March 2011 Archives

Salary Comparability could find its way into the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, thanks to a bill being introduced in Congress today.

The bill, which goes by the catchy-name of the "Fiscal Fairness Act' is sponsored in the House by Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., who has been working on this issue for quite a while. And it's been introduced in the Senate by Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., a former school superintendent, and Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the son of public school educators. Read all about it here and here.

Salary comparability is one of the most confusing fiscal issues in education financing, which is full of confusing fiscal issues.

The cliffs notes version: In order to tap Title I dollars, districts have to show that Title I schools are getting their fair share of state and local funding. Obviously, teachers' salaries are a big expenditure. But, right now, all districts have to do is ensure that all teachers are on the same salary schedule, not that they are actually getting paid the same.

That."comparability loophole" has meant that schools that serve a lot of students in poverty often end up with a crop of lower-paid teachers, typically the youngest and most inexperienced of the bunch, critics say.

But, under the legislation, districts would have to take into account actual teachers' salaries at each school and make sure funding is equal at all schools before they can tap Title I dollars.

That could steer extra state and local money to high-poverty schools, enabling them to attract highly paid veterans, or hire more teachers so that novice educators don't have to deal with large classes in their first year or two.

The bill would also limit the amount of money that state and local spending can vary from school to school. Right now, there can be a difference of up to 10 percent, but under the bill, that would drop to 3 percent. And the legislation directs the Inspector General to conduct audits to make sure school districts are complying with the requirements.

The Education Trust, which advocates for poor and minority kids and has been championing salary comparability practically forever, applauded the measure.

"This legislation would bring basic fairness to budgeting by school districts, holding them accountable for using federal dollars as Congress intends," said Kati Haycock, president of the organization, in a statement.

Still confused about what salary comparability is? Can't say I blame you.

Luckily, the folks at the Center for American Progress have proved that there's nothing you can't make a YouTube video about.

Check it out:

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The headline on a recent Daily Caller piece was eye-catching: "Fed instructs teachers to Facebook creep students." The story, featured in the online news source started by former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, went on to say that the U.S. Department of Education was threatening school districts with lawsuits if they don't police their students' "lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time."

Now, hold on a minute.

The story is referring to guidance the Education Department put out way back in October, which outlined school districts' responsibility in addressing bullying in schools and harassment that might spill over from off-campus into the classroom.

The National School Boards Association raised several concerns about the guidance, fearing that it went too far in expecting districts to police bullying and harassment on and off campus. In a December letter to the department, the NSBA also worried that school officials would run afoul of the First Amendment if they tried to discipline students for their behavior while not in school.

Apparently, the Daily Caller must have just stumbled upon this debate.

In any case, the department finally wrote back to the NSBA. In a nine-page letter dated March 25 that is full of legalese, the department essentially says that no, it did not overreach in its original guidance to school officials—that it only reiterated existing laws and policies and gave examples of how districts can help combat bullying. In addition, when it comes to off-campus bullying, the department maintains that school districts can avoid clashing with the First Amendment by focusing on education and counseling, rather than discipline.

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

So, as I'm sure lots of folks in Washington know, the House of Representatives tomorrow is expected to pass a bill resurrecting the D.C. voucher program. This program is a top priority for Rep. John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House. And it's sponsored in the Senate by Joseph Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

The Obama administration, to no one's surprise, has come out against the bill, saying:

The federal government should focus its attention and available resources on improving the quality of public schools for all students. Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement.

The administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students. Rigorous evaluation over several years demonstrates that the D.C. program has not yielded improved student achievement by its scholarship recipients compared to other students in D.C.

The administration opposes targeting resources to help a small number of individuals attend private schools rather than creating access to great public schools for every child.

But they don't say: We will definitely veto your bill. UPDATE: Eduwonk notes, rightly, that this may leave the door open for compromise.

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli said that this dims (and maybe even totally dooms) the chances of an ESEA reauthorization this year.

But despite that, it's not clear to me that there was ever truly an explicit deal here, where Boehner said to the administration, give us the D.C. vouchers, and we promise to give you reauthorization. That's partly because I get the sense that Boehner and Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, are still trying to get a feel for where the new, more conservative House freshmen want to take the reauthorized law.

Those freshmen are still getting up to speed on this very complicated domestic policy issue. Plus, they're an independent bunch, so there's no telling whether they would have (or still will) sign on to GOP leaders' vision of where to take the new law, whatever that ends up being.

So, even if the administration had said, yup, sure thing on D.C. vouchers as long as you give us ESEA, I'm not sure if the House would have then absolutely gone straight to work on, and finished, a reauthorization bill this year.

But I do think there's a rhetoric issue here. This is a top top priority for Boehner, an outspoken school-choice advocate. It almost certainly creates bad feelings that the administration isn't supporting the only bill he's sponsoring this Congress, particularly an education bill.

And I'm sure that if ESEA isn't passed this year (it's already April and we haven't seen a bill, so don't hold your breath) many folks may cite the administration's decision not to support the D.C. voucher program as a big part of the reason. Will they be right? Comments section is open.

UPDATE: Check out what my fellow Edweek blogger, Sara Mead, has to say about this programs' reach.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At Monday's town hall about improving education among Hispanic students, President Barack Obama raised some eyebrows when he seemed to imply that annual testing may not be the way to go.

Here's what he said in response to a student's question about too much testing:

"Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well."

The Associated Press latched onto this, and wrote a story about how Obama wants less annual testing.

When we asked the U.S. Department of Education today about Obama's statement, spokesman Justin Hamilton clarified it, saying annual testing is still very much apart of the department's agenda:

"While we're open to how we can best assess student progress in subject areas like history and science, we believe annual measures in reading and math are needed to assess progress toward college- and career-readiness. More must be done to improve the quality of those assessments, so that they're a more meaningful measure of student learning..."

But turning to another part of his remarks, if the president doesn't like tests that are delivered in pressure-packed environments that carry real consequences for students, this Politics K-12 blogger wonders what he thinks about another widespread testing phenomenon: the graduation exit exam. Twenty-eight states require students to pass tests before they can get their diplomas.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

No one seems to have much love for the No Child Left Behind Act these days. But everyone seems to agree on the best feature of the law: Schools now have to show how student subgroups that historically were ignored (English-language learners, racial minorities, economically disadvantaged students) are doing relative to their peers.

But it sounds like some civil rights and advocacy organizations are worried about that part of the law being weakened in the upcoming reauthorization of the law, as policymakers try to give states more flexibility overall.

Now a long and varied list of advocacy groups, including Democrats for Education Reform, The Education Trust, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the National Council of La Raza, the NewSchools Venture Fund, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have sent a cautionary letter on that subject to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and lawmakers overseeing reauthorization on Capitol Hill.

Here's a snippet from the letter:

We, like President Obama and many Congressional leaders, want a speedy and bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, preferably before the beginning of the 2011-12 school year. But we also want to ensure that the law keeps its commitment to the children and schools it was designed to serve. ... We need to ensure that the academic achievement of historically disadvantaged students is an intrinsic part of any accountability system.

Here are some of the policies the groups want to see in the new version of ESEA:

1) All students be held to the same college- and-career ready standards, regardless of subgroup.

2) Proper adaptions, accommodations, and assessments be maintained for students with disabilities and ELLs.

3) States continue to set annual, measurable, and ambitious goals for the academic growth and performance of all students and for closing achievement and graduation gaps between all students and subgroups, including economically disadvantaged students, racial minorities, and ELLs.

4) Districts be held accountable for supporting schools and closing district-wide achievement gaps.

5) States and districts make transparency "paramount," and parents be given a right to know how their children are performing.

Why this letter now?

Advocates have been worried about some of the signals they've seen lately from the administration on this issue, most notably the claim that more than 80 percent of schools are "failing," a statistic the administration says is unfair and an indication of why the law needs to be updated.

But many of those schools are being labeled as not meeting achievement targets because of subgroup performance, advocates say.

Raul Gonzalez, the director of legislative affairs for the National Council of La Raza, told me in an interview last week that he does "believe the administration is committed to closing gaps." But he worries that without strong subgroup accountability, states and districts might not focus on schools where minorities and special populations (such as ELLs) are lagging behind their peers even though the schools are doing well overall.

"If I'm a state and I have limited funds and hard choices to make, if there's hard accountability for the bottom 5 percent, that's where I'm placing my emphasis," he said. "There's a lot of uncertainty. We're not in a place right now where we're comfortable with where ELLs may end up with regard to accountability. ... It's important for the administration to clarify what they mean" when it comes to subgroup accountability.

The department just received the letter today, so I'm guessing officials haven't had a chance to comment. But here's what Sandra Abrevaya, a spokeswoman for Secretary Duncan, told me last week when I asked about the subgroup issue: "Subgroup accountability is critically important to the department. We frequently highlight schools that have made gains across all subgroups."

She added that Duncan "says consistently that the most important thing that NCLB did was to create subgroup accountability. That's one of the things that we've time and time again said we're going to maintain."

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As most folks know, the School Improvement Grant program regulations call for the ouster of the principal, unless they've been on the job less than three years and can show that they are the right leader for a turnaround.

But that doesn't mean that these ousted folks can't find other jobs in the district. And more often than not, they do, according to this Associated Press story.

The first anecdote, about a leader who was removed as principal but still got to lead the school's turnaround, is pretty damning. On the one hand, these folks were found unfit to lead failing schools, so maybe their management skills aren't so hot.

But I also wonder whether, in some cases, it's okay that these principals found work elsewhere. Leading a school turnaround is difficult work, and not every leader is cut out for it. But maybe some of these folks would do just fine managing better performing schools with less challenging populations. SIG experts, what do you think?

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By guest blogger Nirvi Shah

For George H.W. Bush, it was broccoli. For Sam (I am) it was green eggs and ham. For President Barack Obama, it's beets.

It's not clear where the president stands on eating beets. Former President Bush was firm that he would not eat broccoli. The current president's distaste for the crimson root vegetable (once declared "the new spinach") hasn't stopped first lady Michelle Obama from planting beets in the White House garden, which has grown to about 1,500 square feet since it was originally planted.

This week, the first lady was joined by elementary school students on the South Lawn for the spring planting of the garden. Also this week, she said she'll be writing a book about the garden and its success. It produces year round, and she said she wants to share the story.

"We get so many questions about the garden: How did we do it? Why did we do it? How do I do this in my own home or community?" Mrs. Obama said. The book goes hand-in-hand with her initiatives for healthy eating and physical activity directed at the country's schoolchildren.

The unnamed book is scheduled to be published about a year from now, and any proceeds will be donated to charity.

It will include recipes, though we didn't get a chance to ask if beets would be among the ingredients.

"Uh-oh" she said at the planting Wednesday. "The president doesn't like beets. But it's okay. We're an equal opportunity garden."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Two lawmakers with a lot of experience and expertise on K-12 issues—U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.—have teamed up to introduce a bill that seeks to make better sense of the maze of federal and state K-12 regulations and the intersection between the two.

State and federal regulations often crisscross in strange and nonsensical ways, the senators said on a conference call with reporters today. For districts and schools, that might mean spending time on testing and compliance, not on teaching and learning, they said.

What's worse: Schools might be afraid to try new strategies that could improve student outcomes because they aren't sure if they're allowed to spend federal dollars on them. For instance, Bennet said, it can be very difficult for districts to spend Title I money on Response to Intervention.

"There's no reason for that," he said. "That makes it harder to deliver results for kids."

So what are they going to do about it?

Well, the two lawmakers have introduced a bill that could become part of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It would call for the U.S. Department of Education to start a national task force that would look at federal, state, and local regulations, as well as testing and assessment systems.

The groups' mandate would be to examine which regulations and assessments schools have to comply with, and to separate meaningless, bureacratic red-tape from the stuff that actually has an impact on student learning. You can read more about it here.

And the senators are going to get started on this kind of work in their own home states: Tennessee, which won Race to the Top, and Colorado, which lots of folks argue should have won Race to the Top. Their respective governors—Gov. Bill Haslam, R-Tenn., and Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.—are also on board. And U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is also supportive.

Typically, when the feds look at regulations, they seek to put in additional requirements, Alexander said. This time, "instead of adding, we're subtracting," he said.

That's the policy behind the bill. But there's also a political reason why this legislation matters: Alexander and Bennet are working together on a K-12 issue.

Both lawmakers have lots of experience on education that predates their Senate careers. Bennet was the Denver schools superintendent; Alexander was Education Secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

And both have good relationships with Duncan. Alexander called him Obama's best cabinet pick; Bennet is the administration's Senate soulmate when it comes to K-12 policy (and the rumored runner-up for Duncan's job).

They also share an interest in using student outcome data to help drive policy decisions and in allowing states, districts, and schools greater flexibility on strategies to boost student achievement.

"We agree on more than we disagree on," Bennet said.

So if there's going to be a bipartisan ESEA this year (or ever, really) these two lawmakers seem likely to play a key role in helping bring the two parties together, at least on the Senate side. Collaborating on this legislation is a way for them to continue to develop their working relationship.

On that front ... Alexander also tipped his hand on some of the areas of "developing consensus" in the reauthorization discussion. Lawmakers want to "set a more realistic goal" for student achievement, and ensure that Washington is "less involved in announcing which schools" in Colorado, Tennessee, and elsewhere are "failing and succeeding." And he said that lawmakers want to see a continuation of the breaking out student data into subgroups (right now, that includes racial minorities and English-language learners).

That's "one legacy of NCLB that has broad support," Alexander said.

And interestingly, Alexander said that lawmakers, including Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House education committee, also want a "lean" bill.

So what exactly would that mean, in Miller's mind?

Rep. "Miller does in fact support a 'thin bill'—the pillars of which would be college and career ready standards, strong accountability and improved use of data," Melissa Salmanowitz, his spokeswoman, told me in an email "He supports consolidation of programs with focused outcome requirements. He believes a performance based system and strong use of data would allow the federal government to get out of the way and give states and districts the flexibility to craft programs tailored to meet the needs of their students and their communities."

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The U.S. Senate just passed a spending bill that would freeze funding for most K-12 programs at fiscal year 2010 levels until April 8. The bill—the sixth short-term funding extension in the current budget wrangle—now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature. More background here.

The measure, approved 87-13, gives the Democratically-controlled Senate, the administration, and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives more time to work out a longer-term spending bill for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, which ends Sept. 30.

House Republicans have sought to cut K-12 spending, in part because they are skeptical that more money equals better student outcomes, and to get the nation on a firmer fiscal footing. President Barack Obama said earlier this week that he doesn't want to see any further cuts to education.

The latest extension contains no new K-12 cuts, but does nothing to restore education programs slashed under the most recent stopgap measure, which eliminated a number of high-profile literacy programs.

The two sides will have to come to some kind of overall budget agreement, or there still could be a government shutdown.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—who often reminds folks that, as a local school superintendent, he did not appreciate interference from Washington—continues to insert himself in state and local debates.

Sometimes he's asked, sometimes he's not. And some of the issues he's gotten himself involved in are far more political than others.

On Monday, Duncan appeared via webcast in Washington state to support Gov. Chris Gregoire's plan to consolidate education functions into a single Department of Education under the governor's control. Under her proposal, the state's separately elected superintendent of public instruction would be required to collaborate and coordinate with a new governor-appointed education secretary. (Thanks to Gov. Gregoire's office for clarifying that her legislation would not actually eliminate the state superintendent's position.) The legislature is skeptical—as is usually the case when a governor tries to get more power over something—so Duncan helped put some ooomph into the Democratic governor's push. Last week, he penned a guest column in the Seattle Times also endorsing the consolidation measure.

Current Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn didn't appreciate Duncan's intervention.

"With all due respect to Secretary Duncan," Dorn wrote, "this Washington is different than the other Washington, and different from Chicago—the secretary's home town."

In February, Duncan got involved in the heated battle over collective bargaining in Wisconsin. And he also told the Atlanta School Board, whose high schools were put on probation by a major accrediting agency, to get its act together.

In January, he urged new Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray to keep interim schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson in that job for good. (And that was the outcome.)

Also that month, he criticized the Wake County, N.C., School Board in a letter to the Washignton Post for ending its busing-for-diversity policy.

Last summer, Duncan urged the Detroit City Council to put a question on the November ballot that would turn control of the city's schools over to the mayor. (The council decided against it.)

And the list goes on. (Think Central Falls, data firewalls, and New York's last-in-first-out teacher layoff policy.)

"We are supporting reform at the state and local level," department spokesman Justin Hamilton told me yesterday.

Now that Duncan has finished giving out nearly $100 billion in education stimulus aid, his ability to push his education-reform agenda is much more limited. The bully pulpit may be his most powerful lever, so I would expect Duncan to continue to be take sides in state and local education debates.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The budget battle that never seems to end continued today, with the U.S. House of Representatives passing a bill, by a vote of 271 to 158, that would fund federal government, including most K-12 programs, at fiscal year 2010 levels for another three weeks while Congress tries to pass a long-term funding measure. The U.S. Senate is expected to approve the measure this week.

This spending bill expires April 8 and is for fiscal year 2011, which technically started back on Oct. 1. The government has been operating under a series of stopgap measures since then.

This would be the sixth extension (!) and lawmakers are promising to make it the last. As in, "We either come up with an agreement that will work for the rest of the fiscal year, or we shut down the government."

If you'll recall, just a few weeks ago, Congress passed a two-week stopgap measure that cut more than $4 billion in government spending and elminated a number of education programs, such as the $250 million Striving Readers program, $67 million Even Start family literacy program, as well as cutting money for the National Writing Project, Teach for America, and other programs.

This latest bill doesn't restore the funding for those programs. Instead, it makes another $6 billion in cuts. But, this time, none of the money would come from the U.S. Department of Education. In fact, there's just one education-related cut: a $125 million career pathways program in the U.S. Department of Labor.

But while education is clear from any further cuts for three weeks, it's definitely not out of the woods. Republicans and Democrats have very different visions on K-12 spending.

The House previously passed a bill for the remainder of fiscal 2011 that would have slashed more than $5 billion from the U.S. Department of Education, plus $1 billion from Head Start. The Senate rejected that measure; Democrats had sought, but failed to get, modest increases for key education programs.

President Barack Obama yesterday said he doesn't want to see any cuts to education at all. But Republicans say the cuts are needed to put the nation on firmer fiscal footing and that more money doesn't necessarily equal better student outcomes.

So now, Congress has three weeks to reach some sort of agreement on K-12 spending, not to mention the rest of the federal government.

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The federal government is asking school districts for too much paperwork and it is taking time from instruction and costing precious and scarce dollars, witnesses told lawmakers on a House education subcommittee today.

Recent case in point? The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which required a lot of extra reporting from districts to track the dollars, one witness said.

"The elaborate reporting requirements associated with [the stimulus] represent a classic example of overly burdensome federal regulations," said Robert Grimesey, the superintendent of Orange County Public Schools, in Virginia, in a prepared statement. "They promulugate a culture of compliance that distracts local focus away from student learning."

Charles Grable, the assistant superintendent for instruction in Huntington, Ind., agreed that federal requirements could be streamlined, but said data collection is important to gauging success.

"What gets measured gets done," he said, channeling former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who served under President George W. Bush. (Interestingly, Grable was the witness picked by Democrats.)

It all made for a pretty friction-free hearing. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,the chairman of the subcommittee overseeing K-12 policy, criticized the federal regulatory burden on schools. "Regulations are usually costly, intrusive, redundant, and can create unnecessary hurdles for K-12 schools," he said in a prepared statement.

The top Democrat, Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan, didn't disagree.

"It is important to look at the requirements we are placing on states and districts through federal law and regulations. If we can streamline program administration and better align programs and data to reduce burdens, we should do that as long as we are maintaining our core goals," he said in a prepared statement.

But another part of the story here is ... paperwork burdens as a hearing topic? Really?

There are so many other issues that really get to the heart of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, including what the federal role should be, that it's sort of surprising in some ways that members of Congress would spend time on this, instead of teacher effectiveness, or turnarounds, standards, or whether Race to the Top has worked. (To be fair, the committee didn't bill this as an ESEA reauthorization hearing.)

Of course, this is one topic that's bound to be bipartisan (no one is pro-paperwork.) And it goes with the overall message that the new, more conservative Congress wants to get the federal government out of people's lives.

But it also shows the committee has a long way to go in examining the trickiest issues surrounding renewal of the law, making it that much harder for Congress to meet the timetable set by the president yesterday, of reauthorization by the start of the next school year.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Typically these days on Capitol Hill, senators set broad parameters on big bills like the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and it's up to the staff (who are sometimes true policy experts, but other times fairly novice 20-somethings) to fill in the details.

But that hasn't been the case so far this year in the Senate. The "Big Four" lawmakers in the Senate overseeing reauthorization in that chamber have been meeting twice a week, for a couple of hours at a time, to have real, substantive discussions about reauthorization.

As a reminder, the "Big Four" are: Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., himself a former Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

For those outside the Beltway, this may sound like the way things should always get done, but in Congress, it isn't. It's unusual for members to be this personally engaged in legislation.

There are plenty of political hurdles to ESEA reauthorization and it's still unclear if lawmakers will be able to finish a bill by the Obama administration's preferred timetable. But the bipartisan meetings are a sign that these four lawmakers are truly personally committed to ESEA.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Barack Obama drew a line in the sand today against attempts to cut education spending as Congress struggles to come up with a federal budget for the rest of the year.

"We're going to have to cut any spending that we can afford to do without," Obama said in a speech on education at Kenmore Middle School, in Arlington, Va. But, he said, "we can't be reckless, and we can't be irresponsible about how we cut. We can't cut education. We cannot cut the things that will make America more competitive."

High-profile education programs have already taken a hit in the stopgap spending measure now funding the federal government. And the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has shown support for slashing Pell Grants, Head Start, Title I grants to districts, and money to turn around low-performing schools.

Obama's vow to preserve education funding came with a call for Congress to overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act before the start of the next school year.

He said that more than 80 percent of schools will be labeled as failing under the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a figure that many critics, including traditional administration allies, have disputed. Obama held up the school he was speaking at, Kenmore Middle School, as an example of one campus that will be labeled a failure even though "Kenmore is thriving. You've got more work to do, but you're doing fine," he said.

The school has not met the law's achievement targets in reading and math for black and Hispanic students, and students with disabilities. And the only student group meeting proficiency in math is white students.

Obama repeated many of the ideas in the administration's blueprint for revising the ESEA, released almost exactly a year ago. He said that teachers need to be supported and paid like professionals. And he said that the federal government needs to challenge states to set standards that prepare students for college or a career. He also said the federal government must reward schools for boosting student achievement.

UPDATE: Obama may be hoping for a bill by the end of the school year, but a key Republican signaled that Congress may need more time to craft the legislation. "The president's remarks affirm the importance of fixing the nation's broken education system," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn. "We need to take the time to get this right—we cannot allow an arbitrary timeline to undermine quality reforms that encourage innovation, flexibility, and parental involvement."

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, commended Obama for his "continued leadership in the push to fix the No Child Left Behind Act." He said his committee is "moving forward on the many areas of bipartisan consensus we've found."

Photo: President Barack Obama greets members of the audience after speaking at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, Va., on March 14. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Barack Obama is expected to give a speech this morning calling on Congress to "fix" the No Child Left Behind Act in time for the start of the next school year.

The speech, at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, Va., will be the administration's highest-profile pitch yet for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is seen as one of the few pieces of legislation that could garner bipartisan support in a deeply divided Congress.

The big question is whether the jolt of presidential energy will be enough to jump-start efforts to reauthorize the nine-year-old law. Discussions have been going on for over a year now, but so far, no one has introduced a bill.

Right after the State of the Union address, which put a lot of focus on education, a bipartisan group of senators announced they would roll up their sleeves and get cracking on ESEA. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, has said he wants to introduce a reauthorization bill around Easter.

For now, the conversation seems to be moving, particularly in the Senate, but it's been slow going.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee that 82 percent of schools will be labeled as failing next year if Congress doesn't act to change the law. The warning drew little response from the committee, and a number of education experts started scratching their heads at the figure and even urged the administration to show its work.

It doesn't sound like Obama is going to call for any new policies, beyond what the administration put forth in its blueprint for revising the law, which was released almost exactly a year ago.

On a call with reporters previewing the speech, Duncan and Melody Barnes, Obama's domestic policy advisor, emphasized themes straight out of the blueprint and Duncan's stump speeches.

Those include:

• Rewarding states and districts that make gains, not just identifying those that fail to meet goals. Under the blueprint, that includes a new round of the Investing in Innovation program, or i3, and the Race to the Top competition, as well as a new "Title I rewards" program.

• Aiming for getting all students ready for college or a career, instead of just bringing students to proficiency on state tests. More than 40 states have signed on to create college- and career-ready standards.

• Revamping teacher quality measures to put more of an emphasis on educator effectiveness, as demonstrated in part by student progress on standardized tests.

• Moving beyond the emphasis on just reading and math by allowing states to use tests in other subjects, such as history, to demonstrate student progress under the law.

• Giving states more control over how to intervene in most schools, while keeping a tight federal focus on the lowest-performing schools.

"Educators and governors are begging for the kind of common sense reforms that we're proposing," Duncan said.

Some background: NCLB was up for reauthorization way back in 2007, but no renewal bill has officially been introduced by either of the education committees. There are partisan divisions to be sure, but both parties are also split internally. For more on the politics, check out this story.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple of weeks ago, the Big 8 (the top lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate overseeing reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) went to the White House to meet with President Barack Obama.

But things didn't quite go as planned, in part because the House lawmakers had to leave for votes, so Obama just chatted with the senators. Now they're planning a do-over this afternoon.

As a reminder, the Big 8 are:

Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and Reps. John Kline, R-Minn.; George Miller, D-Calif.; Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.; and Dale Kildee, D-Mich.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If the administration was hoping that members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee would be aghast and run off to get cracking on a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when they heard U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's big news yesterday, they were disappointed.

Duncan told the committee that 82 percent of schools were on track to be labeled as failures this year under the No Child Left Behind law, the current iteration of ESEA. And he reiterated that the administration is trying to give states and schools much more flexibility to reach higher standards though its blueprint on reauthorization, unveiled a year ago.

But either lawmakers didn't have time to absorb the new data, or they were generally pretty non-plused by the figures. Whatever the reason, there were no questions on the data at all.

So what did lawmakers want to know? Well many Republicans, beginning with Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the committee, reiterated their view that education spending doesn't necessarily lead to better student outcomes.

"We're paying more per kid, and we're not seeing any correlation between this spending and results," said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the top Republican on the subcommittee overseeing K-12 policy. "Why not just take away the bad spending?"

Duncan said the department is encouraging states to make smart choices about how to trim their budgets. "In very tough budget times, we have to make tough calls," he said. But he added that, compared to higher-performing countries, the United States "underinvests" in the most disadvantaged children.

Still, the spending theme continued.

"A lot of people are wondering why we even have a DOE," meaning the U.S. Department of Education. "Everything I'm looking at shows tremendous spending and then a flat line" on student achievement, said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa. "Where is the return on the investment?"

And one lawmaker, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., pointed out that the department's proposal to combine 38 programs into 11 funding streams doesn't actually reduce overall spending.

Still, in a quick interview after the hearing, Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., told me he found the administration's figures on the number of schools not making adequate yearly progress under NCLB "astounding."

For their part, Democrats asked questions about the administration's proposal to cut Pell Grant aid. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., said she hoped the department would put more of an emphasis on wrap-around services that help educate "the whole child."

And Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat, made it clear that he wants to move on reauthorization.

"I hope we could figure out how to get the trains on the tracks here," he said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

UPDATED

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is warning Congress that unless changes are made to a key facet of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the country is on track to see 82 percent of its schools labeled "failing" this year.

He drove home that message in testimony Wednesday before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, but drew swift criticism from education advocates and groups that questioned the department's methodology and motives in issuing that estimate.

Testifying on the pending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of ESEA, the education secretary said: "Four out of five schools in America may not meet their goals under NCLB by next year. The consequences under the current law are very clear: States and districts all across America may have to intervene in more and more schools each year, implementing the exact same interventions regardless of schools' individual needs."

He was referring specifically to adequate yearly progress, or AYP, which is the cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools that don't hit annual performance targets—for their students or for smaller subgroups, such as English-language learners—face an escalating set of sanctions. The law aims to make all students 100 percent proficient in reading and math by 2014, but as that deadline nears, more and more schools are failing to hit performance targets.

The U.S. Department of Education's 82 percent failure number is an estimate only, based on best-case assumptions that all schools will improve at the rate of the top-performing quartile of schools. To come up with that estimate, the department used four years worth of AYP data, from the 2006-07 through the 2009-10 school years. Statisticians examined the amount of gain on state reading and math tests and used that gain to build projections compared against the states' annual performance targets. The department took into account highly technical parts of the law, such as safe harbor or "n" sizes (the minimum size for a subgroup to trigger accountability.)

Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, which tracks schools' AYP progress, says he can't believe that number, especially since it's more than a doubling of the number of schools that didn't make AYP in 2009-10. "I hope they're right," said Jennings, who urged the department to put out a technical paper explaining its calculations. "They're dealing with their credibility."

At best, the number is highly misleading, said Charles Barone, the director of federal legislation for Democrats for Education Reform, a New York City-based political action committee. He said that not making AYP during one particular year does not mean a school is "failing", a word that NCLB doesn't even use. NCLB sanctions don't kick in until schools fail to make AYP for two consecutive years.

"I think they're going to regret this," Barone said. "While I understand their frustration in trying to pass the law, I think it's only going to hurt them. They're creating an atmosphere of fear."

Both DFER and the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit, disagree with the department's methodology.

Sandy Kress, a former White House aide who played a key role in working with Congress to craft NCLB, pointed out that there might be a good reason the number is so high: because states insisted on working their way slowly towards the 100 percent proficiency goal at first, then raising expectations much faster once 2014 neared—akin to a balloon payment.

"States said they needed time to get reforms under way," said Kress, who said that Duncan was trying to create "a little bit of panic."

Andrew J. Rotherham, a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit education consulting firm, said Duncan's testimony will likely only contribute to the confusion over the law's AYP requirements. "It's not especially responsible rhetoric," he said.

Other groups, however, pointed out that the larger message carried throughout Duncan's testimony is important. Even though AYP is a complex issue, "this measure shows how the accountability system does not work. It's very easy to wrap your head around that 82 percent of our schools might be labeled as failing," said Noelle Ellerson, the assistant director for policy analysis and advocacy at the American Association of School Administrators.

It's also important to note that Duncan has already relaxed some of the sanctions for schools not making AYP, such as allowing districts to do their own tutoring (rather than using an outside provider), and allowing tutoring to be provided before schools have to offer to send students to higher-performing schools (the choice provision).

The Obama administration's blueprint for ESEA reauthorization calls for pushing back the 2014 deadline for 100 percent proficiency and replacing that goal with new standards aimed at getting students ready for college or the workforce by 2020. States would be given more leeway to intervene in most districts and schools that are making modest gains. But the bottom 5 percent of schools in each state would be required to follow one of the Education Department's four turnaround models.

Clearly, Duncan is trying to send a message that will resonate with members of Congress, who probably would rather not see schools back home hit with a "failing" label. Whether this is enough to jump-start reauthorization is an open question. One thing may be telling: By more than halfway through the hearing, no member of the committee had asked any specific questions or called attention to the number.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan arrives to testify before the House Education and the Workforce Committee. (Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty)

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The U.S. Senate has just defeated a pair of federal budget bills that would have taken education spending in two very different directions, sending Congress back to the drawing board to figure out a spending plan for the rest of the current fiscal year.

Senate lawmakers, voting 44-56, rejected a House-passed bill that would have cut more than $5 billion from the U.S. Department of Education, plus $1 billion from Head Start, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

But lawmakers also voted down a Senate Democrats' bill that would have provided modest increases for Title I, extended Race to the Top, and brought recently scrapped reading programs, including Striving Readers, back to life. The vote on that bill was 42-58.

Now, lawmakers will have to work together to come up with a compromise, and they don't have much time.

The government is operating under a stopgap measure that funds most programs (with some very notable education exceptions) at fiscal 2010 levels until March 18. Congress must pass another extension before that time or come up with a longer-term compromise, or the government will shut down.

The debate comes as President Barack Obama is turning up the heat on Congress to preserve education funding as it crafts a final budget.

"I want everyone to pay attention. Even as we find ways to cut spending, we cannot cut back on job-creating investments like education," the president told a crowd yesterday during a visit to TechBoston Academy, in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. "There's nothing responsible about cutting back on our investment in these young people."

"Fixing our schools will cost some money," Obama said. "Recruiting and rewarding the best teachers costs money. Making it possible for families to send their kids to college costs money. Making sure that some of the state of the art equipment all of you are working on ... that costs money."

During the Senate debate on the budget proposals, Democrats charged that the House Republican bill would hurt education programs.

"If you vote [for the bill] you're voting to slash Title I grants to school districts," which were cut by nearly $700 million under the GOP bill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate panel that oversees education spending, said during debate. "You're voting to slash Head Start." He acknowledged that the nation needs to get its spending under control, but said such cuts are the wrong way to proceed. "Why would you want to take it out on kids?" he asked.

But Republicans said the Democratic bill wouldn't help the nation get its spending under control.

"No business would run the way we run the United States government," said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. "We're facing a crisis, a debt crisis. ... Our crushing debt burden is like an anchor weighing down our economy."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Kaya Henderson is shedding her "interim" title today and is becoming the District of Columbia's next schools' chief.

She was the deputy under ex-Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and got the endorsement of U.S. Secretary of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who doesn't seem to shy away from getting involved in local education decisions.

In January, Duncan told new Mayor Vincent Grey, according to The Washington Post, "'Let's put Kaya in there." He called her the "right" pick.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As we reported here last month, the White House was having trouble getting high schools to submit their applications for the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge, in which the grand prize is a graduation speech by President Obama. So the White House made the contest a little less burdensome and extended the deadline two weeks, to March 11. At the time, the White House wouldn't say how many applications had been received.

And they still aren't saying, officially.

Yesterday, CBS News' Political Hotsheet reported that the number of applications came in embarrassingly low: 14, at less than a week before the original deadline. As of Feb. 28, 68 schools had applied. This item is, as of 4:44 p.m. today, the most viewed story on cbsnews.com.

This certainly doesn't look good for the Obama administration.

And today, reporters elevated the issue even further, asking about it during the daily White House press briefing with press secretary Jay Carney. In fact, it was the fifth question...coming only after questions about Libya!

Here's the exchange:

Q: Can I follow up on that education question? CBS is reporting that the Commencement Challenge is not going as well as perhaps expected, and certainly not as well as the last time. Is that an embarrassment given all the attention that the President is giving to education?

MR. CARNEY: I would just say that the Commencement Challenge last year was a fantastic process that led to a terrific event that showcased a school in Kalamazoo, and we expect the same to happen this time. We have a large number of applicants and we look forward to a process that will produce a winner and a commencement speech from the President.

Q: Can you tell us how many applicants you have at this point?

MR. CARNEY: I don't know that. I'm sorry.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The biggest story in education right now is the changes to collective bargaining proposed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.

Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican from the Badger state, and others have said that the changes are needed to help states get their finances under control over the long term.

Many Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are none-too-happy about the plans, which they contend would strip state workers, including teachers, of their rights to bargain for fair wages and better working conditions.

But in the House, congressional Democrats are in the minority, which means they can't exactly call an official hearing on the subject.

So they are using a tactic often employed by members of the minority, GOP or Democratic, to get attention for a range of issues. They are having a sort of press conference that follows the same format as a typical congressional hearing, with witnesses and questions and all the trimmings. One difference is that, usually, members of just one party show up to these kinds of events, while in regular hearings, witnesses take questions from both sides.

The event is being organized by Rep. George Miller, of California, the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel that oversees education spending.

Some of the folks slated to testify are educators, including Courtney Johnson, who teachers English and Humanities for Columbus City Schools in Ohio. Johnson says, "no one goes into teaching for the money, but she expects to be able to provide a middle class life for her family," according to a press release on the event.

Another witness is Lynn Radcliffe, who works for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. She has "seen her non-unionized co-workers being treated unfairly when it comes to pay, hiring and firing and treatment in the workplace," according to the release.

If this were a traditional hearing, I'd expect Republican lawmakers to argue that the feds don't really have much jurisdiction here. State collective bargaining rights are a state issue, they'd likely say.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When President Obama appears at TechBoston Academy later today as part of the White House's "education month," he plans to tout his administration's $90 million plan to create a new education research initiative modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the government agency that helped create the Internet and the stealth fighter.

To get up to speed on the administration's proposal, read my colleague Sarah Sparks' coverage from last month. UPDATE: And read her blog item from today here.

But before you get too excited, consider that Congress is in a cutting mood, not a creating-new-programs mood. That said, it will be interesting to see how Obama can sell an idea that goes by the acronym ARPA-ED to a school-age audience, and whether he can make the need for education R&D resonate with the general public.

Last week, Obama talked up school turnarounds at Miami Central Senior High School.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Barack Obama tours classrooms at Miami Central Senior High School.
—Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

President Obama kicked off what the White House is calling "education month" today at Miami Central Senior High School, a persistently low-performing school that received a School Improvement Grant from the feds.

He used a 30-minute speech to talk about the same old things we've been hearing from him for awhile now—the importance of school turnarounds, the success of Race to the Top, and the need to not cut federal spending in education.

But more important than his speech might be who he came with: ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican and education uber-advocate, who sat on stage during the speech alongside U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Obama invoked Bush's name in the speech as an example of how both parties can come together on education.

(For more background on Jeb Bush's growing influence in education across the country, read this story by my colleague Sean Cavanagh, and for more about the history between the Obama and Bush, see this Sun Sentinel story.)

Obama wanted "to make the point that by having former Governor Jeb Bush join him at this event that he firmly believes what I think most Americans believe and that certainly former Governor Bush believes, and that is that education and education reform are not Democratic issues, they're not Republican issues, they're American issues," Obama press secretary Jay Carney said before the event, according to a White House pool report.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As Congress is debating reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Adequate Yearly Progress clock is still ticking for districts and states, even as they begin to transition to brand new standards and assessments.

Kansas has requested an unusual waiver to deal with that issue that could be a sign of things to come. Read all about it at Curriculum Matters.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

UPDATED

Senate Democrats countered the House Republicans' budget cutting on Friday with a proposal that would increase funding for Title I, restore money for the Striving Readers program, and extend Race to the Top.

The measure introduced by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, would fund the federal government, including the U.S. Department of Education, through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Overall, it would cut about $51 billion below what President Obama wanted for fiscal year 2011.

In a press release, the Democrats take pains to point out that their proposal doesn't include education cuts of the same magnitude as the U.S. House of Representatives' version of the measure.

At least one program that was cut under the two-week stopgap spending plan that Obama signed into law on Wednesday—Striving Readers—would be restored under the Senate Democratic proposal, at $200 million. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who oversees the committee on education spending, had pledged to look for money to continue the program's funding.

The House's longer-term spending bill for funding government through the end of the current fiscal year would slash more than $5 billion from the U.S. Department of Education's budget, and cut $1 billion out of Head Start, which is run out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Under the Senate Democrats' longer-term spending plan:

• Head Start would see a slight increase, going from $7.2 billion in fiscal year 2010 to about $7.4 billion.

• Title I grants to districts would see a modest, $100 million hike, to $14.6 billion. In contrast, the program would be cut by almost $700 million under the House measure.

• Pell Grants for low- and moderate-income college students would be protected. The maximum grant would remain at $5,550. Under the House measure, the maximum grant would be cut by about $845.

The Senate bill would also:

• Boost special education state grants by $200 million, to $11.7 billion

• Include new money for the administration's signature education redesign program, the Race to the Top competition, funding it at $450 million. Plus, it would fund the Investing in Innovation Grant program, or i3, which is meant to scale up promising practices at the district level, at $300 million.

• Increase funding for the Promise Neighborhood program, which is meant to help communities create comprehensive support services to boost academic achievement. The program would get $20 million, up from $10 million last year.

• Cut funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which allocates grants to districts to create pay-for-performance programs, from $400 million in fiscal year 2010 to $250 million. The House bill, which cuts pretty much everything else, leaves this program unscathed.

• Cut all funding, $100 million, for the Educational Technology state grants.

• Slightly cut Improving Teacher Quality State grants, which would be financed at $2.9 million, a roughly $50 million cut from fiscal year 2010.

Other programs including the $546 million School Improvement Grants for turning around low-performing schools would be funded, and the $853 million TRIO program would be funded at last year's levels.

And other programs that were cut under the two-week measure would be restored, including Arts in Education, funded at $40 million. There would also be $35 million designated for Civic Education (the program that funded We the People and Close Up) and $10.8 million for advanced credentialing (the program that funded the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. But the bill doesn't specify where the money would go, so, it wouldn't be considered an earmark.

The National Writing Project remains on the elimination list.

The legislation sets up a collision course with the House, which wants much deeper cuts overall. House Republicans worry that the federal government can't afford current spending levels and say that more money for education hasn't equaled better student outcomes. But, of course, education will just be a little piece of the debate over this broader spending bill that touches nearly every federal program.

At least on the surface it seems as though the restoration of Striving Readers and other programs faces long odds, since President Barack Obama already signed a bill effectively killing the programs, at least for the next two weeks.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have two weeks to sort out their differences on a longer-term budget or pass yet another short-term, stopgap measure, or the federal government will shut down.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This morning Arne Duncan held court with six education bloggers for an hour of Q&A. Joining in the dialogue, besides Politics K-12, were Mike Petrilli from Flypaper, "Straight Up" Rick Hess, new Education Sector executive director Richard Lee Colvin, who writes for the Quick & the Ed, Dropout Nation's RiShawn Biddle, and Dana Goldstein, formerly of the Daily Beast and American Prospect.

Highlights of the conversation:

• First off, the department released two guides for states: one on "smart ideas to increase productivity and student achievement" and another on flexibility states have in using existing federal dollars. Both are meant to help states navigate the persisting fiscal woes, which Duncan first told my colleague and fellow blogger Sean Cavanagh about. (Here's the letter Duncan sent today to governors introducing the two new guides.) However, there's one important caveat to the "smart ideas" document, which suggests things like dual enrollment courses for high school students and digital textbooks. There's a footnote the Education Department has inserted saying it doesn't guarantee the "accuracy, timeliness or, completeness" of the ideas in this document, nor does the department pass judgment on their "importance or success." So, I'm wondering how useful these "smart ideas" really are?

• Speaking of flexibility, and the slow-moving reauthorization of ESEA, Duncan continued to insist that the Department is not thinking about Plan B (creating waivers for districts from NCLB requirements) if ESEA isn't reauthorized. When pressed (by yours truly), Duncan said: "We are doing our job in passing that bill."

• The department is working on putting out guidance to states and districts on the creation and use of new assessments, which will be very important to the department's School Improvement, Teacher Incentive Fund, and Race to the Top programs. For example, the guidance will emphasize that in subjects like physical education, a test doesn't have to be a traditional pencil-and-paper test.

• As the push for ESEA continues, the department is playing up the growing number of schools that are not hitting their AYP targets. Carmel Martin, the department's assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development, said as we get closer to the 2014 deadline for proficiency, 80 percent of schools will be considered failing. "The system just doesn't have any credibility," said Martin, who also sat in on the breakfast.

• For the nearly three dozen states who lost out on Race to the Top, Duncan is helping a few of them raise private money. He said he's worked with Colorado, New Mexico, and other states out west to get together with funders who can help with parts of the states' plans. And he's also helping six districts in California find private money. "We are doing calls with states and funders where that's helpful," he said.

• And finally, on the hot-button political battles going on in several states over collective bargaining, Duncan echoed a lot of what he told Cavanagh over at State EdWatch. He reiterated that unions do need to make concessions when it comes to benefits, but that you don't "want to sledgehammer" unions when they were starting to come around on issues such as improving the process for getting rid of ineffective teachers. "You want to give them room to grow," he said.

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

The stopgap federal spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law yesterday almost certainly spells the end of federal funding for more than a dozen education programs, at least for two weeks, quite possibly for good.

The bill would scrap all federal funding for the current year for a number of programs that were considered "earmarks" under congressional rules, because they got non-competitive funds, directed just for them. Some senators protested on behalf of the groups, but it may have been too late—the cuts went through anyway.

The list of funding cuts includes:

• National Writing Project—$25.6 million
• Teach for America—$18 million
• Reading is Fundamental—$24.8 million
• National Board for Professional Teaching Standards—$10.7 million
• New Leaders for New Schools—$5 million
• Arts in Education—$40 million
• We the People—$21.6 million
• Close Up fellowships—$1.9 million
• Exchanges With Historic Whaling and Trading Partners—$8.6 million
• Thurgood Marshall Legal Educational Opportunity program—$3 million
• B.J. Stupak Olympic Scholarships—nearly $1 million

The programs could get money from the department under other funding streams. But more likely than not, most of them aren't going to get any more funding from the feds, possibly forever.

Some of the organizations on the list that have gotten funding, such as New Leaders for New Schools, a New York City-based nonprofit that trains principals to work in underresourced schools, have other sources of funding besides the federal government.

But some depend heavily on federal money for their very survival, including the National Writing Project. That organization gets about 50 percent of its funding from the feds. And the other 50 percent comes from local matching grants from colleges and universities that participate in the program. Most of those institutions are strapped for cash right now, in the face of major state and local cutbacks, said Sharon Washington, the National Writing Project's executive director.

"I would love for the Writing Project to continue," Washington told me. But while she and her staff will "work to do all things possible, we're very aware of the fact that, without the federal investment, it will be a challenge."

The program, based in Berkeley, Calif., helps teachers learn how to work with their colleagues to improve writing instruction. Technically, the organization could still get some federal funding from the department through the Fund for the Improvement of Education, a discretionary pot.

But that program has also been hit. It was financed at $125.4 million in fiscal year 2010, but is now down to $37.3 million.

And getting that money may be tough. "They have given us no indication that they would be able to provide that kind of funding," Washington said.

Even Teach For America, a high-profile nonprofit based in New York City that attracts a lot of non-federal financial support, will feel the loss of federal dollars. The organization had projected that its 2011 corps would be around 5,400 teachers, said Carrie James, a spokeswoman for TFA. Now, they're expecting that number to be closer to 5,000, which means that 25,000 fewer students in high-poverty communities will have TFA teachers next year, she explained.

(It's important to note that the cut wouldn't affect TFA's $50 million federal grant under the Investing in Innovation fund, which will be spent out over five years and was intended to grow the organization.)

With the cuts in the stopgap spending measure, the U.S. Department of Education's entire discretionary budget (not including Pell Grants) drops from $46.6 billion in fiscal year 2010 to $45.9 billion in the current fiscal year. That's about a 1.6 percent cut. (Check out this link for a full, very detailed chart.)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was reserved in his response to the cuts.

"We appreciate Congress' action, but, as the president has made clear, we need a long-term budget that cuts spending responsibly while investing for the future," he said in a statement e-mailed shortly after the bill's final passage.

As we've mentioned before, the bill also cuts two other literacy programs, both of which President Obama had wanted to consolidate into a broader, $383 million funding stream aimed at improving reading and writing. Those are Striving Readers, a comprehensive literacy program funded at $250 million, and Even Start, a $67 million family-literacy program. (In addition, funding for the National Writing Project and Reading Is Fundamental was to be bundled into that new "Effective Teaching and Learning: Literacy" fund under Obama's plan.) With funding for all of these programs wiped away, that doesn't leave much left for the president's proposed new literacy fund.

Meanwhile, two other programs were also scrapped: the $88 million for Smaller Learning Communities, which was supposed to become part of a broader stream aimed at improving educational options, and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships or LEAP, college access program, financed at $64 million.

Some budget background: The stopgap measure, which is meant to give Democrats and Republicans more time to hammer out their differences on spending, funds most programs, such as Title I grants to districts, at last year's levels.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the House approved a longer-term spending bill that would fund the government through Sept. 30, but would mean even more cuts to education—about $5 billion worth.

The Senate will have to figure how to compromise with the House on that legislation, or find another way to temporarily extend funding again. Otherwise, there will be a government shutdown.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

UPDATED

President Barack Obama this afternoon signed a bill approved by the U.S. Senate just a few hours earlier to keep the government running until March 18, while slashing about $4 billion in spending, including eliminating a number of education programs.

The bill effectively scraps all funding for the rest of the year for the $250 million Striving Readers program, the $66 million Even Start program, and other literacy programs.

The administration had wanted to see those programs consolidated into a new, broader, $383 million funding stream aimed at improving literacy. Now it appears there may be a lot less available money for that effort.

The measure also effectively gets rid of all funding for the rest of the year for the $88 million Smaller Learning Communities program, which was slated to be funneled into a broader program aimed at improving educational options.

And it scraps the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships, or LEAP, program, financed at $64 million.

The bill also defunds a lot of programs that are right now classified as "earmarks," meaning money directed at one particular program or project. That includes a number of national education programs, such as Teach for America, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, National Writing Project, Reading is Fundamental, and the Close Up fellowship.

Yesterday, a group of 11 senators, including Sen. Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana, sent a letter to the top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee saying that these programs shouldn't be lumped in with traditional earmarks, which are usually special pet projects lawmakers request just for their districts.

That's not the case with the education programs, the senators wrote. "These programs are nationally structured, with many years of bipartisan support," they said. "They benefit millions of individuals and families in a majority of states, districts, and regions throughout the country."

But the letter may have arrived too late to make much of a difference, at least on this short-term bill. The Committee for Education Funding, a lobbying coalition in Washington, has done some of its own analysis on the impact of the cuts, which were the same in the House and Senate. Check out a letter they sent to lawmakers yesterday.

The really tough part is just beginning. As you probably remember, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill recently that would finance the federal government for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. That measure included some major education cuts, $5 billion in all.

Now the House and Senate will have to somehow reach agreement on a longer-term spending bill—or there really maybe a government shutdown.

Photo: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, right, accompanied by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks during a March 2 news conference on the budget bill. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A group of moderate Democratic senators released a set of principles this morning for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that closely mirrors the Obama administration's own vision as outlined in a blueprint released almost a year ago.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, of Colorado, the administration's Senate soulmate on K-12 issues, and Sen. Kay Hagan, of North Carolina, led the effort to craft the moderates' ESEA wish list.

The statement, which was signed by 11 senators in all, represents a moderate marker on ESEA. It remains to be seen whether it will appeal to at least some moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats, whose support will be needed to get an ESEA reauthorization bill through the Senate (not to mention the more conservative U.S. House of Representatives).

The lawmakers used much of the same rhetoric that the administration has in describing their ideas for K-12 policy. For instance, the statement of principles criticizes the current version of the law, the nine-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, for encouraging states to lower their standards while being really rigid about how they meet those standards—that line is also one of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's greatest hits.

"We should reverse that paradigm through reauthorization: supporting state efforts to set clear, high, common standards for students to be college-and career-ready, but allowing much greater flexibility at the state and local level to determine the best way to meet those standards," the statement of principles says.

It also links improving education with ensuring the nation's long-term economic progress, an Obama-ism.

Specifically, the group wants to:

1) Change the accountability system at the heart of the law—Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP—so it focuses on student growth over time, as opposed to the current system, which basically compares different cohorts of students to one another. This proposal is no surprise. Almost everyone, from conservative Republicans to liberal Democrats, likes the idea of measuring growth, and many states are already doing it through a pilot project at the Education Department that was started by Duncan's predecessor, Margaret Spellings.

They also want to offer rewards or incentives to schools that are making major jumps in student achievement. That reminds me of the Title I rewards proposal in Obama's fiscal year 2012 budget request, which would, in essence, give money and flexibility to schools that help students make progress.

And the senators want to give states more flexibility in figuring out how to intervene in most schools that miss AYP (for instance, those that are successful with most students but aren't working well with a particular subgroup, such as English-language learners) while being really stringent with the lowest-performing schools. Schools that really can't improve should be shut down. That's straight out of the Obama blueprint, too.

2) Stick with the Obama administration's four options for turning around the lowest-performing schools, which include steps such as turning a school over to a charter operator, closing the school, removing half the teachers, and/or putting in a new instructional program, and extending learning time while beefing up professional development. The senators say schools that are struggling the most really need these dramatic models, which have faced some major bipartisan criticism.

The senators say they want to ensure that the models, most of which call for staff shakeups, are workable for rural schools, which may have a tougher time attracting new teachers and principals. And they say community buy-in is key.

3) On teachers, see that colleges of education are held accountable for the performance of their graduates. (This closely tracks with an Obama budget proposal, which was spurred by a Bennet idea.) And the moderates want to provide competitive money to create and scale-up promising teacher prep programs.

They also want to see new systems for measuring teacher effectiveness that incorporate a bunch of measures, including student outcome data, to be developed with teacher cooperation. And they want more on-the-job support for teachers, including extra money for those that take on extra responsibilities.

4) Continue Race to the Top, the administration's signature K-12 initiative, which rewarded states for embracing certain education reform principles, such as charter schools and performance pay. The administration has suggested making it a district competition.

The lawmakers also want to continue the Investing in Innovation, or i3, program, which scaled up promising practices at the district level.

5) Fix the so-called "comparability loophole" in Title I, so that schools would have to report salary data for teachers in addition to other expenses. Districts also should make sure that high-poverty schools get their fair share of state and local resources, the lawmakers say. The administration tried something similar in the reporting requirements for the federal economic-stimulus program, and the lawmakers see that as a good model.

When I think of comparability, I automatically think of The Education Trust, an advocacy organization in Washington that has been championing this idea for eons. But it's not a slam-dunk and could get politically dicey, as this story shows.

So does this moderate set of principles mean that the Obama blueprint has momentum? Maybe. But these lawmakers are probably among the administration's closest allies in Congress on K-12 policy, so if they hadn't liked the blueprint, it's pretty safe to say no one was going to.

In addition to Bennet and Hagan, the set of principles was signed by Democratic Sens. Mark Begich, of Alaska; Thomas Carper, of Delaware; Chris Coons, of Delaware; Dianne Feinstein, of California; Herb Kohl, of Wisconsin; Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana; Joe Manchin, of West Virginia; Mark Warner, of Virginia; and Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

UPDATE: Some of these lawmakers may be introducing bills on parts of the list of principles in coming weeks. For instance, Hagan is working on a bill on turning around the lowest performing schools.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would keep the lights on at the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies for the next two weeks. The bill was approved 335 to 91.

The measure, which cuts about $4 billion in spending, is meant to give lawmakers more time to hash out their differences, while averting—for now—a government shutdown.

The measure also includes significant cuts to education programs, including entirely scrapping the $250 million Striving Readers program, the $88 million Small Learning Communities Program, and the $66 million Even Start program. It also would get rid of the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships, or LEAP, program, financed at $64 million.

The bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where it is expected to pass. But at least two Democrats have signaled that they are unhappy with the education cuts.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who heads the subcommittee overseeing K-12 spending, will work to restore the funding cuts to education in a longer-term spending bill, particularly the cut to Striving Readers, which he views as a unique and necessary program, an aide said.

In an emailed statement, Harkin said:

"When are we going to learn that we need to stop eating our seed corn? When you cut education, that's what it amounts to—hurting kids, especially the neediest kids, some of our Title I schools and others. But in the end, it will hurt us down the road.

"There is no question that the time has come for tough budget decisions, but the smart way to bring down the deficit is for Congress to pursue a balanced approach of major spending cuts and necessary revenue increases, while continuing to make investments in education."

Washington Democrat Patty Murray's spokesman, Eli Zupnick, had this to say regarding the elimination of Even Start and Striving Readers:

"Senator Murray is very concerned about the House Republicans' drastic cuts to literacy programs in their short-term spending proposal. She is currently working with her colleagues in the Senate to make sure they understand the impact these extreme cuts would have on young people across the country who need these critical program to succeed. Senator Murray feels strongly that literacy programs are some of the best investments we can make in our nation's future, and that slashing them would hurt our ability to remain competitive in the 21st century economy."

Republicans have said that President Barack Obama has targeted the same programs for elimination, but Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the Education Department, said that the administration wanted to see them consolidated into broader funding streams.

For instance, both of the reading programs would be part of a bigger, competitive fund aimed at improving literacy. If the programs are cut, there would be less money available for the consolidation efforts.

Some advocates, particularly for reading programs, are none too happy with the cuts and are waiting to see what the administration has to say about the reductions.

"The whole section on literacy in the well-rounded education proposal" in the president's budget "is really being hit with this first budget. The administration has to make the case that it's not a good idea," said Susan Frost, a vice president of the Sheridan Group who was a senior adviser in the Education Department during the Clinton administration.

But she added that the consolidation proposal may make that argument tougher: "Consolidation can be easily ticked off as a potential cut. ... When you block grant something, you lose the constituency, because no one will say what this block grant is going to do."

Frost is also worried about the direction of education spending overall, particularly if these cuts become reality.

So far, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hasn't issued a statement specifically speaking out against the elimination of the reading programs. (My guess is that the department is probably in a tight spot, since the administration is looking at the two-week extension as a whole and no one wants to see a government shutdown.)

The measure includes other cuts to education, particularly to programs the House Appropriations Committee describes as "national earmarks," money doled out directly to a particular pet program or non-profit organization. Examples of programs cut in the bill include Teach for America, the National Writing Project, Arts in Education, and Reading is Fundamental.

Earlier, the House approved a longer-term spending bill, meant to finance the federal government through Sept. 30, that includes $5 billion in cuts to education. The Senate has not yet acted on that measure.

In other budget news, Duncan testified before the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday, where Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the committee, cautioned against the department's fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, which includes an about 11 percent increase in education spending, including Pell Grants.

Here's a snippet from his statement:

"All of us favor education, but we can't continue these large increases in spending—every dollar of which is borrowed. This request for an 11-percent increase—more than 30 percent what we were spending in 2008—is an affront to common sense and an affront to the will of the voters.

"Education has been the beneficiary of unprecedented increases in recent years without, let me add, any significant increase in student performance."

Duncan also fielded bipartisan concerns about the department's focus on competitive grants. For instance, both Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said rural schools are nearly always going to lose out in competitive grant competitions.

In response, Duncan said that most of the department's funding remains formula-based. And he said that the department is hoping to set aside money for rural districts in a new version of the Race to the Top competition, proposed in the fiscal year 2012 request, which would be focused on districts.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Obama will travel to Florida on Friday to visit Miami Central Senior High School, one of 19 schools in the Miami-Dade district that's received School Improvement Grant money to turn itself around.

Most interesting, he'll be joined by former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, a big education-reform sparkplug who apparently recommended this Miami high school to the Obama administration.

(No word about whether current Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, will be there.)

Friday's event kicks off a big push the Obama administration is mounting over the next couple of weeks to emphasize education, according to the White House. On Tuesday, Obama will go to Boston. And on March 10, the White House hosts a conference on bullying prevention.

We aren't likely to hear much new as Obama and Duncan make these appearances, based on a conference call I just listened to with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and White House Domestic Policy Council adviser Melody Barnes. In general, the administration says Obama will talk about "how winning the future in education will require investments that promote a shared responsibility among everyone involved; reform at the state and local levels; and focus on achieving results."

On this afternoon's conference call, Duncan used one of his favorite phrases—about the need to challenge the "status quo". This reminds me of a great must-read story by my colleague Sean Cavanagh, who analyzes the war of words going on in the education policy sphere.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend