al Sharpton, who works with Klein on ed-reform issues, spoke of achievement gaps as a civil rights issue and warned of people “standing in the doorways” to change, an idea Chancellor Klein echoed in a later interview when he mentioned traditional interests blocking systemic progress. Though neither would point to the unions specifically, Chancellor Klein faulted “a system that protects tenure and the way we compensate people. ... We’ve got to challenge those alignments.”

While all the panelists were in agreement about the necessity of change, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said that a damaged education system—not teachers—should be being blamed for the data presented. He likened the teaching profession to the legal one, saying that even the best attorneys have a 50 percent chance of losing their cases and that a loss is not always the reflection of skill level. But in a later interview, Chancellor Klein expanded on the metaphor, saying, “I tell you, if you’re on trial for your life, you want the lawyer to win cases.”

Posted by Alyson Klein at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Education secretary Arne Duncan seems to be getting even tougher on states who may be playing financial shell games with their state stabilization fund money, declaring in an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal: "If they divert money intended for education to noneducational purposes, we may deny future funding or even seek to recover misspent funds."

While Duncan has certainly said he would deny future funding (e.g. Race to the Top funding), I'm hard pressed to remember when he's actually threatened to get the money back. In fact, in an edweek.org interview with him last month, I asked him specifically whether he'd ask for the money back, and he dodged that question (focusing on getting it right on the front-end.)

Perhaps he's tired of reading newspaper pieces like this one from Texas.

In the op-ed, Duncan wonders whether the country will have the collective political will to make tough choices. It will be interesting to see how Duncan handles these tough choices, too. In the op-ed, he talks of making options available to parents, whether those choices are charters, or "some other model." So far, he certainly hasn't made a very strong case for keeping the much-discussed D.C. voucher program.

Or how will Duncan handle tough choices about how involved teachers' unions (who Duncan says are more committed that ever before to change) should be in spending stimulus money, as my colleague on the Teacher Beat Stephen Sawchuk discusses.

Duncan sums his thoughts up with this: "We must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, regardless of ideology."

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

So California is the big winner in the 50-state-sweepstakes of who is first to get the initial round of state fiscal stabilization money.

The Golden State's Prize: Nearly $4 billion in stimulus money for schools.

Actually, there isn't much of a contest here. States have already gotten a portion of the Title I and special education money they're slated to receive under the economic stimulus package. And although the process of applying for state stabilization money was a little trickier, the Department of Education promised a quick turnaround on the first batch of money.

California was quickly followed by Illinois, which got $1.4 billion, and South Dakota, which got $85.4 million.

The funding is meant to help stave off layoffs and programmatic cuts, as well as make progress on key reforms, including improving teacher quality and distribution, developing top-notch data systems, boosting standards, and revamping assessments. States will have to provide more detail to tap their second round of stabilization funding, due out later this year.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said he'll be looking to see how far states get on those reforms before deciding who is eligible for grants under the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund, which is supposed to go to the best of the best.

But it's hard to say just how much money California will have left to reshape its K-12 system. Four billion dollars sounds like a lot ... but, actually, district officials determined that it isn't even enough to save thousands of teachers' jobs in Los Angeles, although it did spare many.

Do you think it's realistic to expect that states in super-dire economic circumstances (California, Florida, Nevada) are going to have the resources to change much of anything?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Still no deputy, but other appointments are starting to come fast and furious.

The Department announced that Robert Shireman will serve as deputy undersecretary, and Massie Ritsch will be deputy assistant secretary for External Affairs and Outreach.

Shireman's appointment shouldn't come to a surprise to anyone who has been following President Barack Obama's higher ed. policy. He had a huge hand in crafting those bombshell student loan proposals that came out as part of Obama's preliminary budget. Shireman founded the Institute for College Access and Success and the Project on Student Debt, a research and advocacy organization. And he was an adviser to U.S. Sen. Paul Simon.

"Bob is the man," Barmak Nassirian, the associate director of external relations over at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, once told me. He said that Shireman has played a pivotal role in just about every good thing to come out of student lending policy in recent years.

Ritsch will be in charge of outreach to education associations, foundations, and think-tanks. He was the communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, which put out a lot of good dirt on campaign finance. Before that, he was vice-president for Sugarman Communications, where he helped build support for charter schools and universal pre-K in L.A., according to a bio circulated by the Ed. Department. And, like another new Obama administration appointee, he's an ex-journalist who covered education and the 2000 presidential race for the L.A. Times.

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

President Barack Obama has asked his cabinet secretaries to put their heads together to cut $100 million from their budgets.

And so far, the Ed. Department has found almost $10 million in spare change.

For one thing, the department is going to get rid of its full-time education policy attaché at the U.S. Mission to UNESCO in Paris. (Too bad, education policy experts who are owed a political favor, that woulda been a sweet a gig.) That will save $713,000.

The Department will also make more employees share each printer, resulting in a savings of $6.7 million a year.

And it will require most employees to use a laptop computer for their work (as opposed to keeping a desktop and also receiving a laptop). This will result in annual savings of about $2 million. I'm guessing that doesn't figure in the cost of a chiropractor to help out employees who get sore backs lugging their laptops to and from Maryland Avenue.

On a different note, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has a reason to gloat at today's first-ever Obama administration cabinet meeting. He is one of the stand-out all stars in the cabinet, according to The Fix - the Washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog. And apparently, education is President Barack Obama's "favorite issue."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:06 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The Race to the Top is officially on, so says Michele in her piece on a big standards pow-wow in Chicago today. (And contrary to Sam Dillon's meandering piece on standards in the New York Times, Arne Duncan is not the first such federal official to make the call for national standards.)

Alexander Russo appears to be quite broken up over the news that EdWeek's own David Hoff is leaving.

Is John Easton, the new head of the Institute of Education Sciences, reform-y enough? Mike Petrilli at Flypaper debates himself.

The budgetary "shell games" that Michele wrote about in this excellent story are alive and well even in states that are in relatively good financial shape, says this Houston Chronicle op-ed.

And finally, if you haven't already, check out my colleague Debbie Viadero's excellent, live coverage of the American Educational Research Association's conference over at Inside School Research. Apparently, she's hobnobbing with "washed-up terrorist" (at least according to Sen. McCain) Bill Ayers who gave us a lot to blog about during the campaign.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

EdWeek's intrepid reporter and NCLB blogger David Hoff (known by some simply as "The Hoff") is putting away his reporter's notebook and joining the U.S. Department of Education as deputy assistant secretary for communication services. (UPDATE: Hoff wants to correct the record on this title, which is actually deputy assistant secretary for communications development. And while we're at it, he'd also like to point out that he doesn't like being called The Hoff.) In his new role, Hoff will work for Peter Cunningham and write and edit a variety of different publications and products (and since the department has $100 billion in stimulus money to oversee, there's presumably a lot of writing to get done).

For the time being, NCLB: Act II will be on hiatus. We'll keep you posted on that.

Hoff, whose last byline was a scintillating epic about a governance struggle in North Carolina, has tallied 1,092 stories (according to the EdWeek electronic archives) during his 12-year run here.

Along the way, Hoff trekked to Antarctica, waited in those oh-so-long lines at Invesco Field with me on Obama's historic nomination day, and, at last, found his long-lost inner self in Richard Simmons.

Hoff starts his new adventure on May 4.

(Photo credit: davidhasselhoff.com)

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:11 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The U.S. Department of Education has revealed in their weekly reports updated today that four states—as of April 10—have submitted their applications for the state fiscal stabilization fund. These applications are important because they show a state's commitments to use the money as intended (to prop up local education budgets) and to make progress on key education reforms.

They are: California, Illinois, Maine, and South Dakota.

In this blog's continuing efforts to monitor the "unprecedented levels of transparency" surrounding the stimulus package, I've tried to get copies of these applications.

Of the four states, only one has put their application online (that I've been able to find.) South Dakota. So kudos to the state and Republican Gov. Mike Rounds (since governors are the ones officially submitting these applications.) If you know of any other applications available online, please leave a comment or email me. UPDATE: An eagle-eye reader pointed me to California's application, which you can find on the state's department of education Web site here. So make that two states.

It should be noted that Illinois' lack of transparency, so far, comes even though the state put out a press release, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education, touting education secretary Arne Duncan's visit yesterday to the state and their planned use of stabilization fund dollars. After two calls to the governor's office over the past two days, a call to the state's commerce department (which is handling the stimulus package apparently) and an email to the commerce department's press officer, I still haven't gotten anybody to email me their application.

The federal education department, for their part, says that although they've committed to making approved applications public, they were undecided (as of yesterday) as to whether submitted applications would be public. It seems as though it would be important to see what a state originally promised to do in relation to stabilization fund money, and what ended up being in their "approved" application. Though in many instances the two could be the same thing, that may not always be the case.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 6:46 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Democrats for Education Reform announced this morning that one of their board members, Alan Bersin, will be named to a key post in the Obama administration. Bersin won't have much to do with education as he leads the Obama administration's policy on illegal immigration and drug-related violence along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Bersin, is the former superintendent of the San Diego City Schools from 1998 to 2005 and former California Secretary of Education. He was essentially a "border czar" in the U.S. Justice Department under President Clinton.

DFER guys do seem to be popular with the Obama administration. Last week, DFER-Colorado founder Peter Groff was named to a key faith-based post under Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

(Photo: In this May 2006 file photo, Bersin, left, then California's education secretary, appears at a meeting of the state Board of Education. Rich Pedroncelli/AP-File)

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

So...it's official. Jim Shelton, a former program director at the Gates Foundation, is really and truly helping to head up the Office for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. (Big hat tip to Flypaper on this one).

And, even though the department hasn't sent around a release announcing the pick, Shelton is already hard at work in his new gig. He signed a letter, dated April 6, that was sent to the parents of new students slated to be enrolled in the D.C. voucher program. It says that the department "deeply regrets the confusion" over the program's future, and points folks to public school resources.

The letter signals that the department isn't going to allow new students to join the program, which is slated to expire after this year unless the Democratically-controlled Congress decides to renew it. (That's considered a long shot). The money already slated this year will go to students already enrolled in the program.

The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing the department for playing politics this weekend. Do you agree that's what this is?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Fresh off his appearance at the 9:30 club, Arne Duncan joined the festivities at the Obama family's very first White House Easter Egg Roll this morning.

Former soap-star Josh Duhamel (whose wife, Fergie, also performed at the festivities) opened for the Ed Sec. Duncan read "Clifford Goes to Washington" to a group of about 100 people. He was joined by White House party-planner-in-chief Desiree Rogers.

The storytime stage, which you can view live here, also included readings from President Obama ("Where the Wild Things Are") and Michelle Obama and her mother, Marion Robinson (aka the First Grandma). They read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"— the story of a demanding, never satisfied mouse (draw your own political parallel in the comments section).

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Colorado Senate President Peter Groff is the newest addition to the Education Department, where he will be the director for the faith-based and community initiatives center.

Groff was part of a milestone moment in Mile High City. In a mostly-white state, he and another African American legislator became the first minority duo to hold the state capitol's top two legislative jobs.

This is making the Democrats for Education Reform very happy. Groff, a charter schools supporter, is a founding member of DFER's Colorado branch and won the organization's "education warrior" award in 2008. During his time in the legislature, he helped craft the Innovation Schools Act last year, which gave school districts more control over hiring staff outside of union contracts and more control over how much time teachers spend in class.

Education secretary Arne Duncan, who brings a strong district perspective to his new federal gig, also picked another (former) legislator for a job last week.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Happy Friday!

Before you head over to D.C.'s 9:30 Club to buy tickets for all upcoming events, so as not to miss another surprise appearance by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, check out these good reads:

Dueling Op-Eds: The conservative Wall Street Journal accused the Ed Sec of sitting on an Institute of Education Sciences report that showed some positive results for the District of Columbia voucher program until after a bill that would sunset the program was finalized. But then former IES head Russ Whitehurst attempted to put the kibbosh on that kind of talk in this Brookings Institution editorial.

Reid My Lips, No Waivers: Senate President Harry Reid doesn't think his state should get a waiver on the maintenance-of-effort provisions in the stimulus law, according to this story.

Speaking of the stim: The New York Times has some suggestions for the U.S. Department of Education on how to craft further stimulus guidance. Do you think they're a little optimistic about the department's available leverage or do you think the editorial is right on? Discuss.

And, finally, the winner of the Best Arne Headline of the Week: Is the New Republic's Seyward Darby, with this gem.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:30 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Yesterday morning, education secretary Arne Duncan was reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to a bunch of preschoolers.

Yesterday evening, he was rocking it out with Neko Case. He shrugged off the business-like suit and tie—and we hope, words like "dramatically better" and "incent"—in favor of jeans and a night on the town at the 9:30 club in D.C.

In fact, he even got to introduce country soul singer Case, as many blogs are reporting.

The link between Duncan and Case is Tim Tuten, an ex-Chicago Public Schools communications official, and Chicago music venue owner, who is coming to D.C. to work for Duncan.

According to folks inside the club, Duncan got a lot of cheers, and talked up teaching as a career. Case did her part, giving props to Duncan and encouraging the audience (mostly 20- and 30-somethings) to consider teaching and tutoring.

What we wouldn't give for a photo.

UPDATE: Photos courtesy Ed.gov Blog.

UPDATE 2: Check out Duncan's 9:30 Club appearance in the video below. And he does use one of his favorite words—"dramatically."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There are grand promises from the Obama administration that the $787 billion in stimulus funding will be spent with "unprecedented levels of transparency." And in a recent edweek.org interview with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, I asked him whether a parent would be able to follow the money all the way from the federal government down to the school level. He said:

There's never been such transparency. Recovery.gov is the Web site.We'll be tracking state-by-state and district-by-district how money is being spent.

Well, now that some $44 billion is starting to flow out of the ed department's doors, it's time to start putting this "unprecedented" transparency to the test.

During Duncan's visit to the Bruce Randolph School in Denver yesterday, the principal announced the school had already received about $200,000 in stimulus money, and must decide how to spend it by Friday.

So I decided to follow the money—backward. Since everything seems to hinge on these recovery Web sites, I started at Colorado's official recovery Web site. Besides a general chart listing education as one category for stimulus funds, I could find no mention of any education funding coming into the state under the Web site's categories of "news", "accountability board", "jobs and projects", "helping people", "resources", and "contact." For good measure, I made sure the Colorado Department of Education didn't have any specific information (they didn't).

Hitting a roadblock, I turned to the U.S. Department of Education's recovery web portal to see if I could find traces of money flowing to Colorado. Buried under "agency reports" are weekly reports in Excel spreadsheet format that detail money flowing out the door. (Are Excel spreadsheets really the best way to be transparent to the general public, many of whom may not have experience with this format?) The latest information from April 7 indicates that the department has spent $11 billion so far—but the information is in broad categories such as special education, Title I, or student financial assistance, with no state-by-state information.

The federal government's main stimulus Web portal, recovery.gov, has an "accountability and transparency" section containing links to the members of the new federal accountability board, and to reports by inspectors general. Nothing on the flow of money. A separate section on "agency progress and resources" contains the same weekly reports on agency websites, and links back to the agency's recovery Web sites. Still, no trace of money flowing to Colorado.

So far, all levels of government are failing the transparency test because, besides a mention in a news story, there's no evidence that money has made its way to Colorado school districts. So far, this unprecedented transparency involves some nice-looking Web sites with spreadsheets showing large chunks of money going out the door. That's not exactly living up to Duncan and Obama's promises. To be sure, it's early. Money has only recently started flowing. But an early test of the transparency claim shows there's a long way to go.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:36 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

From guest blogger Christina Samuels, on loan from her On Special Education blog:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan reminded states that stimulus funds can be used for early childhood programs when he joined representatives of an early-education think tank at a press conference today to talk about a report, The State of Preschool 2008.

The National Institute of Early Education Research noted that more than 1.1 million children attended state-funded preschool last year, an increase of 108,000 over 2007. State funding for pre-K rose to almost $4.6 billion, and 33 of the 38 states with state-funded programs increased enrollment.

However, 12 states provided no state-funded preschool in 2008, and the economy makes future funding uncertain; in most states, pre-K is an entirely discretionary expense, unlike funding for K-12 programs.

But Duncan said the stimulus offers an "unprecedented" opportunity to continue preschool investments, through the stabilization funds and increased funding of Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. "I firmly believe high quality early childhood programs is an economic stimulus package," he told the press, and said he would continue to use the bully pulpit to argue in favor of this investment.

Duncan also said that his department planned to break down silos between federal agencies: federal money for early childhood has also come through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which operates programs like Head Start. The relationship between the two agencies may have been "less than functional" historically, he said, but no caregiver worries about whether funding is coming from the Education Department or HHS—"we have to work together," he said.

Duncan and crew picked a good site to have the discussion: Washington D.C's Oyster-Adams Bilingual School is one of the top schools in the city, and counts among its students the daughter of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The school has 273 students on a waiting list for its preschool programs, says principal Monica Liang-Aguirre.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

The National School Boards Association and Council of Urban Boards of Education minced no words in responding to Education Secretary Arne Duncan's evangelism for mayoral control of big city school districts, stating their clear opposition in a statement:

NSBA is firmly opposed to mayoral takeovers of public schools ...What we need for our complex school districts is long-term sustainable reform. We need a system that allows for community oversight and input. Oversight and input which, too often, mayorally controlled districts do not have. For the mayors who truly put children first, a collaboration between the mayor and school board can and will work.

Duncan raised the dander of more than a few folks when he said last week he will have "failed as secretary" if more city school districts aren't under mayoral control at the end of his term. He softened that message when addressing the National School Board Association's conference last weekend, saying collaboration is needed between mayors and school boards. "It's a false choice to me to say you need a strong mayor or a strong board," he said Saturday. "A piece of the answer is strong leadership at the top."

NSBA says it plans to hold him to that.

"The thousands of school board members and school leaders ... listened carefully to what the Secretary had to say... NSBA will work with Secretary Duncan to promote effective collaboration between mayors and school boards."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Former Maine House Speaker Glenn Cummings is poised to join the U.S. Department of Education, where he'll work on college-access and career-readiness issues, the Associated Press reported today.

UPDATE: Cummings just told fellow Politics K-12 blogger Michele that he will be the deputy assistant secretary in the department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education. He starts on May 4, and will focus on college-access and career-readiness issues. He told Michele he's particularly interested in getting the adult workforce back into education, and in focusing on the "hinge joint" between high school and college—especially those kids who are on the margins and may or may not decide to pursue postsecondary education.

Cummings is currently dean of institutional advancement for Southern Maine Community College. His appointment would mean there would be not one, but two, top Ed Department officials with expertise in community college issues, an area that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed a lot of interest in during our interview with him last month.

Cummings chaired the House education committee in Maine before serving as speaker during the 2007-08 session. He sponsored legislation that requires all Maine high school students to apply for college.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's not clear yet whether the Obama administration's policies will be able to raise achievement, but the president has inspired some students to pull up something else: their pants.

Last year, in an interview with MTV, then-candidate Obama suggested that, while there doesn't need to be legislation requiring students to wear clothing that fits, "brothers should pull up their pants.''

That snippet played during the morning announcements at Plantation High School in Broward County last month. And teachers, students, and community leaders handed out belts between classes, donated by Walmart.

I wonder if this will make it into Arne Duncan's standard stump speech. He likes to talk about the "Barack effect" and suggests that the Obamas have made education "cool."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:06 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

School choice advocates are high-fiving each other over an Institute of Education Sciences study that showed the D.C. Scholarship and Opportunity program has a positive impact on reading scores.

The report came out on Friday, which Flypaper views as a wussy attempt by the Obama administration to bury its findings. (The Washington Post wrote about it anyway, and had this editorial; thanks to Flypaper for the links).

As many folks are already aware, the Democratically controlled Congress approved a massive fiscal year 2009 spending bill that says this will be the last year of funding for the program, unless its authorization is renewed.

No one seems to think that's likely. Still, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut who organizes with the Democrats and chairs the committee that has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, has said he'd like to hold hearings this year on reauthorizing the program.

I'm sure the program's supporters are already Xeroxing copies of the report, and probably the Post's editorial, to hand out at those hearings.

For more on the study, check out Inside School Research.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told school board members today that courage and political will are needed to bring lasting reform to the nation's schools.

"We have let adult issues get in the way of what is right for children," he said.

That courage, Duncan said, will be evidenced by better assessments, more transparent data, a willingness to experiment with other compensation systems for teachers and taking tougher action with underperforming schools.

Duncan was in San Diego to speak the annual conference of the National School Boards Association. The education secretary received no less than three standing ovations from the crowd, which cheered along with much of his stump speech on the Obama Administration's policies for spending education stimulus funds. The first round of stimulus funding was released this week to states.

The education secretary didn't shy away from controversial comments earlier this week staking part of his effectiveness as secretary on increasing mayoral control of schools in urban areas, but prefaced his remarks with a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment the board members might not agree.

"You are welcome to boo. Please don't throw any shoes at me," he said .

Noting the progress made in Chicago, Boston and New York schools since those mayors have gained control of the school systems, Duncan said higher engagement from city mayors and the larger communities are needed to drive real reform.

But the education secretary said his support for mayoral control doesn't mean he thinks school boards should be obsolete. Making the kind of progress Duncan said Chicago's schools have made in the last two decades would have been impossible for him (and Paul Vallas before him) and the board there to make with out strong support from the mayor and larger communities, including business and philanthropies.

"It's a false choice to me to say you need a strong mayor or a strong board," he said. "A piece of the answer is strong leadership at the top."

On another note: Duncan's official Education Department bio says he was "longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country" at the time of his appointment as secretary, something he's mentioned in speeches. While Duncan's seven years as Chicago's schools CEO is twice the average tenure found in a recent survey by the Council of the Great City Schools, other urban superintendents have served longer.

The longest serving urban superintendent is Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Beverly L. Hall,this year's National Superintendent of the Year and the focus of a recent Education Week story. Hall and Pat D. Forgione, superintendent of schools in Austin, Tx., both started their jobs in 1999.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:17 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan will address the National School Boards Association Convention this morning in San Diego. Education stimulus goals are expected to be a focus of his speech, which kicks off the organization's 69th annual conference.

We'll be tweeting his remarks live starting at 11 a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST at www.twitter.com/PoliticsK12.

Check back here later for observations after Duncan's address.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The New York Daily News exposes some eyebrow-raising financial contributions to the Rev. Al Sharpton's organization, the National Action Network, immediately after he announced he was forming the Education Equality Project with New York City schools' chancellor Joel I. Klein. A racetrack and Joe Williams of the Democrats for Education Reform are wrapped up in this complicated web, according to the story.

The Flypaper Folks talk about Margaret Spellings' new post at Fordham and the Ed Trust's new push for highly qualified bus drivers as part of their April Fool's Day edition of the Gadfly. Click through to the video for more fun and games.

The Quick and the Ed highlights Arne Duncan's displeasure with New York's decision to set aside funding increases for traditional K-12 schools while cutting charter schools.

Alexander Russo takes note of who didn't make the list of finalists for the Broad Prize for urban districts.

And speaking of Eli Broad, listen to him talk to the Washington Post about leadership, D.C. schools' chief Michelle Rhee, and how Duncan is the closest an education secretary has ever been to the president:

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Erik Robelen

The White House is turning to Chicago yet again for a key education post. John Q. Easton, the executive director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, has been nominated to oversee the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s main research arm. If approved by the Senate, Easton would serve a six-year term as the director of the IES.

A press release from the consortium, based at the University of Chicago, notes that as director at IES, Easton “will oversee four major national centers, a staff of about 200, and partnerships with institutions nationwide.” The institute funds lots and lots of research, plus large-scale evaluations of federal education programs.

The agency also reports on a dizzying array of statistics on the state of education. To be sure, this is an important job, and no doubt folks will be watching closely to see what the naming of Easton will mean for the future direction of research.

Easton is familiar with a federal test that is highly regarded by researchers, and heavily scrutinized by policymakers: the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He's a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent panel that oversees the NAEP, often referred to as "the nation's report card."

Easton would succeed Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, who left the institute directorship in November, and is now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

(Photo credit goes to the National High School Center.)

Posted by Alyson Klein at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Stephen Sawchuk

The White House says that Martha J. Kanter is Education Secretary Arne Duncan's nominee for undersecretary of education. Ms. Kanter now serves as the chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, in Los Altos Hills, Calif.

Duncan mentioned in our recent EdWeek interview that he hoped to recruit a community-college administrator to a top spot. Looks like Kanter's the pick. No word yet, though, on how her duties will be divided up with that of the yet-to-be-announced deputy secretary.

Kanter also served as a vice president at San Jose City College, and as a director, dean and subsequently vice chancellor for policy and research of the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office in Sacramento. She also serves as the national chair of The College Board's community-college advisory panel.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited a Maryland elementary school this morning to promote the release of $44 billion in education stimulus funding.

Before heading off to visit two classrooms, Duncan told the crowd packed into the school library that with money comes accountability and a push for reform to improve education across the country.

States are going to be required to show more information, including how their state test scores compare with national tests. They must also show measures that tie principals and individual teachers with student performance. And Duncan said the Education Department will be taking a harder look at what states and districts do with chronically underperforming schools.

"We have this magical opportunity to invest significantly in these best practices and scale up what works," he said. "What's going on at this school has to be the norm, not the exception."

The school, Doswell E. Brooks Elementary near the border with southeast Washington, is a 2008 Title I Distinguished School that has posted big gains on test scores over the last five years.

Asked how stimulus dollars and resulting innovations would make schools and their outcomes "dramatically better," one of the secretary's key phrases, Duncan said the U.S. must push toward the goal identified by President Obama recently of leading the world in college graduates.
"At the end of the day, we have to dramatically increase college graduates," he said.
Duncan wasn't alone in singing the praises of stimulus funding. He was joined by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, Maryland state schools superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards and Prince George's County (Md.) interim superintendent William Hite in a group that also included representatives from several national education organizations.

The county school system is using the stabilization money to plug a $151 million deficit that was going to require furloughs and larger class sizes.

Before leaving, O'Malley and Duncan visited classrooms, where the two tag-teamed in a dramatic reading of "New Tricks I Can Do!" to a 1st grade class.

"He's a pretty good reader, isn't he?" Duncan said about the governor, whom the education secretary said was one of his heroes.

When the kids asked him what job he'd do if he weren't education secretary, Duncan said while he enjoys his current job, he'd still be CEO of Chicago Public Schools, a job he said he loved.

"I miss home. I miss the the kids there," he said.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Catherine Gewertz:

In a letter sent today to all chief state school officers, Ed Secretary Arne Duncan outlines several changes he intends to make to the rules covering Title I programs, either by issuing waivers or new proposed regulations.

He is proposing to change a 2002 regulation that bars school districts that have failed to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act from serving as tutoring providers under that law. You might remember that when Duncan was Chicago schools CEO, the district fought tooth and nail for the right to serve as a tutoring entity for its students, even though it had failed to make AYP. It won that right, and the feds, in a pilot program, eventually extended the same right to a few other districts "in need of improvement."

Duncan's letter also says he will also consider waiving, for the 2009-10 year, a regulatory requirement that school districts tell parents at least 14 days before the school year starts if their children are eligible to transfer to another school. He said some states' testing schedules make compliance with that requirement impossible this year.

And Duncan is proposing to change an October 2008 regulation requiring states to update the accountability workbooks required under NCLB. In his letter, Duncan said it doesn't "make sense" to make states undertake that task now, as they are struggling to implement economic stimulus funding, and because the upcoming reauthorization of NCLB could mean that workbooks have to be updated all over again.

The Secretary proposed no changes to the high school graduation-rate regulations issued last October by his predecessor, Margaret Spellings. He praised them as "an important first step," but gave no hint about what next steps might be.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The new stimulus guidance is up, and the most significant directives from the education department center on the data that must be collected under the conditions of accepting money from the state stabilization fund. These are surely going to raise some eyebrows.

Highlights:

*States must collect data on the number and percentage of teachers and principals rated at each performance level in each district's teacher-evaluation system, and on the number and percentage of teacher and principal evaluation systems that require evidence of student-achievement outcomes. (A signal that the department is serious about boosting teacher effectiveness.)

*States must report the number and percentage of students by school who graduate high school and go on to complete at least one year’s worth of college credit (as applicable to a degree) within two years. (Do all states have this capability?)

*States must report whether they allow charter schools and whether there is a cap restricting the number of such schools, the number of charter schools currently operating in the state, and the number of charter schools closed within the last three years for academic reasons. (President Obama just called for states to lift caps on charter school capacity and expansion.)

UPDATE: Over at Teacher Beat, my colleague Steve Sawchuk offers insight into why the provisions on teacher-evaluation reporting are a big deal.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend