June 2010 Archives

Democrats who have supported education reform efforts are pushing back against a plan to divert funding already appropriated for the Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and charter schools to the education jobs bill.

This afternoon, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., a longtime charter school supporter, sent an e-mail out urging his colleagues to sign onto a letter to Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the sponsor of the legislation and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, urging him to reconsider the cuts.

Here's a snippet from Polis' letter:

"Race to the Top has already led to major progress that will improve student achievement. The discussions and changes that have taken place across the nation in the past year have accelerated long overdue and necessary reforms.

"But now, this progress is now threatened by the proposed $800 million cuts to three critical education reform programs: $500 million from Race to the Top, $200 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund and $100 million from the Charter Schools Program. While Chairman Obey's efforts to provide critical funding for cash-strapped public schools across the nation through a $10 billion Education Jobs Fund are commendable, it is very troubling that these three innovative programs were chosen to bear the brunt as offsets. This proposal undermines the President's effort to reshape and reinvent our nation's schools, by incentivizing educational innovation, building on what works, and rewarding results...

"If we are to meet the President's goal of becoming global leaders in college graduates by 2020, we must rethink and reinvent our approach to education by moving forward with bold reforms. Unfortunately, the proposed cuts represent a major step backward."

"We know we need to keep teachers in the classroom with our kids, and we also know that the status quo on public education simply won't do," Sen. Bennet said. "It cannot and should not be a choice between teachers and reform—we can and should support both. This short-sighted decision will deny local communities the opportunity to come together to think differently about education and improve outcomes for our kids from the ground up."

Education advocates say they expect a similar response from Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.

For his part, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said in an e-mail that he would have rather seen the jobs funding paid for through emergency spending—not cuts to existing programs.

"We have an emergency on our hands—teachers' jobs and our children's future are at stake. This initiative should have been funded through emergency spending," Miller said. "Instead, Congress has determined this spending must be offset and is taking the steps it has to take to ensure our teachers are in their classrooms and our students don't lose a year of learning."

But he didn't comment on the specific offsets selected. That's notable because Miller has supported efforts to expand charter schools and boost performance pay and was a champion of the Race to the Top program during the creation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

UPDATE:The American Federation of Teachers is worried that the Polis letter could derail the edujobs bill and has written a memo to congressional offices asking them not to sign onto the letter. The union wrote that although Polis may have "good intentions," the letter could hinder the overall jobs bill's chances of passing.

Here's a snippet from the AFT letter:

"The AFT requests that you ask your boss to refrain from signing on to the Dear Colleague letter being circulated by Representative Polis related to 'Cuts to Education Reform.' Regardless of Representative Polis' good intensions this effort may derail the provision of $10 billion to prevent hundreds of thousands of layoffs, larger class sizes, the elimination of summer school, shortened school days and weeks, and a reduction in the number of programs available to help the students who need it most. As important, this Dear Colleague letter may threaten the approximately $5 billion for Pell Grants included in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill targeted at removing the majority of the Pell Grant shortfall, which will save Congress from either reducing the maximum Pell Grant or cutting other important programs."

For more, check out my story on the jobs bill here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund might be about to get a little smaller.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, just introduced the latest version of the edujobs bill, which would appear to skim some $500 million from the administration's signature education reform initiative in hopes of coming up with $10 billion to help stave off layoffs.

And that's not all. From my reading of the draft now up on the House Rules Committee website, it seems another $200 million would come out of the Teacher Incentive Fund, which helps districts create pay-for-performance programs. That program received $400 million this year, plus $200 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The draft bill also would cut $100 million appropriated to the U.S. Department of Education in fiscal 2009 for innovation and improvement. It looks like that refers to the part of the law that deals with charter schools.

All this is intended to come up with $800 million in cuts from Education Department discretionary grants, which Democrats said they would seek in order to help fund the education jobs bill.

The proposed cuts to Race to the Top would leave $2.9 billion in the pot to reward states for making progress on certain education redesign assurances, assuming that the Education Department doesn't elect to take the cut out of the $350 million Race to the Top assessment competition. (It looks to me like the bill doesn't target the cut to one part of the program or the other.)

Watch this space for more details.

UPDATE:The implications of this move are not lost on the GOP. Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, just put out this statement:

"Democrats have shown their true priorities, jumping at the chance to discard education reform to salvage an unpopular bailout for the education establishment," he said.

Do you think that some Democrats will have similar misgivings, given that this is a real shot across the bow for the Obama agenda? Is getting rid of parts of TIF and Race to the Top, not to mention charter grants, a worthwhile trade for edujobs?

UPDATE 2: Here's what John See, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers, told me in an email:

We support Chairman Obey's bill to keep educators working and protect core education services. We preferred the larger emergency bill, which didn't cut education programs like the Teacher Incentive Fund and Race to the Top. We were not involved in what the offsets would be, or even told about them in advance.

UPDATE 3: I asked Peter Cunningham, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education, whether he thought the cuts to key education redesign programs were worth the tradeoff for edujobs.

"No," he told me, "We think that these reform programs are needed to move [student progress] forward." He said the programs are "very important and driving a historic amount of change." And he noted that there is "huge demand" for the funds...We think jobs and reform are both needed."

He reminded me that the Education Department supported an earlier version of the edujobs bill that would have provided $23 billion to stave off layoffs, without cuts to other programs. "If Congress is determined to find offsets, we will help them do that, but these are not the right ones."

UPDATE 4: Check out my story on the offsets here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Check out District Dossier, where my colleague Dakarai Aarons details his one-on-one interview with Microsoft and Gates Foundation founder Bill Gates.

At the end, Dakarai gets to the issue that's been raised many times on this blog: whether Gates is too cozy with EdSec Arne Duncan and crew at the Education Department.

Gates dismisses such talk, and says: "Arne's got a lot of different strategies. Some overlap [with the foundation's]. Some are different. I wish the world had one [education] agenda it knew would work and be embraced by teachers."

Check out Dakarai's blog for more.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Those American Express commercials on the Harlem Children's Zone must really be inspiring people.

A whopping 339 communities applied for relatively small one-year planning grants from the U.S. Department of Education, meant to help communities create their own Promise Neighborhoods. The new federal program, financed at just $10 million this year, is meant to help communities replicate the superstar, New York-based program's success in pairing high-quality academics with a range of support services, such as counseling and prekindergarten, in order to get kids ready for college or a career.

These 339 applicants aren't even asking for a grant to finance an actual program; those aren't available yet. The department will pick up to 20 communities to receive planning grants of up to $500,000. The department has asked for $210 million in its fiscal year 2011 budget to finance grants to actually implement the Promise Neighborhood program.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

House Democratic leaders are circulating a draft of a scaled-down version of the edujobs bill that would include $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs.

For those keeping score at home, the $10 billion would be a significant decrease from the $23 billion that Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, initially sought to stave off staff reductions. Conservative Democrats balked at the $23 billion pricetag and the fact that the bill would add to the deficit.

This time around, there's a lot less money, and the spending would be offset by about $12 billion in reductions to other programs, including an $800 million cut in funding for new discretionary programs in the U.S. Department of Education.

The $800 million question, for now, is ... where would that money come from? That's not clear yet. I can't think of many new discretionary programs, other than the ones created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, most notably the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, the $650 million Investing in Innovation Grants. And since we're talking about discretionary grants, it's unlikely anyone would be looking at money approved under the stimulus for Title I or special education.

Under the draft, if a governor doesn't submit an application for the edujobs fund, the Department of Education can make awards directly to other entities within the state. (Take that, Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.!) And, according to a notice about the draft, the bill also would include strict provisions to ensure that states use the funds only to save K-12 jobs, not to supplant state spending on education.

Money from the Education Jobs Fund could not be used for equipment, utilities, renovation, or transportation. And the draft bars states from using any of the money for "Rainy-Day Funds" or to pay off debt.

The money would be attached to an emergency spending bill financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That vehicle could complicate matters, since many progressive Democrats would like to vote against war funding.

The draft also includes $4.95 billion to help shore up the Pell Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for college. That's not quite enough to make up the gap in the program, but it will help, leaving a shortfall of about $717 million, advocates say. The Pell shortfall has ramifications for key K-12 programs, such as Title I and special education, because they are financed under the same legislation. If there needs to be additional funding for Pell grants, that might mean less money for those programs.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.V. , who passed away this morning at the age of 92, was famous in the Senate for carrying around a copy of the constitution. And he wanted to make sure that students across America had a thorough understanding of that document.

That's why, in 2004, he put language into a federal spending bill directing schools to set aside a specific day, September 17, to teach students about the constitution, as a condition of receiving federal funds. Not every school has complied with the requirement (it doesn't appear to have been strongly enforced) but many have taken the opportunity to step up civic education.

Byrd also championed a number of programs that were among those that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wanted to see consolidated in his fiscal year 2011 budget. Those included a $118 million program aimed at providing grants for teaching American history, as well as the Byrd Honors Scholarship Program, financed at about $40 million, which funded merit-based scholarships for high school students.

Check out this excellent post over at Eduflack, a blog written by Byrd's former press secretary, Patrick Riccards.

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

That's a very real question, especially after reading this post from the Association of School Business Officials.

During a recent U.S Department of Education webinar geared toward districts, 48 percent of those who participated said they were somewhat concerned about spending their money before the clock strikes midnight on Sept. 30, 2011. That's the deadline for spending $10 billion in Title I and $12 billion in special education dollars.

Of that money, districts have $6 billion in Title I funds (not counting school improvement grants) waiting to be spent, according to the latest Education Department data from June 18. Districts have $7.6 billion in special education funds on the table.

Clearly, the department is at least mildly concerned about slow spending since part of the recent webinar, including some PowerPoint slides, focused on the how much stimulus money is still out there to be spent. To be clear, this is not a department problem; the feds have obligated the money and made it available to districts. This is, apparently, a district spending issue.

While this money sits waiting to be spent, many districts and education advocates are fighting for more money from Congress to help stave off additional teacher layoffs as states slowly recover from the economic downturn. And some leaders in Congress are aware of this unspent money, and may even have been eyeing it to help pay for the edujobs bill. Leaving money on the table certainly doesn't seem like a wise strategy for convincing a frugal Congress to fork over even more funds.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A group of 83 House Democrats has sketched out what its members would like to see in the renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the current version of which is the No Child Left Behind Act.

The group, called the Progressive Caucus, includes some of the most liberal members of Congress. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, who is pretty much The Man in Charge when it comes to the House version of ESEA reauthorization, is a member, but it's tough to say just how many of the group's ideas he would endorse.

Perhaps more important, the two co-chairs of the caucus, who likely had a lot of input into the recommendations, are Reps. Raul M. Grijavla, D-Ariz., and Lynn C. Woolsey, D-Calif., both rank-and-file members of the House education committee, so you can bet they'll be pushing for these proposals.

Among the ideas:

*All reform models must include parental and community engagement.

*Measures of annual progress must be broad and flexible, with student success including non-academic achievement (i.e., participation, regular attendance, and, for some students, GED completion.)

*Ensure that any evaluation of teacher effectiveness include multiple measures, not limited to a single high-stakes test.

The group also wants to see expanded support services (particularly for prekindergarten). And it would like to see charter schools held accountable in the same way traditional public schools are, including for meeting the needs of special populations, such as students in special education.

You can check out the full version of the recommendations here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Education Department has made good on promises to disclose more data on the 1,600-plus applicants for the $650 million Investing in Innovation, or i3, fund.

Officials have created a user-friendly Web portral that allows you to splice the information apart in dozens of ways. You can examine the data by geography, and figure out where the biggest—or smallest—concentrations of potential winners are located. You can see who applied for each tier of grants, how much money they want, and who their budget partners are. You can examine the applications by type of applicant, which allows you to see which school districts, nonprofits, and others are vying for this money.

I've complained before about the Education Department's difficult-to-navigate web site, and so I want to be among the first to cheer them on when they make data available in a particularly user-friendly sort of way.

The next question is whether the department has figured out when and how to make the contents of the applications available. This is especially important for the 19 applicants for the largest scale-up grants, which are worth up to $50 million each.

Regardless, the almost-winners will be announced at the end of July, according to this new frequently-asked-questions document the department put out. Winners won't be full-fledged winners until they secure that 20 percent matching grant for their project proposal, which must be done by Sept. 1, according to the FAQ document, which also provides a lot of helpful information about securing that match.

Those who can't secure their match by the Sept. 1 deadline will not win the money, and no deadline extensions will be made. And by then, it will be too late to ask for a waiver from that requirement. That had to be done as part of the applications submitted by the May 12 deadline. Only about 12 percent of applicants asked for a waiver from that requirement, according to the new i3 data available online. Applicants who requested a waiver will know if they are granted one when the almost-winners are announced at the end of July.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Despite support from big-name congressional Democrats, the administration, and the very energetic lobbying efforts of a number of education groups, the edujobs bill still has not made it to legislative prime-time.

Conservative and moderate Democrats, as well as Republicans, are questioning the impact of the legislation's $23 billion price tag on the federal deficit. And the measure may, for now, be in (indirect) competition with another bill also aimed at steadying faltering state finances, a $24 billion measure offering Medicaid aid to states.

That money is nearly as important to education as the edujobs bill, some advocates tell me, because some 30 states have included it in their budgets for fiscal year 2011. If it doesn't get approved, they'll have to go back and make cuts...quite possibly to education. The Senate failed to approve a $120 billion measure that included the Medicaid aid last week.

Much of the opposition to the edujobs measure comes from the lack of an "offset." There have been concerns that Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, may cut the cost of the bill to as little as $10 billion. And he may be looking to offset at least part of the cost by shifting unspent money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for education and other areas to the edujobs measure.

Some folks are worried that that could include some of the competitive pots, like Race to the Top, the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), and even Title I and special education money.

But Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the bill's Senate champion, has said he doesn't want to see ARRA dollars used. And it's tough to see the administration supporting that plan. My guess? It's a long shot that those dollars would be used. But Congress can be pretty unpredicatable.

For their part, of course, most education advocates are opposed.

"That would be robbing Peter to pay Peter," Joel Packer, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, told me. To make his argument, Packer is pointing to this recent Gallup poll, which shows Americans favor additional government spending to stimulate the economy. He's also touting this Roll Call editorial, which seems to be a counterpoint to these editorials.

Meanwhile, Eduwonk, is taking a look at what the lack of support for the edujobs measure means for the overall political environment.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Longtime U.S. Department of Education official Joseph Conaty will take over as interim director of the Race to the Top now that Joanne Weiss is moving up the chain and becoming chief of staff to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Conaty, who has served in many roles since coming to the department in 1987, is currently the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education's director of academic Improvement and teacher quality programs.

He'll take over the post July 4 and will temporarily be in charge of both the high-profile $4 billion state competition, and the $350 million assessment competition.

If you'll remember, dominoes started falling when chief of staff Margot Rogers announced she was leaving at the end of this month.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When I talked to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan earlier this week about the transition in his chief of staff post, he talked about the broader shift in the department: from policy formation to policy implementation.

Designing and executing the competitions around Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation Fund are only a small part of the battle for the department as it pursues its reform agenda. Next comes implementation. States and i3 winners must make these reforms happen, and the department must hold them accountable.

To that end, the department needs some outside help.

For Race to the Top, the department wants a contractor to help build a "technical assistance network" for the states that win these grants. I am not an expert in federal procurement, but it looks like the department is targeting specific consulting firms for this work, such as Westat, American Institutes for Research, and KPMG. The contractor will work with individual states to implement their reform plans, and build a network to share best practices and lessons learned across all states. And, the contractor is supposed to ensure an efficient and transparent use of funds. This sounds like a big job!

It also looks like the Institute of Education Sciences, the department's research arm, is doing research on whether there's capacity in the small business community for a contract that would help IES conduct "impact evaluations" of Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants. The department is also gearing up to hire contractors in general to help evaluate this $650 million i3 grant program. IES will play a big role in evaluating stimulus-related reforms.

And finally, the department is also working on getting a contractor to provide technical assistance, paid for through the economic-stimulus package, for winners of Teacher Incentive Fund grants, which are used to help design performance-based compensation systems for teachers.

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

The "Big 8" lawmakers who chair the committees and subcommittees charged with K-12 policy held a closed meeting Wednesday on Capitol Hill with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Melody Barnes, the White House's point person on education. The department and the White House called the meeting, congressional sources told me, to gauge progress on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

After the meeting, I was able to chat very briefly with Barnes; Duncan; Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee; Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the panel; and the top Republican and Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees K-12 education, Reps. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and Mike Castle R-Del.

What they all said (paraphrasing here):

The meeting itself was very congenial, and staffers will continue to work in a bipartisan way to complete the reauthorization, ideally sooner rather than later. Every single person agreed that the current version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act, is flawed and needs to be changed. Everyone gave the secretary high marks for an inclusive process.

What none of them said:

The reauthorization will definitely get done by the end of this Congress, the time line the administration had originally been shooting for. Although everyone stressed that the work will continue, absolutely no one committed to any sort of specific time line.

Given that it's already the middle of June, I'm guessing that means that it's going to be an uphill battle to complete the bill this year. There had been some speculation among lobbyists that the House education panel was shooting to mark up a bill this summer, possibly even next month, but Miller didn't confirm that one way or the other.

Still, if staff and lawmakers are going to continue discussions, it's important to pay attention to the areas in which they are able to reach agreement. Lawmakers have a way of picking up where they leave off on bills like this.

Kline told me that the group discussed some such policy areas, including the need for more local flexibility and the need to support charter schools. (He did note that not everyone agrees on the number of charter schools ... which I think is a reference to the administration's push, in Race to the Top, to get states to raise their charter caps.)

Duncan said there was "lots of good camaradarie" in the room and that some even said the process was a model for how Congress should tackle issues in a bipartisan way. And he wants to make sure the eventual reauthorization has both GOP and Democratic support—he hoped the renewal would be as non-political as possible.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Check out my interview with Margot Rogers, who is leaving her post as Arne Duncan's chief of staff after 18 months. She's giving up her Blackberry and hitting the beach for the summer before figuring out what's next. And given her extensive education policy background, Rogers should have no problem landing a plum gig.

Her one big regret? Not sticking around to see ESEA get reauthorized. (But can anyone blame her for not waiting? Reauthorization might still be a long way off...)

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

I'm sure you've heard by now that the White House, which some folks said wasn't going after the edujobs money with sufficient gusto, sent a letter, on a weekend no less, to congressional leaders asking them to please pass legislation to stave off what some warn could be 300,000 teacher layoffs.

A couple of things to note here:

*The version of the edujobs bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December, was set to provide $23 billion, but the letter doesn't specify an amount. Still, published reports say this is an ask for $50 billion in total state aid, which would seem to suggest that the administration wants the full $23 billion.

*The White House also asked Congress to pass an extension of the Medicaid FMAP program, which could cost about $24 billion. That money is also pretty important to education funding because some 30 states have already written it into their budgets. If it doesn't come through, there could be more cuts to state ledgers, which usually means more cuts for K-12, which almost certainly means more layoffs.

Congressional leaders are working on a plan to offset at least part of the cost of the edujobs legislation, lobbyists have told me.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been up on Capitol Hill, asking for the jobs money for quite a while now, and he's made it clear that he is speaking for the entire Obama administration. Still, this is the clearest signal yet that the White House supports the effort.

What do you think? Will the letter help the edujobs effort, or is this too little too late? And are you disappointed the White House didn't specify an amount?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

First it was Richard Simmons, getting Congress to exercise.

Now Rachael Ray is lending her star power to the House Education and Labor Committee's effort to revamp school nutrition programs. Apparently, she thinks a bill introduced today by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the committee, is yummo and delish.

Ray, who participated up in a press conference on Capitol Hill today to roll out the legislation, asked the audience to imagine what it is like for a child to go hungry.

"The difference an apple or a good school lunch makes to these kids ... it's more than just keeping them focused in class, it literally is everything," she said.

The bill is also being championed by Reps. Todd Platts, R-Pa., and Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. The Senate Agriculture Committee passed its own version of the measure earlier in this Congress. It's awaiting floor action.

The measure seeks to better coordinate child nutrition programs with data produced by other federal agencies so that more kids can participate. For instance, the bill would make it easier for kids to enroll in the school lunch program by using Medicaid/SCHIP data to show that their families meet the necessary income requirements. And it would use U.S. Census data to help steer meals to high-poverty schools. The measure also would aim to make meals more available at school and community-based summer and afterschool programs.

And it would aim to make meals healthier by offering schools competitive grants to improve their healthy breakfast programs, and by hiking the reimbursement rate for school lunch by 6 cents per meal.

The bill also would help schools establish partnerships with local providers, such as nearby farms, to create school gardens And it would seek to improve food safety.

No mention of EVOO in there, though.

You can watch Ray's full speech here, and Miller's here. And check out this fact sheet on the legislation.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was a major force behind the stepped up federal accountability in the No Child Left Behind law, has tapped former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to serve as the new head of its education programs.

In case you've been living under a rock, Spellings was a key architect of the NCLB law when she served as President George W. Bush's domestic-policy adviser. As secretary of education, she introduced substantial new flexibility into the law and also racked up some major international frequent-flyer miles.

Spellings, who will be replacing Arthur Rothkopf, has already been serving as a senior adviser to Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber's president and CEO.

It's hard to say whether having her as frontwoman will help the chamber's cause. On the one hand, she's still well respected by many folks on Capitol Hill and in the policy community, and is seen as an effective deal maker. Plus she's funny, a great communicator, and as folksy as it gets. On the other hand, the NCLB law is a pretty tarnished brand and Spellings is as closely associated with it as anyone out there— except maybe her former boss.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., a former Denver schools chief, who is said to be the administration's go-to guy on education issues, just dropped this bill aimed at helping states and districts build capacity to turn around low-performing schools.

Unlike a proposal by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., which would completely reject the administration's four turnaround models outlined in the School Improvement Grants, the Bennet proposal is more about training school leaders to do turnaround work and spurring more research on how to intervene in struggling schools.

The bill would create a School Leadership Academy, which would be charged with developing a training program to help principals intervene in foundering schools. It also would help create a network of School Leadership Centers of Excellence, which would basically do the work of training and supporting turnaround principals. The centers would be run by partnerships between non-profit organizations, higher education institutions, and state education agencies or districts. At least one center would specialize in rural turnarounds.

The whole thing reminds me of this model, used, apparently with great success, in the United Kingdom.

Bennet, who was supposedly the runner-up for Obama's U.S. Secretary of Education, was appointed to his Senate seat when then-Sen. Ken Salazar became secretary of the Interior. Now, Bennet's fending off a tough primary challenge from former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, and he may be in for an even tougher general election battle against former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, the likely GOP nominee.

Along with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., (and of course, committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa,) Bennet wins the Best Attendance Award at this spring's string of Senate hearings on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Bennet is also said to be working on legislation aimed at teacher quality. Apparently, he's considered ideas such as offering a special, national license to make it easier for promising teachers to work in low-performing schools across the country.

So far, Bennet hasn't introduced the legislation. It's tough to say whether that bill is getting held back because it could hinder support from unions—possibly hurting Bennet's primary chances, as some folks have speculated—or whether Bennet is waiting for the Senate to get closer to reauthorization, when his ideas would get more attention, as other folks have told me.

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

Joanne Weiss will become U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's chief of staff at the end of the month, a department spokesperson confirmed today.

Weiss, the department's Race to the Top director, who has earned high marks for how she's handled this high-profile competition, will replace Margot Rogers, who came to the department alongside Duncan at the beginning of the administration. No word yet on where Rogers, who previously worked for the Gates Foundation, is landing.

The department spokesperson said: "Margot has been an amazing leader, a trusted confidant, and an invaluable friend to Arne and all in the department. She will be deeply, deeply missed.

"Joanne's experience with Race to the Top, which has helped drive unprecedented education reform across the country, will prove an invaluable asset to Arne as Chief of Staff."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Lisa Fine

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill usually talk about children in a specific context, such as education or health policy, but a hearing today—the first of four—focused on "The State of the American Child" in a big-picture way.

The Senate education committee's subcommittee on children and families is receiving testimony from a variety of experts who will examine numerous aspects of children's lives: their health, education, and family and community life.

At today's hearing, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who is subcommittee chairman, said he was planning to craft and introduce legislation to create a national commission on children to regularly and closely examine the needs of American families and identify solutions.

"There's a reason our kids get report cards in school," said Dodd, who is retiring after this year. "They help us clearly identify how we're doing. Only by assessing honestly our progress—celebrating our successes and acknowledging our failures—can we improve it."

At the standing-room-only event, Dodd and the subcommittee heard from Alma Powell, chair of America's Promise Alliance, in Washington; Elaine Zimmerman, executive director of Connecticut Commission on Children, in Hamden, Conn.; Jack Lund, president and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Greater New York, in New York City, and Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University.

They brought up such issues as the need to improve the graduation rate, reduce childhood obesity and poverty, provide quality, affordable preschool and aftercare options for working parents, and make sure children have access to health care.

These have long been identified as challenges facing children and families, but are even more critical in light of economic conditions, Dodd said.

"We can't ignore the fact that this discussion is taking place in the wake of a brutal recession that will have a tragic impact on American families long after the economic indicators have turned around," Dodd said. "One in seven American children have an unemployed parent. One in five live in poverty, and an additional 5 million could be driven into poverty before this recession is through. One in four currently use food stamps, and half of all kids will use them at some point during their childhood. This recession will end, but its impact will endure."

He said the commission is needed to bring experts together to address the overall well-being of children.

"Just what we need, another commission," Dodd said jokingly. "I know people think rather than solve a problem, we form a commission. But this will be a way to strip out the [political] ideology from the debate."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

So tonight, some very lucky students in Kalamazoo, Michigan are going to have their commencement address delivered by none other than President Barack Obama.

And although I doubt Obama will talk much about union side deals and other education policy inside baseball, it's not surprising that the administration is using the hoopla surrounding the speech as an opportunity to tout its progress on major education redesign achievements - and to lay some groundwork for the administration's priorities as Congress begins to consider the fiscal year 2011 education spending bill.

Chief on that list? The competition for a slice of the $4 billion Race to the Top. In a conference call with reporters today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the program has sparked a spate of reform-ey state action, including some "very progressive labor-management agreements."

He said it was clear there was "pent up demand for change" and "couldn't be more proud of the work" that states have done or committed to do.

And he said that some states are very close to enacting the kind of reform plan the administration would like to see and might have a great shot at "Race to the Top Three." The Obama administration has sought $1.35 billion in additional funding from Congress for the program.

It's uncertain whether Congress will extend the program in its fiscal year 2011 spending bills, which could be marked up this summer. But I'd except to hear way more rhetoric from the administration on how the program can continue to make a difference, now that Round 2 applications are in and Congress must begin to decide its fate.

Duncan also touted the administration's efforts on school improvement using the SIG grants, which have recently received some congressional pushback. It also remains to be seen whether lawmakers will include the administration's full request for the School Improvement Grants, which they have sought to increase from $546 million in fiscal year 2011 to $900 million in fiscal year 2011.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Florida's Race to the Top application and the so-called side deals that districts and unions are entering into on their own—outside of the official application—are raising some eyebrows among education policy wonks. It's really unclear just how problematic these side deals might be to the spirit of the Race to the Top competition in Florida, but they sure do raise a lot of questions. Eduwonk, Sherman Dorn, State EdWatch, The Washington Post's Answer Sheet, and this blog have all explored the ramifications of these side deals.

Now, the U.S. Department of Education is weighing in late Friday on such deals. They would not talk about Florida, specifically, because of the ongoing competition, but my guess is some high-level conversations went on to discuss the matter. After all, the last thing the department wants is a bunch of copycat side deals across the country that threaten to complicate the second-round competition.

So, in general, department spokesman Justin Hamilton told me today, federal officials will be giving peer reviewers much more extensive training in reading, understanding, and scrutinizing any district MOUs that are submitted that are conditional on collective bargaining agreements. (Of course, this only helps if states are forthcoming, and if any side deals are actually included with the applications.) He said peer reviewers will only judge what's in a state's application, which is consistent with the rules and the first round.

Secondly, Hamilton repeated that any state that starts deviating from its submitted application, if it wins, will be in jeopardy of losing its award funding.

And lastly, he pointed out, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has the discretion to go against the peer reviewers recommendations and select the winners. Not that that's likely to happen, but Hamilton said that's another backstop in the process.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My colleague Lesli Maxwell highlighted over at State EdWatch a disturbing trend in Florida, where some districts and their local teachers' unions are signing side deals that seem to fly in the face of the spirit of the Race to the Top competition.

Intrepid St. Pete Times reporter Ron Matus first wrote about the issue here, and has since uncovered more side deals. UPDATE: Blogger Sherman Dorn writes this is much ado about nothing—that the MOUs districts signed and these side deals are really quite similar.

Florida improved its round two application by getting 54 local unions on board (versus five in the first application.) Apparently, many of those signatures were given with a wink, wink.

Florida law requires districts to bargain wages and other factors affecting teachers. So its MOU says that to receive grant funds, districts and unions agree to bargain in good faith and that a failure to negotiate ALL the terms will mean the districts lose their grant money. But language in these side deals, at least the one in Hernando County, says: "The parties further agree that said signature does not constitute agreement to modify the existing [contract] or to negotiate additional language consistent with all elements of the [Florida Department of Education] Preliminary Scope of Work."

And another disturbing thing is that these side deals also say that any changes successfully negotiated because of Race to the Top will expire once the funding does. This is important because Florida is requiring districts to successfully negotiate all parts of the state's Race to the Top plan in order to get any money from the grant. This escape clause essentially allows the district and union to "negotiate" to meet the Race to the Top requirements with the full knowledge that they'll only be subject to any changes for a maximum of four years, or the length of the grant. It seems many of Florida's districts and unions have little to no intention of making these lasting changes in their education systems.

Of course, the peer reviewers who are judging this contest won't see the content of these side deals in the state's application, although anyone can read Hernando County's here and Broward County's here. Certainly, the peer reviewers aren't supposed to use any outside information to help them score the applications.

These side deals raise two big questions in my mind: Is this just a Florida phenomenon, or have districts and unions in other states figured out how to create similar escape valves? Please weigh in below, in the comments section, and let me know.

And secondly, can, will, or should the Department of Education do anything about this? Justin Hamilton, a spokesman, told me today that Race to the Top money "is distributed in phases, tied to milestones. If they divert unacceptably from the plan, we can stop funding it." Of course, once the grant money runs out, any leverage the department has also would seem to run out.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

State finances remain as bad as they have been in decades, and the fiscal picture isn't likely to clear up anytime soon, according to a report released this morning by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers.

"Fiscal 2010 presented the most difficult challenges for states' financial management since the Great Depression, and fiscal 2011 is expected to present states with similar challenges," the report says. "The severe national recession that most likely ended in the second half of calendar year 2009 has drastically reduced tax revenues from every revenue source."

And fiscal 2011 isn't looking much brighter, the groups say: A majority of states are contemplating cutting K-12 education next year as they brace for overall spending reductions for what could be the third year in a row.

State general fund spending declined an unprecedented two years in a row, in both fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the report found. It estimates that fiscal 2010 general fund expenditures will be $612.9 billion among all the states, down from $657.9 billion in the previous fiscal year—an 8 percent decline. And in their budget requests, 13 governors proposed spending less in fiscal 2011 than in fiscal 2010.

Overall, 44 states estimate that they will be spending less from their general funds in fiscal 2010 than they did in fiscal 2008, the last year before the recession struck.

Not surprisingly, the reduction in general fund spending was linked to a major drop in revenue, including sales, personal income, and corporate tax collections. The report estimates that those revenue sources dropped 11.8 percent from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010. (The report did not give comparisons for property taxes, which generally are local and are an important source of revenue for education.)

Mid-year budget cuts, typically considered a fiscal option of last resort, were widespread in fiscal 2010. Forty states made mid-year cuts totaling $22 billion. That's a lot even compared to the previous economic downturn in fiscal 2003, when 37 states made $12 billion in mid-year reductions.

K-12 education was a prime target for reductions. Thirty-four states cut spending on elementary and secondary education in fiscal year 2010, while 36 states made cuts to higher education.

Next fiscal year isn't looking good either. Thirty-one states have proposed cutting K-12 in fiscal year 2011. And 31 states have also proposed cutting higher education.

The stimulus helped make a bad situation somewhat more tenable, according to the report. Thanks to the stimulus, the federal share of state spending jumped to 30 percent in fiscal 2009 from 26.3 percent in fiscal 2008. But the stimulus only covered fiscal years 2009 and 2010. And states are likely to be in even worse shape without the federal assistance, the report concludes.

UPDATE: Governors and state lawmakers have been trying to protect K-12 education and health care, but that just might not be possible anymore, according to Scott Pattison, the executive director of NASBO.

States "disproportionately cut a lot of areas in state government while attempting to keep health care and education [from facing severe reductions]," Pattison told reporters at a press conference this morning to discuss the findings. "I'm not sure if every state can continue to do that."

Raymond C. Scheppach, the executive director of NGA, said the organization is hoping Congress will provide an additional $23 billion in Medicaid funds, which eat up a large portion of state budgets. That legislation must win approval from the U.S. Senate, he said.

But NGA isn't pushing for a separate $23 billion measure to stave off education layoffs championed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees education spending, and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Scheppach said some governors are concerned about the impact of the legislation on the deficit.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With $3.4 billion left in the Race to the Top hopper and states facing dire financial straits, 35 states plus the District of Columbia have thrown their hats into the ring for what may be the last round of the Obama administration's signature education-reform competition.

First-time applicants are Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, and Washington, and will join other big-league competitors who were finalists in round one, such as Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Massachusetts. The number of round-two competitors is lower than in round one, which saw 40 states plus the District of Columbia apply. Of course, round-one winners Delaware and Tennessee didn't apply in this round.

Here's who did not apply by today's 4:30 p.m. deadline for applying in round two: Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The reasons for not applying are as diverse as the states themselves. Indiana's efforts broke down amid a bitter feud between State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and the state teacher's union. Minnesota encountered similar issues. Texas thinks it's already at the top.

Texas is one of four states that chose to entirely sit out the Race to the Top, as they didn't apply in either round of the $4 billion competition. The others are: Alaska, North Dakota, and Vermont.

For round two, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said there will be 10 to 15 winners after Delaware and Tennessee scooped up $600 million between them to win in the first round in March.

Based on the 500-point scoring system and characteristics of the two states that won the first time, it seems the winners in the second round will have to have buy-in from a significant proportion of their state's school districts and unions, will have made changes to their laws to more closely tie teacher evaluations to student performance, and will have strong charter school laws.

If Congress does not reauthorize Race to the Top after the economic-stimulus program runs its course, as the Obama administration has asked it to do, this could be the last mad dash for a significant sum of discretionary federal money.

Now that the applications are in, the Education Department has said that finalists will be notified the week of July 26, with in-person presentations before the peer reviewers in Washington scheduled for the week of Aug. 9. Winners will be announced at the end of August or early September.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As we wait for the official tally of entrants into round two of Race to the Top, join me at edweek.org for an online chat today at 3 p.m. Eastern featuring Steven Brill, who recently penned two pieces on Race to the Top and will take your questions. His main piece, in the New York Times Magazine, examined the overall effect Race to the Top is having on the country's education reform dynamic, particularly on the relationship policymakers have with teachers' unions. He wrote a companion piece for Edweek that delved into the wonkiness of the 500-point grading system and the peer review judging process.

If you can't tune in at 3 p.m., you can submit questions in advance here. And check back later for a transcript.

Shortly after the Brill chat ends, so will the window for states to submit their Race to the Top round-two applications. They're due at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, on the dot. Several states have already announced they're bowing out, per this latest Associated Press story and my earlier blog item.

We hope to get the full list of applicants still tonight from the U.S. Department of Education, so check back here often once the deadline passes.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend