Politics K-12

Barack Obama will stop in Wisconsin tomorrow--one year and one day after being elected to the presidency--in advance of a key vote expected Thursday in the state legislature that could put Wisconsin in a better position to compete for the Race to the Top Fund.

Obama will cheer on the legislature as it considers a proposal to lift the ban on using student test scores for teacher evaluations, which would lift the so-called "data firewall" that stands between any state and being eligible for a slice of $4 billion in Race to the Top grants.

In a conference call today, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes said the Obama Administration is taking direct credit for spurring education-reform moves in several states--including similar data firewall actions in California and Indiana, and efforts to improve the charter school climates in Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Ohio and Rhode Island.

Obama is expected to praise states for taking these steps, and encourage Wisconsin to follow along. Barnes did not mention anything about legislation in the Wisconsin legislature to allow the mayor of Milwaukee to take over the city's schools. That's something Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, champions.

If you'll remember from the draft regulations on Race to the Top, while not having a data firewall is a must for Race to the Top, a state's charter school environment is just part of the larger overall criteria by which states will be judged.

However, any of this could change as the U.S. Department of Education continues to make changes after receiving a slew of comments.

Barnes wouldn't even give us a hint as to what changes are coming for Race to the Top. And as to when we might see final regulations, applications, and how the criteria will be weighted, she said the administration isn't at a "final, final" place yet.

So stay tuned here for final, final regulations.

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John White, who was hired in May to be the press secretary for the U.S. Department Education, has left that post and is now the deputy assistant secretary for rural outreach.

Peter Cunningham, the chief public relations strategist for Education Secretary Arne Duncan, told me that the press office was "overstaffed." (Really? I can come up with plenty more things for them to do, if needed!)

Rural outreach is an area where the department, which has been criticized for overlooking the rural perspective on issues, certainly needs some help. And, so, White is filling a void, said Cunningham, who is officially the assistant secretary for communications and outreach. He added: "Arne's not a rural guy. I'm not a rural guy." (I'm not sure White, who is a former spokesman for Prince George's County Public Schools, is a "rural guy" either, but lots of folks will stand ready to school him in all things rural.)

Cunningham (who is, like his boss, a Chicago guy) also said this is part of a broader strategy to improve outreach as reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act approaches. "The media is critically important, but outreach is where you build support for the agenda."

He noted that he has department staffers who specialize in outreach to associations, to other government entities, now to the rural schools, and he's hiring someone from Los Angeles to tackle outreach at the community level.

As a result of White's departure from the press office, deputy press secretaries Sandra Abrevaya and Justin Hamilton have been promoted and will be sharing the title of press secretary. That also means they're graduating from cubicle offices to a real office, although they'll have to share it.

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In honor of National School Lunch Week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited D.C. Prep Edgewood Elementary and Middle School Campuses in northeast Washington, D.C., last week, touting the department's "Fueled and Fit: Ready to Learn" campaign. He'll be making other school stops in the coming weeks as part of this initiative to promote nutrition and fitness.

So, this seems like a fitting time to resurrect the photo above, which features Arne's lunch tray during a May stop at a West Virginia school. These foods, while likely mainstays of school cafeterias, sure look like they'd make a good example of what not to eat. But then again, the lunch could be healthier than it looks, and I'm not sure I can even identify all of the foods. I see ketchup and mustard, a carrot-and-bean salad, perhaps, and definitely onion rings. But is his main course a steak sandwich? And what's next to it, potatoes? (Click on the photo to enlarge it.) UPDATE: Eagle-eyed commenter Stafford has made a convincing case that my "potatoes" are actually a peach or apple cobbler.

(Photo: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan adds ketchup to his lunch with students at Eagle School in Martinsburg, W.Va., on May 5, 2009. Alex Brandon/AP)

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Just because California has removed its teacher-student data fire wall, thereby making itself eligible to compete for Race to the Top Fund grants, that doesn't mean the state is a shoe-in for the money.

In fact, it seems that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is trying to temper expectations by building a larger narrative that any changes prompted by Race to the Top also could put states in better position for other stimulus-related education grant competitions. After all, the Education Department realizes it can't give $4 billion in Race to the Top money to every state. (But, it's worth pointing out that California was often singled out by Duncan for having the firewall, and did act swiftly to get rid of it.)

"This is a piece of a much larger package," he said in a phone interview today, pointing to some $10 billion in discretionary funds under the stimulus program, such as the school-improvement grants, or the "i3" innovation grants.

And, in specifically speaking about California and other states that have made changes to put themselves in better position for Race to the Top, Duncan tried to downplay the motivation behind these changes: the money. "This money is going to be gone two to four years from now. This is a victory for schoolchildren," he said.

But for cash-strapped states, it is also about the money.

Earlier this year, when I traveled with Duncan in Florida, he said that one of the reasons he peeled off $350 million from the Race to the Top Fund to award to states for common assessments was to spread the stimulus love around -- to give states that may not be competitive for Race to the Top grants a shot at some stimulus prize money.

Clearly, Duncan & Crew are cognizant that states will need to be rewarded, one way or another, for their education-reform efforts. And he has a large portfolio of award money with which to work. Still, the department has successfully made Race to the Top the most prestigious education stimulus prize of them all.

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Kevin Jennings, was appointed to his job at the helm of the U.S. Department of Education's office of safe and drug free schools more than three months ago, amid criticism from some socially conservative groups that sought to derail the appointment. Now, some controversial statements he made years ago to a gay student are stirring up those critics once again.

Warren Throckmorton, a conservative psychology professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and an independent blogger, recently posted an audio interview on his Web site, in which Jennings recounts that while he was a high school teacher he told a sophomore, who picked up an older man in a bus station and went home with him, that he hoped the student used a condom.

Jennings now said he wishes he had handled the situation differently.

"I should have asked for more information and consulted medical or legal authorities," Jennings said in a statement to the Associated Press in the wake of recent criticism. "Teachers back then had little training and guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers."

Still, some conservative-leaning news outlets have sharply criticized Jennings, including the Washington Times.

But Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has backed Jennings, telling the Associated Press that he's "honored to have [Jennings] on the team."

Alexander Russo posted a pretty interesting graphic on the subject here.

UPDATE: A lot of groups in the education community are throwing their support behind Jennings. The National Association of School Psychologists put out this statement. And Learning First has this supportive statement.

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which handpicked 15 states for $250,000 each in funding to help them prepare their Race to the Top Fund applications, is going to offer assistance to the remaining 35 states—if they meet eight education reform criteria.

That's according to a memo Vicki Phillips, the foundation's director of education, college ready, sent yesterday to the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

But before states can get an unspecified amount of money, they must meet eight criteria (outlined in Phillips' memo) that mirror the criteria by which the U.S. Department of Education has proposed judging applications for $4 billion in aid under the education-reform competition.

The Gates Foundation criteria includes whether states have signed onto the NGA-CCSSO common standards effort, whether they have alternative routes to teacher certification, and whether they have no firewall barring the use of student achievement data in teacher evaluations.

Chris Williams, a spokesman for the foundation, said he couldn't say how much money states might receive, either individually or collectively. He also wouldn't elaborate on why the Gates Foundation decided to open up its resources to the rest of the country.

However, Phillips' email gives a clue, indicating that whatever the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers said to foundation officials in response to the Chosen 15 was effective. In her email, Phillips indicates the change was the result of "much discussion and careful consideration of your feedback."

UPDATE: Dane Linn, the education division director of the NGA's Center for Best Practices, said that there was concern—especially in this economic downturn—that some states would have an advantage over others. "We are really pleased that Gates will make investments that will put everyone on equal footing," he said this morning. "We've got to create national momentum. We can't have reform in just [a few] states."

The foundation's initial Chosen 15 were: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.

After these states were chosen, there was a lot of discussion in the ed policy world that these 15 had an early edge in Race to the Top.

It's clear these states are still foundation favorites. Phillips' email says: "These states...are poised to successfully scale reform efforts that can dramatically improve student achievement. Accordingly, these states will be targets for further foundation investment provided they continue to follow through on these commitments."

UPDATE: I should point out that Gates is going to use the Arabella Legacy Fund to serve as the middleman for this grant. This is a grant management group that Gates has used before for some of its global health initiatives. Arabella staff will be the ones to run what seems to be the official warm-up to the Race to the Top—they will, on behalf of Gates, review the grant proposals from the states, answer questions, make the awards, and execute contracts.

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Steve Robinson, who was hired by Education Secretary Arne Duncan as a special adviser on math, science and other issues, is moving to the White House—a small but not insignificant shift in job duties.

The education department says he's still working as a special assistant in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, but will be doing so from the White House's Domestic Policy Council.

"Having Steve over there allows the [department] to maximize coordination" between the education department, the White House, and other agencies, an Education Department spokeswoman said.

Just last week, Robinson, a former high school science teacher who worked for Obama when he was in the U.S. Senate, was a focus of an EdWeek story on Washington fellowships for teachers.

What's interesting about Robinson's shift is that it further signals that STEM is a really big issue for President Obama, but perhaps not as significant for his education secretary. (UPDATE: The department wants to stress that STEM is just as significant for Duncan as it is for Obama, and that Robinson's move is more of a re-location than anything else.)

President Obama has talked about science, technology, engineering and math (the STEM subjects) a lot in major speeches. Today, President Obama spoke at a New York community college to emphasize innovation and technology, according to prepared remarks.

In an August speech on the economy, he said: "Right now, our schools continue to trail many of our competitors, and that's why I've challenged states to dramatically improve achievement by raising standards and modernizing science labs, upgrading curriculum, forming new partnerships to promote math and science, and improving the use of technology in the classroom."

In the many, many, many speeches Obama's education secretary has given, Duncan doesn't often focus on things like modernizing science labs, or improving technology. That's not to say Duncan isn't in favor of these things. (UPDATE: I was neglectful in not highlighting the March speech he gave to the National Science Teachers Association, when he stressed getting great talent into STEM subjects. Or his Aug. 25 remarks to the National Science Board panel.) It's just that he's much more keenly focused on teacher quality, data systems, academic standards, and low-performing schools. And probably rightly so, since Congress identified those areas, or "assurances", as priorities in implementing the $787 billion economic-stimulus act, $100 billion of which is for education.

So in many ways, it seems Robinson is a better fit for the White House than the Education Department.

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So, remember that listening-and-learning tour that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan embarked on to get a sense of what Americans think of the No Child Left Behind Act? Well, he took the tour to the airwaves (sort of) earlier this week, holding a national town hall meeting that was televised in many places. Check it out online here.

There wasn't much said at Tuesday's event that was new to me. The criticisms he heard of NCLB were important, but relatively predictable (too much testing, too much focus on the core subjects at the expense of physical education, art, and other interests).

And Duncan's answers were similar to what he's said on those topics before. He wants tighter control from the federal government on what states' goals should be, but would like to consider how there can be more flexibility in how they get students there. (Is that attitude evident in the guidance the department has put out so far, dealing with Race to the Top Fund and other programs? Discuss.)

When it comes to teachers, he thinks student achievement data should be part of the equation in measuring effectiveness, but he also said that it doesn't tell the whole story. Principal observations and peer feedback counts too, he said.

"We need a menu of options," he said.

Duncan took questions from folks in Hillsborough County, Fla., school system, which includes Tampa. The superintendent there, MaryEllen Elia, recommended national standards, to allow for better comparisons across state lines.

"Amen," said Duncan.

Interesting factoid: Duncan did not have a TV in his house growing up. Instead, his parents read to him and his sibilings from classic literature, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Huckleberry Finn, and Moby Dick. Makes me wonder if his own children have a television.

Speaking of TV, despite lots of help from the U.S. Department of Education, I had a tough time finding a place to watch live on television. It's not clear that the event was broadcast in Washington, D.C., or in parts of suburban Maryland, for instance, just a few miles from where it was being taped in Shirlington, Va. Although Duncan said the program was being broadcast on 800 stations nationwide, I guess mine wasn't one of them. I suspect that's at the discretion of local providers...there probably wasn't much the department could have done about it.

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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said today at Wakefield High School, where President Obama is set to deliver his back-to-school speech at noon, that the controversy surrounding the remarks has “absolutely not” undermined the president’s intended message of personal responsibility and the need for students to stay in school and stay focused. He said such controversies roll off him like “water off a duck’s back,” and said that one of the problems in education policy today is that we “focus on adult issues and adult drama,” instead of paying attention to the huge challenges facing school systems. (This is similar to what Duncan told Bob Schieffer on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday.)

Duncan stressed that watching the speech is entirely voluntary—students can watch in school today, online later, or not at all. As for the suggested lesson plans and classroom activities that some conservative critics have said violate restrictions against the federal government setting curriculum, Duncan said the lessons were put together by “some of the best teachers in the country”—participants in the Education Department’s Teaching Ambassador fellowship program. He conceded that some the original wording of those activities focused too heavily on the president’s goals and that the wording was modified in some cases to focus more heavily on students’ goals.

Before the speech, Secretary Duncan and President Obama planned to hold a round-table discussion with ninth-graders at Wakefield High School to listen to their concerns about their own educations. And he wasn’t the only cabinet secretary planning to visit a school—nearly two dozen cabinet secretaries and other high administration officials were expected to fan out today in support of the president’s pep rally.

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To push states into undertaking education reform, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using $4 billion from the Race to the Top Fund as leverage.

But when it comes to making students and parents take more responsibility for their own educational futures, Obama and Duncan have little more than their bully pulpits—and now a $1,000 cash prize.

When Obama delivers a Sept. 8 back-to-school speech, he will emphasize personal responsibility on the part of students and parents and urge the nation's schoolchildren to set short-term and long-term goals. These are themes that he touted during his campaign. The noon EDT speech will be carried live on C-SPAN and on whitehouse.gov. (UPDATE: By the way, Obama will deliver his speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., which has gotten some love from his administration before.)

UPDATE: The speech, and accompanying "lesson plans" that the education department shared with teachers and school districts, is already causing quite a stir. The department is having to retract one lesson plan that asked students to write letters on how they might "help" the president, according to the Washington Times and Talking Points Memo. Meanwhile, school districts, such as those in the Dallas, Texas area, are struggling with concerns from parents who may not want their children to watch the speech.

In helping the White House gear up for the speech, Duncan taped a promo this morning in his office that will run on MTV on Sept. 8, urging kids to watch the speech by tuning into C-SPAN (and urging MTV viewers to flip to C-SPAN is no easy pitch).

And as part of this back-to-school message, Duncan also taped a commercial that will be featured on YouTube and on a new Web site promoting a contest the department will run called "I Am What I Learn." (The filming of this was a low-budget operation—no teleprompters. Picture Duncan's assistant Liz Utrup standing on a chair, holding print-outs of the script, in 40-plus-point-size, taped to a big flip chart.)

The month-long contest, which starts the day of Obama's speech and ends Oct. 8, invites students to submit videos of up to two minutes long on YouTube that will highlight their personal stories about how they will improve their educations this school year and the "role it will play to fulfilling their dreams," according to the department. A few celebrity judges (to be named later) will narrow the entries down to 20, and then the public will vote for the winner of the $1,000 prize.

This notion of personal responsibility in education reform hasn't been raised just by Obama and Duncan. It was raised, albeit in a less-than-tactful way, by an Atlanta-area teachers' union leader in an Aug. 31 piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Metro Association of Classroom Educators Chairman John Trotter was quoted as saying, in reference to proposed regulations by the Education Department for turning around the nation's worst schools that call for firing staff: “He [Duncan] wants to replace everyone ... except the ones who matter, the children ... The problem starts with the students. What is Duncan going to do with some so-called students who act like miscreants each day?”

Those statements lit up the blogsphere and Twitter feeds.

But Duncan, who would surely quibble with most of what Trotter had to say, also acknowledged when I asked him about this today, that "unquestionably, without a doubt" students bear responsibility, too, for the state of the nation's most struggling schools. And that broader message of personal responsibility is what you'll hear from him and Obama next week.

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from former guest blogger Lesli A. Maxwell, now resident blogger at District Dossier.

Remember a few weeks back when we told you that Jerry Brown, California's attorney general, would likely have to offer his legal opinion on whether the state's law restricts using student data to evaluate teachers -- criticized repeatedly by Education Secretary Arne Duncan -- would render the Golden State ineligible for Race to the Top Fund grants?

Well, Brown, a likely front-runner in the Democratic primary for governor next year, decided to wade into the whole matter by submitting some very interesting, highly critical comments on the proposed RttT rules. (Hat tip to Anthony Cody, an Oakland science teacher who blogs over at Teacher Magazine).

For some reason, though, Brown doesn't directly address whether he thinks California should be considered eligible. He, instead lays out, sometimes dramatically, seven quibbles, many of them philosophical, and not so subtly suggests to Duncan that "a little humility would be in order" since no less than "the impressionable minds of the children of America" are at stake.

Brown also calls the philosophy behind Duncan's RttT rules "command and control," and tells the secretary that he senses in the draft rules a "technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power of social science."

Wowzers! No telling if Brown's comments will sway the brain trust in Duncan's shop to rewrite any rules, but they sure make for some fun reading.

Funny how just a few weeks ago, Brown's staff didn't know anything about RttT and whether the AG would be asked to review the state's firewall law when I called them to inquire. No doubt that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's convening of a special session over this whole issue got Brown's attention.

photo credit: http://www.californiagovernors.ca.gov

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Education Secretary Arne Duncan today spelled out how he wants states to spend $3.5 billion in Title I school improvement money over the next three years.

This grant funding ($3 billion from the economic-stimulus package and $546 million from fiscal 2009 appropriations) will flow to states based on the Title I formula for aid to disadvantaged students, but states will have discretion in how they award the money. The U.S. Department of Education, in its regulations, however, prescribes how the money would be awarded. States would award grants to districts that agree to adopt one of these four models (with some exceptions):

*Turnaround Model: This would include among other actions, replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of a school's staff, adopting a new governance structure and implementing a new or revised instructional program.

*Restart Model: School districts would close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization, or an educational management organization selected through a rigorous review process. A restart school would be required to admit, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend.

*School Closure: The district would close a failing school and enroll the students who attended that school in high-achieving schools in the district.

*Transformational Model: Districts would address four specific areas: 1) developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, which includes replacing the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformational model, 2) implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies, 3) extending learning and teacher planning time and creating community-oriented schools, and 4) providing operating flexibility and sustained support.

In a nod to how important Duncan thinks school leadership is, all of these would put the school principal on the chopping block.

It's also worth noting school districts have a big incentive to adopt the "turnaround" or "restart" model. If they choose one of those two models, the regulations would allow states to seek a waiver to allow those districts to restart the NCLB school improvement clock and no longer be required to provide public school choice or supplemental education services.

This money could be a significant lever for school improvement, especially since Duncan has made turning around the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools a priority.

It's important to put this dollar amount in perspective. It is almost as big as the $4 billion Race to the Top Fund, and it's far bigger than the new i3 Investing in Innovation Fund. Also, the fiscal 2009 appropriation for school improvement grants is just $546 million.

What do you think of these proposed regulations?

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It goes without saying that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who spent his educational career in big-city settings, is not as attuned to the needs of rural districts as the needs of urban ones.

Duncan appeared at a town hall meeting with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (the former Democratic governor of Iowa), in the small town of Hamlet, N.C., which is near the South Carolina border, a good 90 minutes from the nearest big city of Charlotte, and two hours from Raleigh. (And I can say from my experience yesterday that there's also little on the drive between Raleigh and Hamlet, except for an almost ghost-of-a-racetrack in Rockingham where NASCAR drivers once raced.)

When someone at the forum asked about housing issues facing rural educators, Duncan said he was talking to the Housing and Urban Development agency about what can be done. To which Vilsack amusingly chided his peer that HUD is for urban housing, and that his ag department could actually be a resource for rural housing issues. And the ag secretary also talked about how the promise of broadband Internet access in rural areas can make people feel more connected.

Asked about the challenge in finding good principals for rural schools, Duncan replied that the issue of recruiting and retaining good leaders is not "unique to rural communities."

But certainly the context is different. School leaders I spoke with from Richmond County Schools, in Hamlet, talked about the difficulty in getting young promising leaders to move to, and stay in, such rural, out-the-way places. (There isn't even a movie theater in Hamlet, for example.)

And another hot-button education reform issue that Duncan has championed—charter schools—also wouldn't likely flourish, either, in somewhat remote places where there isn't a big concentration of students, rural educators say. (No one asked about charter schools during yesterday's town hall; however, one man did ask about vouchers—to which Duncan talked up charter schools instead.)

I'm told that Duncan's staff is trying to figure out how to ensure that the rural perspective factors into their policymaking. What's still unclear is whether contextual factors, such as the rural or urban character of a state, will factor into that all-important $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition.

(Photo: Sen. Richard Burr, left, R-NC, U.S. Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, third from left, and Congressman Larry Kissell, right, 8th District NC, listen to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan speak on Aug. 17, during a rural community forum held on the campus of Richmond Community College in Hamlet, N.C.)

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If you were in Minnesota for the Republican convention last year or in D.C, during the inauguration you may have been lucky enough to catch the Al and Newt Education Equality Project Show.

In case you missed it, it basically involves Rev. Al Sharpton and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich high-fiving and fist-bumping and telling everyone about how their similarities on education policy transcend their differences on... just about everything else. They're pro-charter, pro-merit pay, pro-accountability, and they play well with all sorts of audiences.

At the convention, a room full of conservative Republican delegates gave Sharpton a standing ovation, while, during the inauguration festivities, a crowd at an inner-city high school in majority black and Democratic D.C. took cell phone pictures of Gingrich (although he kinda got upstaged by another Republican, Sen. John McCain of Arizona).

Well, now U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is hopping on the tour.

Duncan, Sharpton, and Gingrich will visit Philadelphia in September and Baltimore, and New Orleans in November. Those cities were chosen in part because of their efforts on education reforms that the administration would like to see duplicated elsewhere. (For example, New Orleans has been a welcoming place for charters.) The tour may also include a rural site, to be finalized later.

Probably not surprisingly, the superintendents in all three cities have joined up with the Education Equality Project, which was founded by Sharpton and NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

As you probably remember, the group released a "No Excuses" blueprint for education redesign during the presidential campaign that was often compared to another education manifesto, put out by the Bolder, Broader Coalition.

The two documents, which sucked up a lot of the K-12 oxygen during the campaign, were said to epitomize the differences within the Democratic party on education. McCain signed onto the Education Equality Project's manifesto, while President Barack Obama said he agreed with both, but signed neither.

Later, Duncan was seen as a compromise choice for secretary, in part because he signed both documents. But then, Duncan showed up at the Equality Project's inauguration event. And, since he became secretary, some Bolder, Broader folks say he's been trending towards that line of thinking.

So this tour brings up a bunch of questions: Does it mean Duncan is officially on the EEP's team? Or does he still see these agendas as complementary (as he told me when he first took office)? And also, should there be some sort of T-shirt for the Arne, Newt, and Al Tour?

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So this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former big city superintendent, is headed up to Alaska as part of a cabinet-level push to connect with rural states.

The tour has been going on all summer, but the Last Frontier is Duncan's first stop.

The trip is part of a larger effort to reach out to rural America, but the education emphasis may be coming just in time to soothe some friction between rural schools and the administration.

For instance, on a call last week, one rural official said he thought the competitive grant programs created under the economic stimulus program penalized rural districts, which are unlikely to be able to find private partners to provide the "matching" funds that could be required under the Innovation grant program, which is meant to reward districts. (Department officials encouraged him to apply and said they would work with rural districts to help them figure out how to meet the criteria, which haven't been released yet).

And this commentary, published last month in Rural Policy Matters, the magazine of the Rural School and Community Trust, ponders whether Duncan and other cabinet officials on the tour are actually just trying to help Democratic incumbents who are likely to face tough re-election battles (like Rep. Larry Kissell of North Carolina, a former high school social studies teacher who ran on an anti-NCLB platform).

The stop in Kissell's district, which will focus on education, could be beneficial "only if the Secretary will listen rather that preach two of his favorite turnaround solutions: charter schools and paying teachers according to the test scores of their students," the commentary
suggests.

And it continues:

If participants in the Rural Tour listen well during the rural education stop in Hamlet, North Carolina they will hear that rural poverty can’t be overcome by labeling schools failures, that schools can’t hang on to poorly paid teachers by bullying them to improve test scores, and that fiscally starved traditional public schools can’t get better by sending their funds to charters.

That sounds like a direct rebuttal of Duncan's EdWeek commentary, in which he wrote that, "Rural schools shouldn’t let their unique challenges become excuses for keeping the status quo." That may have rankled some folks.

Andy Rotherham, of Eduwonk fame, predicted a few months ago that the rural/urban divide could pop up in education policy debates.

What do you think? Major tensions with the rural community, or just the usual back-and-forth between the feds and the states? And, if there is an issue here, can the tour make a difference?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One important criteria on which states would be judged in the Race to the Top competition is the extent to which they get support for their education reform proposals from key stakeholders.

In the proposed criteria, the U.S. Department of Education counts among stakeholders: charter school authorizers, teachers' unions, foundations, school districts, and community groups. Though these groups wouldn't have veto power, their support will be judged as part of a state's application. But to even submit an application, a governor must get a sign-off from the state's education chief and the president of the state's board of education, according to the department's draft of the Race to the Top guidelines.

The department seems to have left off a key constituency whose support is required in any significant education reform push: state legislators.

You know, those are the guys and gals who make laws and pass budgets (including K-12 appropriations). But you'd be hard-pressed to find the words "legislator" or "legislature" (when pertaining to a state) in a search of the dozens of pages of proposed criteria.

Much of the education reform that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Crew envision can't happen without the state legislature, which determines how much money will go to public schools and sets policy and law on everything from whether there should be a cap on charter schools in the state to what kind of authority a state education department has to turn around failing schools. Sometimes, the most powerful people in education reform in a state are the chairs of the House or Senate education committees.

What's more, state legislators will likely play a crucial role after a state wins Race to the Top funding. While half of the award money will go to school districts based on the Title I formula, the remaining dollars will be spent according to the state's Race to the Top plan. But most, if not all, state constitutions give the power of appropriations to state legislatures (with some exceptions, like in emergencies). So what if a governor pitches a plan to the department to spend the money on a merit-pay plan for teachers, wins the award based on this plan, but the legislature won't play along?

Even a token nod to this group of people would seem to be advisable. Perhaps when the department comes out with its final criteria, adding state legislators to the list of "key stakeholders" in the criteria would be a first step.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at This Week in Education, Alexander Russo wonders whether ex-Chicago Public Schools chief and now Education Secretary Arne Duncan has also been subpoenaed by federal officials in an investigation over allegations that well-connected parents called in favors to get their kids into elite public schools. (The Chicago Board of Education President has disclosed he has received a subpoena, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.)

Good question. So I asked.

John White, the press secretary for Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education, told me in an email today: "We have not been contacted."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow, I'm spending the day with Arne. Yes, the Arne.

And, I'll be tweeting about it, so follow along via the Politics K-12 Twitter feed.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be in Florida as part of his Listening and Learning tour. He'll also give a speech at the GE Foundation's meeting.

In between visits, I'll try to get answers on my questions (and yours) about Race to the Top.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Lesli A. Maxwell:

In his campaign for turning around the nation’s worst public schools, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan this morning called for a cadre of “warrior principals.”

Speaking to principals from across the country, Mr. Duncan said that without strong leaders, any effort to dramatically transform the thousands of public schools that have failed for decades would be futile. He challenged the leaders to “take on the toughest job in America.”

“We need a team of warrior principals to leave the easier places and go into the most underserved communities with a chance to build a new team,” Mr. Duncan said to the roughly 350 principals who are in Washington this week for the annual meeting of the National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals. Mr. Duncan said he would need to enlist about 1,000 principals a year, over the next five years.

The secretary has been pushing hard for turning around thousands of failing schools, and has already implored other groups of educators, including the charter school movement, to get involved in that work. Mr. Duncan also asked the principals to work on fixing the “broken” teacher evaluation system by developing evaluations that are “fair, thoughtful, but meaningful.”

The principals peppered him with questions that reflect a wide range of concerns among school leaders. One question, from the executive director of South Carolina’s principals association—who made the room roar with her joke about Gov. Mark Sanford’s peccadilloes—was about the secretary's position on school vouchers.

“I’m a big fan of choice,” said Mr. Duncan, who said he doesn’t object to private philanthropy being tapped as a way for poor children to attend private schools. But government-sponsored vouchers, he said, “pull out one to two percent of children but leave the other 99 percent to drown. As a federal government, we have to be more ambitious than that.” The principals LOVED that response.

And, of course, Mr. Duncan used the school choice question as one more opportunity to push for turning around failing schools. “We have to save more than one percent to sleep well at night," he said. "That’s why the turnaround effort is so important.”

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Cabinet secretaries Arne Duncan (education) and Kathleen Sebelius (health and human services) held a very ho-hum conference call this morning to announce their support of a $10 billion Early Learning Challenge Fund grant program introduced in legislation this week by Rep. George Miller. As if their support was in question.

Investing in early learning is a big priority of President Obama, and Rep. Miller (the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee) would pay for this initiative by overhauling the federal student loan program. (UPDATE: It's worth adding that the President called for this kind of investment—and the Early Learning Challenge Grant program—back in March, and that Miller was the first to answer that call.)

Sebelius said early education is the best economic investment a state can make, while Duncan emphasized that states will be expected to build a quality workforce to serve in early education jobs.

Miller's bill, which is expected to be marked up next week, would establish a competitive $10 billion grant program for states to improve their systems of early education. States are expected to develop evidence-based quality standards for programs, improve support for parents and professional development for teachers, and require that teachers have degrees in early education.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

President Obama is planning today to announce a $12 billion infusion into community colleges to jumpstart progress to a new goal he's setting to increase the number of graduates by 5 million by 2020.

According to the Washington Post's article, the breakdown for the $12 billion is: $2.5 billion for construction and renovation at the nation's community colleges, $500 million to develop new online courses and $9 billion for "challenge grants" aimed at spurring innovation at the colleges.

UPDATE: According to excerpts of Obama's remarks, distributed by the White House, the President is calling this the "most significant down payment yet on reaching this goal in the next ten years. It’s called the American Graduation Initiative." And to pay the tab, Obama says: "We pay for this plan by ending the wasteful subsidies we currently provide to banks and private lenders for student loans, which will save tens of billions of dollars over the next ten years."

Obama's announcement is well timed, given the latest jobs report my colleague Catherine Gewertz blogs about over at High School Connections.

And if you'll remember, in a February speech, Obama set a new goal that the United States will be No. 1 in the world for college graduates by 2020.

Still, we've heard very little from the Obama administration (including EdSec Arne Duncan) about how to boost high school graduation rates, specifically, especially given that high school is the gateway to postsecondary education. In May, Catherine explored this issue, and whether the 2020 goal is realistic. Clearly, the $100 billion in education aid that's wrapped up in the stimulus package may indirectly help improve graduation rates, but so far, stimulus money is supporting the status quo rather than reform—and the status quo isn't going to boost high school, or college graduation, rates.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

The National Journal has rounded up a veritable who's who among education policymakers to talk about the pros and cons of mayoral control of schools on its new education blog today, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who famously said he will have "failed as secretary" if more big cities don't have mayoral control by the end of his tenure.

Duncan kicks off the discussion, saying: "Mayoral control also clearly defines accountability. One person is in charge. ... For cities that need to take bold action to improve their schools, creating a clear line of accountability to one person is an important step in turning around the schools."

But he also says mayoral control may not be right everywhere, but an important tool to consider.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten says mayoral control can and does work, but her seven years of experience with it in New York City (where the law expired last week because of inaction by the New York Senate) shows that transparency and accountability are key, including independent reviews of financial decisions and a formal place for parents to be heard.

Rep. John Kline, the newly-minted ranking Republican on the House committee that oversees education, also favors a measured approach:

"Mayoral control has certainly worked well in some large cities, and I applaud it. But in other areas, engaged school boards have been able to implement the right kinds of reforms to improve student achievement. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to education, whether you’re talking about governance or curriculum."

Check out more responses here from other top thinkers, including former NYC schools chancellor Harold Levy, AEI's Rick Hess, Fordham's Checker Finn and NSBA's Anne Bryant. The school boards group delivered a stern smackdown to the secretary after he promoted the virtues of mayoral control at their April conference.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In his fourth and final speech on the education reform "assurances" that are featured in the economic stimulus package, Education Secretary Arne Duncan walked into the lion's den NEA convention in San Diego today and called for merit pay for teachers.

It's reminiscent of the National Education Association's big summer confab last year, when Barack Obama was just a presidential candidate, getting booed by some delegates for mentioning performance pay.

My colleague Stephen Sawchuk, who is in San Diego, will have much more on this speech (including whether Duncan gets booed) over at the Teacher Beat.

According to prepared remarks, Mr. Duncan took on some of the prized benefits of being a teacher: tenure, the salary schedule, and union protection.

On tenure:

"When an ineffective teacher gets a chance to improve and doesn’t—and when the tenure system keeps that teacher in the classroom anyway—then the system is protecting jobs rather than children. That’s not a good thing. We need to work together to change that."

On teacher evaluations:

"...to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."

On teacher pay:

"We’re asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs 'with' you—and 'for' you—not 'to' you—programs that will put money in the pockets of your teachers and support personnel by recognizing and rewarding excellence."

Duncan also emphasized the importance of improving the quality of school and district leadership, calling on those leaders to accept the same new education-reform demands as teachers.

And if you need a refresher on Duncan's previous speeches on the assurances, read about his standards speech here, data here, and low-performing and charter schools here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you think Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his staff don't read the comments on their ed.gov blog, then think again.

As part of Duncan's Listening and Learning Tour, which will take him to at least 15 states in town-hall style meetings on education reform, the department has launched an online conversation asking for comments.

A comment about raising academic standards from a high school world history teacher in Princeton, Texas—Kyle Brenner—must have resonated with the education secretary.

Enough so that Mr. Duncan called Brenner today to talk about his post. So if you leave a comment, be prepared to talk about it.

UPDATE: I reached Brenner by email today, and he indicated that he and Duncan spoke for about eight minutes this morning. And here's how the conversation went, according to Brenner:

He asked me my thoughts on raising standards and I told him that the best way to raise standards was to pay teachers more but require them to get a graduate degree similar to the of a lawyer or doctor. He agreed that teacher pay was a big problem and told me that they were working on some programs to reward excellent teachers and lower the debt burden for teachers. He then I asked me if I believed that teacher pay affected young people from joining the profession. I told him that I believed it did. Finally, we talked about student incentives for raising standards. I believe that we should find a way to reward students who excel by offering reduced or free college that way all students know that if they work hard they can go...he responded that they are still studying the situation and looking for a way to give student incentives.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

First, Charles Barone at Swift & Change Able reports via Twitter this morning that some members of Congress are "following orders" from supporters of the education "status quo" to stop appearing with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and stop lending support to President Obama's education agenda.

And now, several moderate Senate Democrats have sent a letter in support of Obama's education message.

What's going on?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're CNN, and you have a choice between broadcasting two live events, would you choose A or B?

A: A live briefing with Education Secretary Arne Duncan about student financial aid forms getting simpler.

B: A live press conference featuring a contrarian Republican governor who went missing for a few days, was eventually thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, but was actually in Buenos Aires carrying out an affair with an Argentinian.

Needless to say, Duncan's White House briefing—which CNN was going to carry live—got trumped by South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. If you'll remember, Gov. Sanford had some harsh words for Duncan in the kerfluffle over the state stabilization fund. But from now on, it's unlikely Duncan will have to put up with any more snippy letters from Sanford, who has much bigger things to worry about.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Erik Robelen:

As careful readers of this blog will recall, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today was going to roll out the administration’s plans to simplify the federal college-aid application process during the White House press briefing. He did so this afternoon, and was joined by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

“The debate about how to simplify FAFSA [the Free Application for Federal Student Aid], I think, has been going on for over 20 years. So this change is long, long overdue,”said Mr. Duncan.

Some of the changes are already in place, while others will be phased in over the next few months (and still others will require legislation), according to the Education Department.

In a follow-up chat with several reporters just outside the White House press room, Duncan recalled his own frustrations with the application process when he was superintendent of the Chicago school system. “This damn form was killing us,” he said.

Mr. Duncan also said the Education Department is planning a public campaign this fall to help get more young people interested in college and to let them know about all the help that’s available. He emphasized that the campaign will not only target high school students, but try to reach them earlier, in the 6th and 7th grades.

“The goal will be for our young people to understand that college is a possibility if they work hard,” he said. “I want to get to children at a young enough age before they start to give up on that dream.”

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow, the U.S. Department of Education will announce plans to help simplify the process for applying for federal student aid using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

It may not sound like a particularly sexy issue, but a lot of experts think the FAFSA has been a major barrier to student access. In fact, 40 percent of college kids never even file the form, even though most of them are eligible for some form of student aid. (The Chronicle of Higher Education has some excellent background here).

Duncan's plan has three main elements. It would:

1) Rework the online application so that it skips irrelevant questions. For instance, students who are at least 24 or married won't have to provide their parents' financial information, and low-income kids won't be asked about asset information. Part of the plan to rework the online application has already been put in place. Since May, the department has provided students with estimates of their Pell Grant aid student loan eligibility.

2) Eliminate some questions through legislation, possibly including questions relating to assets.

3) Let some students apply for financial aid using IRS information, which would make the process much faster and easier, according to the department. This would start in January, as a pilot program, but could expand in the future.

The issue of FAFSA simplification isn't new. The most recent version of the Higher Education Act called for a slimmed-down form. And Duncan's predecessor, Margaret Spellings, unveiled an online tool to help students figure out how much federal aid they are eligible for.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's the end of an era at 400 Maryland Ave. The little red No Child Left Behind schoolhouse out in front of the U.S. Department of Education's headquarters in the nation's capital is no more.

It's no secret that folks in the administration and Congress are very likely to change the name of the federal school improvement law. A key author of the legislation, U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has called it "the most tainted brand in America." And U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told Michele awhile back that he might seek suggestions for a new name for the law from America's schoolchildren.

I guess the schoolhouse was necessary collateral damage. The Education Department had it dismantled over the weekend.

Awhile back, the Eduwonk blog held a contest to rename NCLB. So, in that spirit, Politics K-12 is taking any and all suggestions of what the Education Department could put on its front terrace to symbolize that it's a new era in education policy under President Barack Obama and Duncan. The comments section is ready and waiting.

UPDATE: The U.S. Department of Education just announced today that it will decorate its halls with "larger than life" photos of kids from all around the country participating in the arts and athletics, as well as reading and in classrooms. Sounds to me like the department might be trying to send a message that the federal government cares about more than just the reading and math tests that are central to NCLB. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan this morning asked charter school operators to play a major role in turning around the nation's lowest-performing schools.

"Today, I am challenging you to adapt your educational model to turning around our lowest-performing schools. I need you to go outside your comfort zones and go to under-served rural communities and small cities," he said to the attendees of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' ninth annual conference, which kicked off this morning at Washington's convention center.

While Duncan praised charters, he said the charter school movement has real work to do on improving accountability for its schools, calling out states with laws he said provide "minimal" accountability, such as those in Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and Texas. He also cited a new report by Stanford University researchers that found a wide range of quality among charters.

"The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate, and in some cases, third-rate charter schools to exist. Your goal should be quality, not quantity."

Duncan's speech was the third of four speeches he is doing on the "assurances" that states must make to get a significant share of education stimulus dollars. Duncan has pushed states to lift caps on charter schools, or find themselves in a weakened competitive spot for the funds.

He broadly outlined four options for turning around failing schools, which the department will give more details on in a request for proposals for those applying to use Race to the Top funds to turn around schools.

In the first model, the students remain in the school, but at least 50 percent of the staff is replaced, which may become a grant requirement. The teachers can reapply for their jobs and many will go elsewhere. It's based on the work done in Chicago under the Academy for Urban School Leadership.

The second model calls for replacing the staff and turning the school over to a nonprofit group or charter management organization, such as Los Angeles-based Green Dot or the Mastery charter schools network, which the secretary highlighted for its work in Philadelphia.

A majority of the existing staff would stay under the third model, which the secretary said would be most suited for rural districts or small communities where finding new staff members would be especially difficult. But the district would have to commit to a "rigorous" performance evaluation and intensive training and mentoring of the staff, along with a focus on more time for children to learn later in the day and on weekends. The school should be given flexibility over its calendar.

That option should not be considered the easy way out, he said, as the schools will be required to show measurable improvement in student achievement.

The fourth option is simply to shut down the lowest-performing schools and send the children to another school. "This might seem like surrender, but in some cases it’s the only responsible option," Duncan said.

All of the models, Duncan said, require about a year of planning, so districts and charter management organizations should get started this summer in order to have these schools opening in the fall of 2010. He said schools and districts can use Title I money to start that process now.

Duncan said he knows turning around schools is different than the work most charters presently do, but he said students need their innovative approaches to help close some of the nation's most persistent achievement gaps.

There's more to come, so check this blog and our Twitter feed for the latest news from the charter school conference.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's going to be story-hour at 400 Maryland Ave. - all summer long.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is planning to read to kids on the lawn of the U.S. Department of Education on a regular basis throughout the summer. (Suggest your favorite children's classics in the comments section).

He may even be joined by other cabinet secretaries from time to time.

The program is part of the White House's Summer of Service initiative, "United We Serve" which kicks off on Monday, and runs through Sept. 11. Duncan's cabinet colleagues are getting in on the act too. For instance, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will be helping build homes with Habitat for Humanity in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Duncan's first stop on the reading tour will actually be Fanwood Memorial Library in Fanwood, N.J. On Monday, he'll be reading to students in kindergarten through third grade and meeting with representatives of the New Jersey Regional Libraries. He'll be reading Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and possibly How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague.

The project is meant to highlight the importance of reading in stemming the summer slip-off. Research shows that if kids read just five books over the summer, they might be able to prevent the decline in reading achievement scores that often occurs over the vacation months, according to a statement from the Department.

Photo by Christopher Powers for Education Week.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

The AP's Libby Quaid has an interesting story about how Education Secretary Arne Duncan has put in writing a threat we've heard before: that if states play shell games with the economic-stimulus money intended to help stabilize their budgets, they may be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes time to award the $5 billion in competitive stimulus grants under his control. Pennsylvania is considering cutting K-12 education, using stimulus money to fill in the resulting gap, while leaving its "rainy day" fund largely intact. Read Duncan's letter here. And listen to him talk about the larger issue in this interview with EdWeek from March.

But Duncan's threat to Pennsylvania policymakers may turn out to be an empty one. Here's why:

Does Duncan—who readily admits in his stump speeches that Washington does not have all of the answers—know better than the budget experts in individual states? Sometimes, depleting a rainy day fund is a bad idea. For example, bond-rating agencies look at a state's savings in awarding bond ratings--a healthy rainy day fund usually means a better bond rating. A higher bond rating lowers borrowing costs for states, which can save money for other things.

Second, a lot of states are talking about or doing what Pennsylvania is talking about doing. Texas is another notable example. Applications approved so far show most states are using their State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money to backfill cuts. And if you look at the latest fiscal report from the associations representing the nation's governors and state budget officers (advance to page 52 of the PDF), you'll see that many states are projecting that they'll end fiscal 2010 with money still in their "budget stabilization" or rainy day funds. Many of these same states have cut K-12 education. That's a lot of states to potentially take out of the running. Will Duncan and Team Stimulus be able to distinguish which states really, really needed to cut education versus those that didn't?

Note in Duncan's letter that states will be asked about (and not necessarily judged on) how they used their stabilization fund money. And, he says a state may be "negatively impacted" by such decisions. What's more, it's important to remember that the stimulus law, as approved by Congress, contains loopholes that allow states to move money around—and potentially away from—intended purposes.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In response to new research that casts doubt on the quality of charter schools, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weigarten had this to say, in an official statement:

"...the inconsistencies in the quality of charter schools should give pause to those who want to lift charter caps, particularly when they are not matched with calls for legislatures to increase accountability."

Hmmmm...I wonder who she could be talking about?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Department of Education has now laid out very specific deadlines for states vying for a piece of the Race to the Top fund, a pool of discretionary economic-stimulus money that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will get to dole out to the states. Billed as a "national competition," the grants will be distributed in two rounds—to give states that miss out the first time around a crack at the second phase.

Applications will be due in December and June. So states that have charter school caps, for instance, have a year (as Duncan might say) to get their act together and lift those caps!

It looks like these deadlines will apply only to the $4 billion in state grants, not to the $350 million that's been set aside for new assessments, nor for the $650 million in innovation grants available to school districts and nonprofit groups.

The deadlines are:

Late July: The Department will publish a notice of proposed rule making in the Federal Register, inviting public comment for 30 days on the proposed grant application and the criteria for evaluating the states' applications.

October: Notice inviting applications will be published in the Federal Register.

December: Phase 1 applications will be due.

March 2010: Phase 1 grants awarded, winners announced.

June 2010: Phase 2 applications will be due.

September 2010: Phase 2 grants awarded, winners announced.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Department of Education will use a portion of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund to help states work on developing assessments, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told governors in North Carolina tonight. They were gathered for an education symposium sponsored by the National Governors Association and the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy.

The details are still being worked out, but he said $350 million of the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top money set aside for states will go to the project. (The $650 million in innovation grants will still go to local districts and nonprofits.) And it sounds like Duncan is hoping that at least some states will work together on creating the tests.

Really good tests will cost more than the fill-in-the-bubble variety, Duncan told the governors, and it'll be too much money for any one state to do on its own. So the feds are going to put up part of the funding and Duncan is hoping that states will choose to collaborate with one another.

But, in prepared remarks, he stressed that the feds won't be the ones driving the bus:

Some people may claim that a commonly-created test is a threat to state control – but let’s remember who is in charge. You are. You will create these tests. You will drive the process. You will call the shots.

And he said he wants states to also work together on so-called formative assessments, which help teachers gauge where their kids are:

This is a growth area for the testing industry, which may worry that assessments used across multiple states will be bad for business, even if it’s the right thing for kids.
However, it’s not my job to worry about their business. My job is to worry about kids...

The $350 million for assessments means that Race to the Top state grant funding is now down to $4 billion. States can either collaborate with one another or apply on their own for the grants, Duncan said. And he reiterated that the funding will be doled out in two rounds. States that lose out the first time are eligible for Round 2.

Duncan also said he wants to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act to make sure that it rewards states for raising their standards. These lines, included tonight, have become part of his NCLB stump speech.

As states come together around higher common standards, I want to flip it – and be tighter about the goals – but more flexible in how you can meet them. I trust states and districts to find the way – and I don’t trust Washington to tell you how to do it. You have the ideas, the leadership, and the ability. I’m here to support you.

And, as he has before, Duncan gave a big pat on the back to the 46 states that have pledged to consider common standards.

So let’s be clear: this effort is being led by governors and chief state schools officers. This is your work and this is your agenda. Federal law does not mandate national standards. It empowers states to decide what kids need to learn and how to measure it.

In case you haven't already noticed, the whole Washington-Isn't-On-Your-Back thing was a major theme of the speech. But Duncan may have stepped on that a little bit when he repeated his call for states to, pretty please, lift their charter cap.

As you might remember, Duncan is doing a round of speeches on each of the four "assurances" spelled out in the stimulus package - the ones that states must promise they'll improve on to get a major piece of the stimulus funding. This one was obviously standards and assessments. He's already done data systems.

Duncan also gave us a preview of the two final stops in the Assurances Tour:

He'll be talking about turning around low performing schools—another assurance—at an event with charter school advocates next week. Interesting pick of audience there...might indicate that he is going to push for more continually failing schools to be reconstituted as charters.

And Duncan said that he will be outlining his vision for teacher and principal quality in a speech to the National Education Association in July, a gutsy move considering that the speech will more likely than not mention performance pay, a policy the union isn't a huge fan of.

UPDATE: The Associated Press did a good story on the speech that you can read here. In an interview with AP, Duncan explained that providing resources for the tests is a good way to keep the standards movement going. Establishing standards will be relatively cheap, Duncan told AP.

But tests will be a "very heavy lift financially," Duncan said. "Having real high standards is important, but behind that, I think in this country we have too many bad tests... If we're going to have world-class international standards, we need to have world-class evaluations behind them."

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of Arne Duncan's key leadership picks has ignited the conservative blogsphere: Kevin Jennings, the U.S. Department of Education's soon-to-be assistant deputy secretary in the office of safe and drug-free schools.

The former Massachusetts Department of Education official founded, and was the executive director of, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. GLSEN works to make schools safe for students regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. This is a real issue, as the latest GLSEN survey from October showed that 86 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students experienced harassment during the previous school year.

This isn't the first time the Obama administration has signaled its commitment to raising awareness about keeping schools safe, including for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth. Jill Biden, a community college professor and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, gave the keynote address at GLSEN's annual awards banquet last week. In April, as part of a broader statement on school safety, Duncan called attention to the importance of protecting students from bullying and harassment because of sexual orientation.

But the Jennings pick—which does not require Senate confirmation—is lighting up Twitter and drawing fire from conservative groups, including Catholic Online, and the legislative arm of the Family Research Council, which is urging folks to write the department opposing the choice. Specifically, the group says that GLSEN "force[s] affirmation of homosexuality in schools, beginning in kindergarten." What's up with certain conservatives linking sex and kindergarten? (Think back to that 2008 campaign ad that purported that Barack Obama supported sex-ed for kindergartners.)

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As we mentioned yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is talking tough about the need for state data systems to include some sort of indicator that can be used to tie teachers to their students' performance.

Who knows whether it will happen in California, Duncan's new poster child for the issue. But the situation in Arizona may be promising for proponents of the idea, at least according to the state schools chief, Tom Horne.

I asked Horne last week (while reporting this story) whether he thought the state would actually be able to squeeze some reform out of the stimulus money, given Arizona's dire fiscal situation.

He said he thought that the law gave him leverage to add a teacher indicator to the state's data system, and the cost won't be high. According to Horne, the proposal has been languishing in the state legislature for a while. Now “schools are going to have to do it,” he said. "That’s going to be a big change” because principals can use the data to better target professional development, Horn said.

If it happens, don't be surprised if Duncan gives Arizona a little love in his data-system stump speech.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has added more tough talk to his stump speech.

Just yesterday, he urged states to strike down laws that prohibit them from using data systems to link individual teachers to student outcomes.

Today he hit that theme again, singling out California's law, which he said makes it impossible to figure out which of the state's educators and practices are effective.

At a breakfast with reporters in Washington, he called the Golden State law a "fire wall. ... This thing is a huge, huge barrier. ... We've got to tear down this fire wall."

Not being able to link student and teacher data, Duncan said, makes it tough to pinpoint which of California's educators are the top performers and which "should find another line of work."

And about half an hour later, he used very similar language to, yet again, rail against California's law at an event surrounding the release of a Carnegie report on math and science education. My colleague Sean Cavanagh already has blogged about this over at Curriculum Matters.

(If you're looking for some good background, my colleague, Steve Sawchuk of Teacher Beat fame, sketched out the political dynamics around the data system issue in this story.)

My guess is that the first thing California has to do if it wants a piece of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund is scrap that data law. It sounds like the state could sure use the money. And, California Democrat and Education Committee Chairman Rep. George Miller is with Duncan on this one.

Other odds and ends from the events:

*After giving a speech at Carnegie, Duncan said he will consider ways to urge districts to make science an important part of the school day. He's worried about how the subject fits into the "narrowing of curriculum" issue.

*At the reporters' breakfast, Duncan mentioned that, in his "listening tour" on the No Child Left Behind Act, he's heard teachers, particularly young teachers, complain about the quality of the training they've received at their colleges of education.

*Also, at the reporters' round table, Duncan answered the million-dollar question: Yes, he's played basketball with President Barack Obama since the new administration has come into office. And no, he won't tell us where they've played.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In the first in a planned series of four speeches about the Education Department's top reform priorities, Secretary Arne Duncan told education researchers today that innovation and new practices must be supported by evidence-based research. And, what's more, he took states to task for enacting laws barring student test scores from being used in teacher-evaluation decisions.

Debbie Viadero, who covers and blogs about research for EdWeek, called in to say that Duncan, in particular, singled out New York and California for having such state laws.

But the problem goes deeper than those two states. According to the latest update from the Data Quality Campaign, 17 states have no plans to create a unique teacher-identifier number and link that number to student achievement data. My colleague Stephen Sawchuk, who blogs over at the Teacher Beat, has explored this issue in depth.

In his speech to the Institute for Education Sciences, Duncan urged researchers to work on improving accountability models based on student achievement growth on test scores and developing fair models of compensating teachers and other school staff based on the achievement of their students. Ultimately, he added, the data should be used to ensure that students are on track to graduate and to succeed in college, according to an Education Department press release.

Duncan's planned series of speeches is built around the four "assurances" that are included in the federal economic stimulus law. The assurances say that states must make progress in turning around low-performing schools, building better longitudinal data systems, recruiting and retaining effective teachers, and implementing more rigorous college- and career-ready standards. States must show such progress, or a plan for progress, to get their share of the $48.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. In addition, Duncan has said he will use a state's progress on the assurances to help him make decisions on who gets the billions of dollars in Race to the Top funding under his control.

This isn't the first time Duncan's put a little bully in his bully pulpit. He's put states on notice that charter school caps that limit the growth of these nontraditional public schools are not his idea of innovation or reform.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As part of the Obama administration's larger effort to help communities affected by the near-collapse of the U.S. auto industry, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is doing his part.

He announced today in Milwaukee a new competitive grant program to help develop more community college programs to help people, especially those hurt by the auto industry's decline. Don't expect this new program to have a big impact though—the total funding is only $7 million. Grants are likely to range from $300,000 to $700,000. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the some $100 billion in education money in the stimulus package.

The education department's press release points out that many of the high-demand jobs in 2009 are within reach of a community college graduate. Just what are these in-demand jobs? According to Manpower, the 10 hardest jobs for U.S. employers to fill in 2009 are: engineers, nurses, skilled/manual trades, teachers, sales representatives, technicians, drivers, information technology, laborers, and machinists.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Erik Robelen:

Apparently, a Democratic lawmaker in Texas didn’t get the talking points from Education Secretary Arne Duncan about expanding the charter schools sector.

A bill that would have allowed more charters to open in Texas was killed on the floor of the state's House of Representatives last night by a point of order raised by Democratic Rep. Lon Burnam, of Fort Worth, according to the Quorum Report, an independent newsletter on Texas politics.

Some charter critics couch their language diplomatically, but Rep. Burnam didn't mince words.

“This is a massive charter school expansion bill,” the Quorum Report quoted Rep. Burnam as saying to explain the move. “I hate charter schools. I’m going to kill this bill.”

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan got to use his favorite word again in a speech this morning when he said he wants states and districts to take "dramatic" steps to overhaul schools that are struggling to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act.

He talked about how, as superintendent in Chicago, he closed the city's lowest-performing schools and brought in all new staff, resulting in significant academic gains.

But in a wide-ranging speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Duncan said that there's a shortage of folks out there—among states, districts, and even innovative non-profits—who know how to reshape foundering schools.

"I can count on one hand the number of turnaround specialists doing this work," he said.

There is already $3 billion for school improvement included as part of the economic stimulus package, and Duncan is pushing for another $1.5 billion in the fiscal year 2010 budget. Some experts have told me that, while that money is great, they're not sure it will necessarily be put to good use because districts also need expertise to help fix chronically underperforming schools.

Duncan also acknowledged that the $100 billion in stimulus funding for education may have an uneven impact in states, since some, such as California, will still have to make drastic cuts, while others, such as South Dakota, will get an enormous windfall.

But he said that shouldn't preclude states that are in the red from taking steps to overhaul schools.

"In a time of crisis, you have to look very carefully at how you are spending the money," he said. "States that have been hardest hit" may be well-positioned to advance reforms, he added. "This is a huge test of leadership."

Today's was the latest in a series of tough-talk speeches by Duncan about the need to turn around low-performing schools, with the implication that states and districts that don't take the hint may be left out of the running for some of the $5 billion in Race to the Top and innovation grant money he will be doling out.

Duncan said he hadn't expected that so many states would drag their feet in applying for the first round of fiscal stabilization funding in the stimulus package. He said the Education Department hasn't come up with a contingency plan in case states don't finish their applications by the July deadline, since he expects them all to be complete by then.

"I don't think that's going to be much of a problem," he said.

Duncan was also asked about his efforts to improve Education Department's culture, after the department ranked near the bottom of a survey of the best places to work in the federal government. (The survey was taken before the Obama administration took office.)

He said that he will try to create the kind of collegial, professional working climate that he would like schools across the country to adopt.

If the department doesn't rise in the rankings, "you can hold me accountable," he said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you missed it, according a survey released earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education was ranked as one of the absolute worst places to work in the federal government. (For a quick summary, check out the The Washington Post's story on the survey).

To be fair, 400 Maryland Ave. wasn't dead last. That honor belonged to the Department of Transportation. But it ranked 27th out of the 30 large agencies surveyed.

The survey, conducted by the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit in Washington, used data from the Office of Personnel Management's federal human capital survey, from fiscal year 2008, well before President Barack Obama took office.

Well, Secretary of Education "Call me Arne" Duncan saw that survey, and yesterday, he told ED employees he's out to change that culture, and he wants their help and input.

Here's a snippet from his email to employees:

I knew from day one that I needed your feedback to make this a more focused, results-oriented, efficient, and great place to work. We have a critical agenda, and we will not be successful without everyone's involvement.

The survey results on which rankings are based show that while employee satisfaction has increased at ED in recent years, we still have a long way to go. Coming in 27th out of 30 federal agencies in this new report is not where I want the Department to be. I take the specific findings of where we fall short very seriously. And I want to learn more about the previous efforts to address these shortcomings, find out what worked and what didn't, and develop a thoughtful approach that can help us create real and lasting change in ED's culture.

The current findings suggest that people don't feel they are being listened to, and I expect our leadership and our managers to take responsibility for changing that. We need to make sure management understands your concerns and works to address them. We need to make sure to open the lines of communication between my new leadership team and you, the people most familiar with our challenges and opportunities.

You need to know how your work impacts and advances our priorities, and that your work matters.

The memo seems like another indication of Duncan's managerial style—or at least how he wants to be perceived over at the Department. From reportedly giving out his personal cell phone number to rural school superintendents to hearing concerns about the No Child Left Behind Act in school districts across the country, it's pretty clear Duncan is (or wants to be perceived as) The Nice Guy Who Listens.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put out the official list of many of the folks who've gotten top positions at the U.S. Department of Education. Most of these aren't new, but the list is a good Who's Who of new political appointees.

Another Gates Foundation refugee got a top job. Margot Rogers, formerly the senior counselor to Duncan, will be Arne Duncan's chief of staff. While at Gates, she managed the foundation's five-year education strategy.

Juan Sepulveda will be the director of the White House Initiative on the Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He was the Texas state director for Obama for America and the former president of The Common Enterprise, whose mission is to help nonprofit groups, philanthropic organizations, and businesses help build stronger communities.

Also among those we've already told you about: the Aspen Institute's Judy Wurtzel as a deputy assistant secretary in the office of planning, evaluation and policy; ex-EdWeek staff David Hoff, deputy assistant secretary for communication development; and, former Prince George's County Schools spokesman John White as press secretary. And Dianne Piche is the deputy assistant Secretary of Enforcement, Office for Civil Rights. Piche most recently served as executive director of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights.

Kevin Jennings, the assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, is the founder and former executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which works to keep kids safe in school, regardless of their sexual orientation. Before that, Jennings was a history teacher and history department head at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, and a teacher at Moses Brown School in Providence.

Stacey Jordan, director of Intergovernmental Affairs, comes to the department from The Education Sector, where she served as a communications manager. And Jordan also served as special adviser for education policy to the mayor of Providence, R.I., and as director of The New York City Department of Education Office of Strategic Partnerships.

Julius Lloyd Horwich has been tapped as deputy assistant secretary, Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs. Like lots of folks in leg jobs, Horwich is a Hill veteran. He's worked with most of the top lawmakers on education policy, so he'll be well positioned to sell Duncan's agenda to his old bosses. Horwich recently served as education counsel and policy adviser to the House of Education and Labor Committee, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. And he also worked as an education counsel on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Subcommittee on Children and Families and as a policy counsel to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a pretty important guy to know since he controls the purse strings on ed spending in the Senate.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, today urged Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to be very picky in determining which states should get money under the Race to the Top fund, a $4.35 billion pot of money created as part of the stimulus package to encourage states to work on teacher distribution, assessments, data-systems, and standards.

Giving a brand-new Secretary of Education broad discretion over such a huge discretionary grant program – privately dubbed Arne’s Slush fund by some during the stimulus debate - was “an amazing act for the Congress but … also a vote of confidence in you,” Miller said at a hearing of the committee, Duncan's first time testifying before the committee.

But, he warned Duncan to hold firm in deciding who gets the grants, only giving them to states that are really serious about enacting reform.

“When you put $5 billion on the table in Washington, D.C., there’s no shortage of people who will have an interest in that agenda, no matter what it is,” Miller said.

He said the department should go for quality over quantity. “I think it would be better to have fewer entities doing more because they can be the pathway, the beacon [to others],” Miller said. “I’m not sure everybody should be able to participate just because there’s so much money.”

There has been speculation in Washington that, given the sorry condition of most state's finances, the department might give a piece of the Race to the Top Funding to almost everyone. I wonder if that's why Miller worked so hard to make it clear that wasn't Congress' intention in creating the program.

Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., the top Republican on the committee, said there are policies on which the administration and GOP lawmakers agree at the 30,000-foot level - such as that there should be more charter schools. But he pressed the Secretary for specifics on how the federal government can encourage their proliferation.

Duncan said he’d be asking states whether they have charter caps in determining who gets those Race to the Top funds. That could set off debate in state legislatures on whether the grants are worth getting into a fight with charter school detractors.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., asked Duncan about No Child Left Behind Act's reauthorization, which is supposed to ramp up this year. The Ed Sec gave a pretty vague answer on that one.

“We need to get this right,” Mr. Duncan said. “We have a chance to think blue skies.” He said Congress should keep in place the parts of the law that are working, but fix the parts that aren't. "Let’s not tweak around the edges, let’s fix it. I just want to ask all of you to work with me and really do a much better job of making sure that we do the right thing by children.” So... I’m guessing that means the administration is still working on its NCLB renewal game plan.

And there was definitely a lot of mutual admiration between Duncan and Miller, who many folks say are pretty much on the same page when it comes to K-12 policy. Miller praised Duncan’s work in Chicago and called him a “true disruptor” – Miller’s number one qualification for an Education Secretary.

Duncan thanked Miller for being so helpful in his transition to Washington and for being “an absolute champion” for children. “Thank you for your leadership, your heart and passion … for kids in this country,” Duncan said.

No hugging though.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Judy Wurtzel, who was on leave from the Aspen Institute to serve as a consultant to the Education Department, is in line to take a full-time position under Education Secretary Arne Duncan. She would be the deputy assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development.

That's according to an email just sent out by the Aspen Institute. UPDATE: And the education department also confirms.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, the superintendent of the Pomona Unified School District, in California, is being nominated as the new assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, the White House just announced. (UPDATE: Pending Senate confirmation, of course.)

This would make Melendez the top K-12 specialist, in charge of Title I programs and other things No-Child-Left-Behind. She'd be the highest-ranking Hispanic in the department. (UPDATE 2: Reading Alexander Russo's post on Melendez reminded me that Gabrielle Gomez, who is also at the assistant secretary level—for legislative affairs—is also Hispanic.)

Though she's not a big-name superintendent like Washington's Michelle Rhee or New York City's Joel Klein, she's got her own education street creds. She was part of the reform-y Broad Superintendents Academy, in the class of 2006. She worked for 25 years in urban school districts and is known as "Dr. T."

One of her district's high schools, the Village Academy, caught the attention of President Obama after students made a nine-minute, thought-provoking video called "Is Anybody Listening?," which called attention to the economic hardship of local families and students. Obama did listen, and referenced the video and the students in his March 10 education speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. And several days later, he met with the students who made the video.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Colorado Senate lost a big education advocate when Peter Groff, that chamber's president, left for a new job with the U.S. Department of Education.

But never fear, ed reformers.

Taking Groff's seat (but not his leadership role) in the State Senate is Michael Johnston, an education adviser to then-candidate Barack Obama. Johnston is the principal of a Denver-area charter school that got a much-publicized visit from Obama (when he was still a candidate.) UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter below, who pointed out that while Mapleton is a choice school within the school district, it's not a charter school.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After health care, it seems one of the next big things on the Obama agenda is the No Child Left Behind Act.

In an interview about Education Secretary Arne Duncan's cross-country listening tour yesterday, lead spokesman Peter Cunningham told me that the goal is for Duncan and the president to be able to outline their plans in early fall for overhauling federal education policy.

That's if all of the political air doesn't get sucked out of Washington during what's sure to be a contentious and fast-moving debate about health care.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Department of Education is changing its tune on whether state stabilization fund money can—and should—be used to pay for new school construction.

In April, the department issued its first round of guidance on the stabilization fund, declaring that new school construction was, indeed, an allowable use of funds (because of a big loophole in the stimulus legislation.) But yesterday, the department backed off. In a big way. Not only is the department discouraging states and school districts from using stabilization fund money for new construction (renovations and repairs are okay), officials strongly hinted that any state or district that does so will be penalized when it comes time for the department to award Race to the Top money.

So what happened between April 1 and now?

Apparently, Republicans have been squawking about the department's guidance for a while, most recently in a meeting last week on a House bill on the 21st Century High Performing Public Schools Act. During the congressional debate on the stimulus package, school construction was a huge bone of contention for most Republicans and some moderate Democrats, who didn't want a big chunk of stimulus money to go for new construction. So a $14 billion (in the House) and $16 billion (in the Senate) line item for new construction got zeroed out.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has a new teacher quality adviser ... and he's got a foot in both the merit pay and union camps.

Brad Jupp is formerly a senior policy adviser to Denver-schools-superintendent-turned-U.S.-Senator Michael Bennet. In that role, he worked on school and district performance improvement and accountability, teacher effectiveness, and school choice, among other issues.

But, before that, Jupp was a teacher and a union activist with the Denver Classroom Teachers Association for 19 years. He helped develop the Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp), Denver's signature alternative pay program.

At the department, Jupp will work on teacher quality issues in the economic stimulus program and in the No Child Left Behind Act.

"He will be the voice of the Department to teachers across the country, gathering input from teachers on ED policy," said John McGrath, a spokesman for the Department in an email. "Brad will also help the Department advance its goal of supporting teachers and promoting teachers as professionals."

Reading between the lines, I'm guessing he might dispatched to replicate what he did in Denver, namely getting the unions on board for a pay-for-performance plan. But that might be a lot trickier inside the Beltway than in the Mile High City.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At a Brookings Institution event today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan put aside a lot of the rhetoric he's been pushing lately on the "Race to the Top" to focus on those languishing at the bottom.

He seems to want to direct our attention to a less-talked-about pot of money—the $3 billion in Title I funding that's set aside as school improvement grants for the lowest performing schools. Coupled with $1.5 billion in the fiscal 2010 federal budget, that means low-performing schools have available to them almost as much as is in the $5 billion Race to the Top fund, he told the packed crowed.

Duncan wants to target the lowest 1 percent of schools—those schools where student achievement hasn't improved in years—to be eligible for new staff and leadership. In fact, he seems intent on seeing 5,000 of the nation's worst schools closed and reopened within five years.

That may be an ambitious goal. After all, the new Coalition for Student Achievement (made up of leaders from the Broad and Gates foundations, along with other education advocates) declared that a measure of success would be whether 500 schools are closed by 2012.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Obama administration has proposed cutting 12 programs from the Department of Education's budget, for a savings of $550.7 million. By contrast, in his fiscal year 2009 budget, President George W. Bush sought to scrap 47 Education Department programs (such as Even Start, and EdTech state grants) for a potential savings of $3.3 billion. But, as then-President Bush discovered, proposing those cuts and actually getting Congress to go along are two different things.

Let's look at the programs on the chopping block this time around. Notice that the department plans to keep many of the concepts of these programs (like character education) but absorb them into other programs.

Safe and Drug-Free Schools State Grants: According to the department, this program has not demonstrated effectiveness. Money would be better spent for targeted school safety and drug prevention education activities. The Office of Management and Budget, in its performance-based budget rating system, has not quite declared the program ineffective, but instead says that results have not been demonstrated. This means the program either hasn't set goals, or hasn't collected enough data to determine if it's performing. Savings: $294.8 million.

Even Start: This family literacy program is one of the more high-profile cuts, and may face the biggest barriers. The education department points out that three separate national studies find no benefit to the program. OMB rates Even Start ineffective. Savings: $66.5 million.

College Access Challenge Grants: The department wants to eliminate this program, which helps increase the number of underrepresented students in higher education, in favor of its own, much bigger, "better structured", $2.5 billion College Access and Completion Fund. Seems like a name change to me. (The program wasn't evaluated by OMB.) Savings: $66 million.

Mentoring: This program that provides grants to school districts and community-based organizations for mentoring at-risk youth was found to be ineffective, according to a recent evaluation conducted by the Institute for Education Sciences. OMB declared it duplicative of other programs. Savings: $48.5 million.

Civic Education: This program provides non-competitive grants for the We the People civics education course and for exchange programs. The department says it will replace this with a broader, competitive grant program. OMB hasn't evaluated this program. Savings: $33.5 million.

Character Education: Eliminates funding to states and school districts for character education, instead wrapping it into a new initiative that's part of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools national program, not to be confused with the state program that's getting the ax. OMB hasn't evaluated this program. Savings: $11.9 million.

Ready to Teach: Eliminates funding for TV programming that helps improving teaching in core curricular areas. OMB hasn't evaluated this one either. Savings: $10.7 million.

Javits Gifted and Talented: Read more about this over at the On Special Education blog. Savings: $7.5 million.

National Institute for Literacy: The department wants to cut this nearly 20-year-old program for demonstrating "little success" in providing national leadership on literacy issues (its mission). The OMB said this institute overlaps with the duties of other federal agencies. Savings: $6.5 million.

Academies for American History and Civics: The department says this program, which makes "3 or 4 awards" annually to support workshops for teachers, is too small to make any real difference. And apparently too small for OMB to bother evaluating. Savings: $1.9 million.

Close Up Fellowships: Provides funding for low-income students and teachers to visit Washington, D.C. The department says the foundation that runs the fellowship doesn't need taxpayer money because it gets plenty from the private sector. Not evaluated by OMB. Savings: $1.9 million.

Foundations for Learning: The program is too small for its broad mission of helping to promote the emotional, behavioral, and social development of at-risk kids, the department says. Plus, other parts of the budget address these issues. OMB hasn't evaluated this one either. Savings: $1 million.

Total Savings: $550.7 million.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Dianne Piche, the executive director of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, is headed to the department of education as the deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Civil Rights.

She belongs to the more reform-y wing of the Democratic Party, is a friend of the Democrats for Education Reform, and a supporter of the Education Equality Project. According to her official bio, she's represented students in desegregation case in St. Louis and Fort Wayne, Ind. and has also been an advisor to congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.

Piche, an attorney, will be working for Russlynn Ali, who is that office's assistant secretary.

(Photo credit: Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights.)

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan snagged himself an invitation to the White House Correspondents' Association annual black-tie dinner, on May 9.

His date? CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.

While many news organizations and reporters want big name celebrities as their guests—in fact, Jon Bon Jovi, Ben Affleck, John Cusack are on the guest list for Saturday night's shindig—it seems Arne is celebrity enough for Katie! After all, he practically opened for Neko Case, and made Rolling Stone's Top 100 people who are changing America.

(Photo credit: Gaas/AP)

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So it looks like President Obama is going to propose extending the D.C. voucher program, just for the kids currently enrolled, in his fiscal year 2010 budget, to be released tomorrow.

Politically, it's probably a smart move. The administration will avoid stories and commentaries about kids, including a couple of Sasha and Malia's classmates at Sidwell Friends School, getting booted from their desks.

But it should put an interesting twist on the debate over reauthorizing the voucher program. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent Democrat from Connecticut, has said he will hold hearings on whether or not to renew the program, which is set to sunset this year.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Politics K-12 imagines that the communication between the President and former South Carolina education chief Inez Tenenbaum regarding her nomination to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission read something like this:

Dear Inez Tenenbaum,

Thanks so much for serving on my education advisory team during the campaign, and especially for being an early supporter when practically everybody else thought Hillary was going to win.

Sorry I selected Arne to head up the education department, and not you. His jumpshot is dramatically better than yours.

But as a token of my appreciation, you get to make sure that Barbie's hair is flame resistant.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Get to know Arne Duncan a little bit better by checking out these good reads:

In a Jan. 8 ethics letter posted at the ProPublica journalism Web site, you can see Duncan declaring that once he's secretary, he'll give up his unpaid consulting position with the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and other involvement in groups including the Harvard University Board of Overseers, Illinois Center Against Handgun Violence, and the South Side YMCA. (H-T to Russo.)

And in his financial disclosure required when he was nominated for secretary, you'll see that Duncan has socked away plenty of money for his two kids for college.

More recently, in a round-up of his own 100 days in office, Duncan and his staff write mostly about the stimulus package, but also note that he's done at least 68 media interviews since Jan. 21 (which probably doesn't even count his Neko Case appearance!) The report also notes that in addition to eliminating its Paris office and requiring employees to share printers, the department is saving money by reducing travel within the secretary's office and eliminating unnecessary videoconferencing equipment. Also, Duncan reports that he has taken steps to change the department's internal culture, from asking people to call him "Arne" to dining in the building's cafeteria.

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

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

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

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

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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

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

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

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

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

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

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

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

What we wouldn't give for a photo.

UPDATE: Photos courtesy Ed.gov Blog.

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

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

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

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

NSBA says it plans to hold him to that.

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

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

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

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Education Department is at the center of a flurry of activity expected tomorrow.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is scheduled to visit Doswell E. Brooks Elementary School in Capitol Heights, Md., to announce more detailed guidance on the economic stimulus package. Reportedly, the money is supposed to start flowing to states tomorrow as well. The guidance is expected to focus on the data points that states and districts will have to collect to show they're making progress on four assurances that are spelled out in the stimulus as a condition of receiving the nearly $40 billion state stabilization fund money.

And, the department is expected to announce changes to the Title I program, specifically to accountability provisions under the No Child Left Behind Act. We're hearing from education advocates that these Title I changes will hit on four main topics:

* The department wants to change the regulations to allow districts that are in need of improvement under NCLB to be able to provide their own tutoring services. (Even if they’re allowed to tutor, districts still have to permit outside providers to solicit students – they can’t just bar them.) That's now just a pilot program that several districts, including Chicago Public Schools (Arne Duncan's old district), are participating in.

* School districts will be able to get a waiver from the requirement that they notify parents 15 days ahead of time that their children are eligible for tutoring services under NCLB if states are late in getting test scores to districts.

* States will not have to update their accountability workbooks this year to justify their "n-size" or "confidence intervals" per the time frame outlined in the regulations that ex-Secretary Margaret Spellings ushered in last year. These are very wonky, but important pieces of information that states use to determine if districts and schools are making adequate yearly progress under the law.

* The department wants to continue to work with individual states to re-examine how districts' graduation rates are determined.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in a school system dominated by mayoral control.

He's said he loses sleep at night over Detroit Public Schools.

And he's weighed in on New York City's governance structure, declaring that the city's public schools are best left in the mayor's hands.

Now, as if the education secretary doesn't have enough going on, he's wading even further—and more dramatically—into the thorny issue of local control and school governance by declaring that more big-city mayors need to take over school districts. And if the numbers don't rise, he said according to Libby Quaid's Associated Press story, he "will have failed as secretary."

UPDATED: Read Libby's latest, in-depth coverage of Duncan's statements and the reaction. This includes Duncan's expanded pledge to actually go to cities and lobby on behalf of mayoral control.

This is tough talk from a guy who is now the very-publicized face of public education—at least on the federal level. And local and state officials don't usually appreciate comments from federal officials about how to govern local school districts. This is sure to irritate some of Duncan's base of support—like teachers' unions, the Council of Great City Schools, and the school boards association.

In fact, on Saturday, he gives a keynote at the National School Boards Association conference in San Diego. Does he dare to face that crowd and stake his legacy as education secretary on increasing mayoral control?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The National Rifle Association's monthly magazine has deemed Education Secretary Arne Duncan the "most anti-gun" member of President Obama's cabinet.

The America's First Freedom magazine devotes its cover story, a four-page spread called "Education at the Extremez", to Duncan.

The magazine labels Duncan as such because the new education secretary, when he was superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, declared that children and guns don't mix--and even won an award from the anti-gun lobby (which Duncan touts in his official biography.) The article also calls Duncan out for encouraging students to participate in a poetry, art, and essay contest about anti-handgun violence. And the author warns that Duncan, even as education secretary, can have a big influence on federal gun policy.

The article reads:

He can incessantly and hysterically use his bully pulpit to promote repressive gun control as an absolute necessity "for the children." ... What he has done to support the gun-ban movement in Illinois he can now do on a vastly larger scale. Moreover, the Department of Education publishes a vast amount of regulations and policy guidelines that affect public schools through the nation. There is every reason to be concerned that Duncan will turn the Department of Education into a tool to promote a gun-ban agenda in America's public schools...

Although Duncan is sure to take a lot of heat for big decisions he makes as education secretary, keeping guns out of schools probably won't be one of them.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a wide-ranging interview with EdWeek reporters and editors on Tuesday, said his office is working on a way to get stimulus money to states where the governors don't want it. (Think Alaska and South Carolina.)

Basically, he told us he'd find people in those states who do "care" about kids' education, and find a way to work with them. "We are absolutely working with folks in those states who care passionately about their children's education."

And, he added, "We are looking to be creative and work with people who have a vision."

So, what will the Department do?

"Stay tuned," he said, without elaborating.

Watch the exchange here:

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In a conference call with reporters today—in which there really was no news to report—Education Secretary Arne Duncan said his office will issue more guidance on the stimulus package either Monday or Tuesday of next week.

You can expect this guidance (which will be the second round) to more clearly spell out how the department wants states to distribute stabilization fund dollars to local districts. This has been the subject of debate in a lot of states, and is also the topic for a story I'm working on for our next issue of EdWeek.

Separately, the Department says changes to Title I regulations will be out on Tuesday. These regs, which then-Secretary Margaret Spellings issued on her way out, deal with everything from how states define graduation rates to how states should ensure access to tutoring and choice for students under No Child Left Behind.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made Rolling Stone's list of the 100 People Who Are Changing America.

He rang in at No. 98, edging out country pop star Taylor Swift, who was No. 100.

Who beat Duncan? Cleveland Cavaliers' star LeBron James at No. 52. (Duncan, a basketball player himself, is probably okay with this.) Comedian Will Ferrell came in at No. 38. The new energy secretary is apparently the "change-iest" in Obama's cabinet—Steven Chu came it at 24.

And No. 1?

Barack Obama, of course.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan met yesterday with kids and teachers from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to talk about the importance of anti-bullying efforts.

Duncan asked GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard and the delegation for data on a number of possible interventions to curb bullying.

The group gave Duncan high marks for his sensitivity and openness.

“Secretary Duncan showed great compassion for their experiences, respect for their perseverance and dedication to identifying effective responses to school climate issues," Byard said. "I am confident that we will see growing engagement with these issues at the Department of Education and truly positive change.”

Organizations like GLSEN still sometimes run into trouble gaining acceptance from local schools and communities, so meeting with the Secretary of Education is a big step. Duncan is the first Education Secretary to meet with the group, a spokesman told me.

I wonder what Buster the Bunny would have to say about all this....

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When you've got control over $100 billion, and 50 states to deal with, you're bound to get lots of questions and complaints about the money. Letters from governors and other policymakers about the stimulus package have already started flowing into Education Secretary Arne Duncan's mailbox.

What follows is the Politics K-12 oversimplified translation for a sampling of these official letters:

* Dear Arne: We don't have time to wait for official forms and guidance! Nobody's gambling in our casinos and we are about out of money! Sincerely, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, in a March 18 letter requesting a waiver from one of the stimulus law's requirements.

* Dear Arne: Pick me! Pick me! We've got merit pay in Minnesota already, so make it easy on yourself and just give us your $4.35 billion in incentive funds. Sincerely, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in a March 13 letter urging the secretary to look at his state's Q Comp model for teacher compensation.

* Dear Arne: Gov. Don Carcieri isn't playing fair with stimulus money! Make him share. Sincerely, Providence, R.I. mayor David N. Cicilline, in a March 11 letter complaining that the governor's funding formula unjustly takes away money from his city's schools.

And for good measure, let's include South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's letter to President Obama, asking a second time for flexibility in using stimulus money, this time to pay off school construction debt:

*Dear Barack: Do you remember what happened last time South Carolina didn't get its way? Sincerely, Mark, in a March 17 letter.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It appears that another official with strong ties to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is headed for a key post at the education department.

Flypaper reports that Jim Shelton, a program director with the foundation, will be leading innovation efforts with the education department.

Certainly, the Gates Foundation has a very broad reach, so it would be difficult to staff an office with powerful people in the ed policy world without picking those who are involved with the foundation. But it's worth pointing out the Gates connections since the foundation doles out a significant amount of money to influential organizations that are helping shape education reform. One of the foundation's key pillars now, for instance, is pushing high, common academic standards—which mirrors a priority of the Obama administration and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

So, in addition to Shelton, there's Carmel Martin, the pick for assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development. She had just gotten hired at the Gates Foundation when she was lured away to the education department.

And Education Secretary Arne Duncan's new senior counselor, Margot Rogers, was the deputy director of education programs at the Gates Foundation. In this 2006 Catalyst Chicago magazine article, Rogers praises the guy who is now her boss: “We really see Arne as one of a few leaders in the country who is really thoughtful and groundbreaking in making sure students are prepared for college, work and life.” Gates had just awarded Chicago Public Schools, where Arne Duncan was then the superintendent, a four-year $21 million grant, according to the article.

Are we missing any education department officials with strong Gates connections?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Robinson, whose name many folks will recognize from President Barack Obama's congressional office, and the presidential campaign, has officially joined the U.S. Department of Education as a senior adviser.

Robinson will be focusing on science, math, engineering, and technology issues.

My colleague, Sean Cavanagh, has much more over at Curriculum Matters.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Smith, a top adviser to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, made some eyebrow-raising statements about common standards today at an event at the Library of Congress, which my colleague Mary Ann Zehr writes about here.

First, he says he's "somewhat skeptical" of the value of common standards—which have been a cornerstone of the education proposals and policies of the Obama administration and Duncan.

And then, Smith counts among the "weak" arguments in favor of common standards the idea that the nation needs them because, as matters stand now, all 50 states set different proficiency levels. The argument is weak, he said, because the proficiency levels can be standardized, according to Zehr's blog item.

However, Obama said in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: "Let’s challenge our states to adopt world-class standards that will bring our curriculums into the 21st century. Today’s system of fifty different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming – and getting the same grade."

And Duncan said in a C-SPAN interview: "We’re looking for states that will commit to common, very high, common standard...in too many states, we have 50 different bars, 50 different goalposts."

It's worth nothing that Smith also said he could envision clusters of states that go in together to develop a common academic standard -- which is similar to what Duncan has said.

Smith added that there are some strong arguments for setting common standards, one of them being that they would foster a national curriculum. Now that's something that many people—including some of those who support common standards—are especially wary of.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Catherine Gewertz:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is reviewing the package of regulations that his predecessor, Margaret Spellings, announced as she headed out of office last fall. In an interview in his office last Friday, Duncan said he expects to issue a decision at the end of this month on whether to make any changes to the regulations that were issued Oct. 28. You might recall that those were the ones that dealt extensively with high school graduation rates.

Among other things, the regs require states to calculate and report, for NCLB purposes, a uniform, four-year-cohort graduation rate. They also allow states to apply for permission to use "extended-year" rates that give schools at least some credit for students who take more than four years to graduate. The regs deal with lots of other stuff, too--from minimum AYP subgroup size to inclusion of NAEP scores on school report cards--and Duncan did not specify which parts his review is focusing on.

Special Assistant Ann Whalen said the department was taking a closer look at the public comments submitted to the proposed regulations, talking with a few more groups for ideas, and would have a decision by the end of the month after an internal review. "A couple weeks, so stay tuned," Duncan said.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a two-hour hearing today before the House Budget Committee, members of Congress peppered education secretary Arne Duncan with questions seeking more details about President Obama's fiscal 2010 education spending plans. That's something a lot of people, from advocacy groups to media, have been clamoring for.

But Congress couldn't get any answers, either.

Duncan wouldn't budge on how much more money will be allotted to Title I or special education, or whether there will be funding for the Washington, D.C. voucher program in the president's budget. (Duncan did, however, echo the president's sentiments that current voucher students shouldn't have their schooling disrupted.) Read his prepared testimony here.

He did, however, use his first appearance at a congressional hearing to explain his overall approach to changes he will seek during No Child Left Behind reauthorization. He said that NCLB got what's "loose" and "tight" backwards...that the law is very loose on the education goals but very tight on how schools should get there. He wants to flip that, he said, and be very clear that schools and districts and states need college-ready, internationally benchmarked academic standards.

Republicans used the hearing as an opportunity to grill him on the D.C. voucher program (he said vouchers aren't a long-term solution but then talked about not disrupting current kids' educations), federal versus local control of the school curriculum (Duncan says he's more a believer of local curriculum decisions now than he even was in Chicago), and why a new $2.5 billion program to support innovative state efforts to help low-income students complete college is a mandatory and not discretionary program (because the ed department wants a stable funding source.)

And, in what has to be one of Duncan's least verbose answers to a question, he said that the answer to getting ineffective teachers out of the classrooms is: "You remove them."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held a conference call with reporters today to expand on President Barack Obama's major education speech, but the secretary didn't offer any surprising new developments.

As Michele said yesterday, reporting from the Council of Chief State School Officers annual meeting, it sounds like the Department really wants states to develop more uniform academic standards and will be keeping that in mind as federal officials craft the Race to the Top grant program, which will dole out at least $4.35 billion in grants to improve student achievement.

"We want those states to work together," Duncan said. "Having a set of states do their thing in isolation does not make sense."

And, yesterday I mentioned that there seemed to be some confusion on just how those incentive pay programs Obama talked up in his speech would shake out. Duncan offered some clarification in today's conference call, but there are still plenty of potential questions.

Duncan said he thought that student achievement, as demonstrated by test scores, were "a piece we should look for" in crafting alternative pay systems, but not the only thing. And he stressed that it's "really important to get teacher input."

He used the line NEA president Dennis Van Roekel praised yesterday, "the idea of doing stuff with people rather than to them is really important." But of course, NEA, at least, hasn't been a fan of tying pay to test scores. So we'll see whether Duncan can achieve some sort of happy medium with teachers unions.

Stephanie Banchero, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Duncan's hometown paper, asked a great question in the conference call about whether the administration had considered research on charters and merit pay before pushing those policies. (Research has been a big Obama administration theme). While she said there's plenty of research behind expanding pre-K programs, another key piece of the plan, the research on charters and merit pay "is a little murkier."

Duncan pretty much ducked that one, and instead descended into a long explanation of why he and Obama want to expand charters, but would close those that aren't performing well.

"I think there’s big variation," he said. "And what we want to do is scale up what works.... No one is arguing that charter schools are the answer. What we want to look at are those operators, those players, that have a demonstrated ability to dramatically improve student achievement."

It was a good answer on a charter question... but that's not exactly what Stephanie asked.So I'm still wondering what role research will play here. (And do all you alert ed-researchers and wonks out there think that the research on charters and incentive pay is somewhat murky? Hit up the comments section of this blog.)

Finally, some reporters from Florida asked whether their state would be getting a waiver from the maintenance of effort provisions in the stimulus. Duncan reiterated the Department's claim that it will be looking at how much education was cut in proportion to other programs and services when deciding who gets waivers. And he said the Department would move expeditiously in Florida's case. (Here at Politics K-12, we think we've already answered their question).

UPDATE: For those of you wondering just when you'll get which pieces of the stimulus money, check out this handy chart from the Department of Education.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Michele is out covering the Council on Chief State School Officers meeting today, which featured a visit from President Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and some top Education Department officials.

There's lots of buzz about Obama's speech this morning, the Department's guidance on the economic stimulus package, and the stimulus generally.

At least one state chief, Jim Rex, in South Carolina, is worried about the backlash of some GOP govs toward the stimulus funds. Rex said that if South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford doesn't accept the stimulus money, it could mean that the state would be ineligible for Duncan's "Race to the Top" funds, for which both the governor and state chief must apply.

"The governor is likely not going to be very cooperative," Mr. Rex told chiefs and Duncan. Later Rex said in an interview with Michele that he would be talking to the governor in the next couple of days to convince him South Carolina needs access to the race to the top funds.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," Rex said.

State chiefs are also getting antsy about the accountability provisions on the stimulus funding, which specify that states must keep careful, detailed records on spending.

Iowa chief Judy Jeffrey talked about the "fear factor."

"We always want to make sure we have clarity at the front end so at the back end when we are audited we have really prepared ourselves," she said.

Education Department advisers said they will be working to pull lessons learned from the Department's current Inspector General, and from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's experiences with disaster relief.

And Arkansas chief Ken James said the General Accountability Office has notified 16 states that they're going to be going in and auditing them ASAP. (No word on which ones, though).

There was also considerable discussion of more uniform, rigorous standards--a major theme of President Obama's speech today, his first major policy speech on education.

"The idea of 50 different benchmarks is not the way for us to move forward," said Jon Schnur, who is serving as a consultant to the Obama administration. He called common standards a "national priority." But whether it's one set of standards, or a consortia of two or three, either way is beneficial, he said.

And Duncan made it sound like the Department is going to use the "Race to the Top" funding to prod states to develop more uniform standards.

"I don't want 12 great proposals from 12 great states," Duncan said. "This doesn't change the national conversation."

It also sounds like Duncan is worried about how the $10 billion in Title I money provided under the stimulus will be spent. "I worry about putting good money after bad," he said.

Outgoing New York state commissioner Rick Mills said that it might be easier for 50 states to agree on a common set of standards now that the President and the Secretary of Education have put momentum behind the idea.

"If we get 25, or 20, or 15 states, people are going to see that the train is moving and say, 'Let's get on,' " he said.

Schnur also filled the group in on some details of the 150-district teacher pay plan outlined in Obama's speech. Schnur said it will be targeted to high-needs school systems. He also said there will be "real commitment to early reading" in Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget. (Could that be something to replace Reading First?)

And Schnur hinted that there could be changes coming to teacher quality provisions that could to offer more "transparency" to language in the stimulus that calls for highly effective teachers to be better distributed.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Given that there are gaping holes in Education Secretary Arne Duncan's leadership team, he's been asked repeatedly about who is making important decisions for the department, especially since it's now been handed $115 billion in stimulus aid to oversee.

In fact, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, wants to know a lot more about how the department is going to oversee all of this stimulus money. He’s asked for a series of briefings – and answers – from the department about everything from the criteria for stimulus waivers to when the money will start flowing. His specific demands, and questions, are outlined in this letter. Although he’s in the minority, it’s worth noting that McKeon can complicate the department’s life, by, for example, requesting a lot of GAO investigations.

Duncan has pointed out that he has a team of career staff members and consultants helping him figure all of this out.

So Politics K-12 asked the education department just who these consultants are. They're listed below. This list will also give you a good idea of who may be headed for key, permanent posts in Duncan's office.

Barbara Bowman: She's a paid, intermittent consultant, working less than half-time. A co-founder of the Erickson Institute, the Chicago-based graduate school for child development, she's providing advice on early childhood initiatives. UPDATE: One of my eagle-eye colleagues pointed out that Bowman is the mother of close Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Anthony Miller: A paid, full-time consultant, according to the education department, though he's apparently acting as the department's chief operating officer and playing a key role in the stimulus package. He's providing advice on general organizational issues. He used to work for McKinsey and Co. and more recently worked for a private equity firm.

Jonathan Schnur: A full-time consultant on leave from New Leaders for New Schools. He's providing advice on organizational issues and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Interestingly, the department isn't paying him to do this.

Robert Shireman: A paid, full-time consultant who is providing advice on student financial assistance. He's been the go-to guy for questions about the bombshell student aid ideas in the President's fiscal 2010 budget. He's on leave from the Institute on College Access and Success, which he founded.

Judy Winston: A paid, intermittent consultant who is working less than half-time. A former education department general counsel under President Clinton, she oversaw President Obama's education transition team and now provides advice on program and management policy and organizational structure.

Judy Wurtzel: A paid, full-time consultant. According to the department, she's providing advice on the stimulus package and "general mission critical" functions. She works on education issues for the Aspen Institute and is the former executive director of the Learning First Alliance.

In addition, two more key staffers worth mentioning include:

Charlie Rose, who has been nominated as the department's general counsel. He's a Chicago-based lawyer and bigwig when it comes to collective bargaining negotiations.

And Joseph Conaty of the department participated in a webinar last week on the stimulus, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and Teachscape, in which he was identified as the acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Erik Robelen:

His office may be smaller, but Marshall (Mike) S. Smith, a veteran education official from the Clinton era, is back at 400 Maryland Ave. in downtown Washington. As of last month, Smith has returned to the Education Department's headquarters as a senior adviser to Secretary Arne Duncan.

“I’m working with a team on the implementation of the stimulus package, which is a big part of my time, and other duties as requested by the secretary,” said Smith, who served as both the undersecretary and acting deputy secretary at the federal agency for seven years during the Clinton administration.

Smith, 71, said he expects to stay in his new position, which does not require congressional approval, for a year or two.

Many key slots at the Education Department remain unfilled, including the deputy secretary position.

And with a federal stimulus package to contend with, which includes some $115 billion in aid to public education, the Education Department under President Obama has had to hit the ground running.

“The mix of things we have to deal with now is far greater than in the first days of the Clinton era,” Smith said.

The former Education Department official joins an administration already loaded with plenty of former Clintonites.

“It’s just the natural way of the world,” he said. “These are people who know the workings of government.”

In his case, Secretary Duncan asked him to come on board, Smith said.“That always helps in making decisions.”

Since stepping down from the department in 2000, Smith has spent most of his time as the education program director (and more recently a senior adviser) at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, based in Menlo Park, Calif. His official last day at the foundation was Jan. 21.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Politics K-12's own Michele McNeil will be on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program this weekend interviewing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, along with the Associated Press' Libby Quaid. (Quaid along with Edweek's Steve Sawchuk and Dakarai Aarons, landed a coveted spot on Alexander Russo's Hot For Education list).

Michele asked Duncan when the department would be sending out the stimulus checks to states and school districts (probably the number one question on school officials' minds). Duncan said districts would be receiving their money and guidance as soon as possible.

And Michele pressed him on whether the Department could enforce the teacher effectiveness and distribution requirements in No Child Left Behind law and that are a condition of states receiving stimulus funding. He said it wasn't an issue of enforceability....does that mean no?

Secretary Duncan told Michele and Libby that he'll be trying to come up with a new name for the No Child Left Behind Act. (He should look here for suggestions).

You can check out the program on Sunday at 6 p.m.

UPDATED: Check out Duncan's very on-message answers here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So President Obama caused a bit of a stir when he picked a charter school for his first visit to a public school.

Now, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will use his first "Education News" TV show appearance tonight from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. to address the topic: "Charter Schools: School Reform that Works." You can watch it at very odd hours on TV on channels like The Learning Channel, or on public broadcasting stations. It looks like it's also available via webcast. The show is a longstanding Education Department initiative to communicate education information to parents. A registration is required.

(By the way, I found out about this from an ed department "tweet." This is not your father's education department, because these folks are Twittering.)

The description of the show talks about how Obama and Duncan want to embrace and foster innovation, and singles out "progressive" districts in Miami, Milwaukee (vouchers!), Tampa, and Chicago.

"Charter schools, in particular, are increasingly appealing to parents, and for good reason," the description of the upcoming broadcast says.

Specifically, the show's description indicates that Duncan and other guests will talk about the latest tools and options for parents, how the charter school and school choice movements have impacted academic achievement, and what a high-performing charter school looks like.

UPDATED: Politics K-12's own Alyson Klein was holding court of her own on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning—described as a "wonderful lady" by one caller, she explained the stimulus package and fielded numerous questions from callers.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If education secretary Arne Duncan is a T-Mobile user, he let us know who in the lobbying world belongs in his "Fave 5".

And they are...

Anne Bryant, the executive director of the National School Boards Association;
Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools;
Mary Kusler, assistant director for advocacy and policy for the American Association of School Administrators;
Gene Wilhoit, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers; and,
Molly Broad, the president of the American Council on Education.

Duncan singled out this lobbying quintet out in a conference call to about 500 people from education organizations on Wednesday, when he spent a few minutes updating them on the status of the stimulus package. He thanked them by name for all of their hard work as the stimulus package was being developed.

Wilhoit and Bryant, incidentally, joined Duncan during his tour earlier this week of Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., where he tried to drum up support for school construction funding in the stimulus package.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The education department announced today that President Obama has nominated Education Trust vice president Russlynn Ali as the new assistant secretary for civil rights.

The EdTrust, of course, is very pro-accountability and championed NCLB as it was being written. And, Ali has done a lot of work on teacher quality and compensation issues. She's also the executive director of the group's West Coast arm, Education Trust-West.

Of course, we're still waiting for the official word on who will be Duncan's deputy secretary.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For those wondering which regulations new education secretary Arne Duncan might have his eye one, make sure the new graduation rate rules are on your list.

One of the last things former education secretary Margaret Spellings did was usher through new regulations establishing a uniform way of calculating graduation rates across states, similar to what the governors voluntarily agreed to do in 2005.

At issue is what defines a high school graduate, at least for accountability and statistical purposes. Should a high school get credit just for students who get a diploma within four years? What about those who take five or six years to finish high school? The new rules call for high schools to count only four-year graduates in their calculations, although the education department can consider districts' plans to count other graduates, too.

But some organizations, like the school boards, think the four-year standard is too rigid.

Duncan was receptive to revising that rigid standard, said Anne Bryant, the executive director of the National School Boards Association, who stepped away from her association's annual federal relations conference in Washington yesterday to attend an hour-long meeting with Duncan and other folks from education organizations.

Though the topic of the meeting was the economic stimulus package, other topics came up--especially as Duncan outlined his five top priorities as ed sec: improving early childhood education, developing better assessments, reducing the dropout rate, improving human capital, and a broad priority of expanding on "what's working."

Bryant said that in the context of the dropout discussion, she raised the new grad rate regs. She said that he showed a lot of interest in revisiting those regulations and told the group that his experience in Chicago Public Schools showed that some students will take longer than four years to get a diploma.

"He got it," she said.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Stephen Sawchuk

Education Secretary Arne Duncan made his first big staffing announcement late Friday (interesting timing). Carmel Martin will become the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, a position most recently held by William Evers.

Martin has an extensive background in education policy but she was most recently chief education adviser to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate education committee.

It's hard to tell where she stands on policy priorities. In 2007, Martin was fairly tight-lipped during the failed attempt to reauthorize the NCLB law, and it was never clear where Kennedy was headed on debates about "multiple measures" for accountability, for instance, or performance pay for teachers.

Since Duncan, Obama, and Obama adviser Linda Darling-Hammond have been reluctant to engage in the "Broader, Bolder" v. "Education Equity Project" debate, it seems like Martin will fit right in.

Peter Cunningham, a communications consultant who worked for Duncan and the Chicago Public Schools, was announced as assistant secretary for communications and outreach. Alexander Russo predicted this was coming not long ago over at This Week in Education.

Darling-Hammond remains a wild card, but perhaps that will change next week. See some thoughts on this here at Teacher Beat (scroll to the bottom of the post.)

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Unlike Barack Obama, who really had no choice but to move his family to 1600 N. Pennsylvania in the District of Columbia, new ed sec Arne Duncan can move wherever he wants in the area. And since he has two school-age kids, Duncan is probably like a lot of parents who consider the quality of public schools as key in house-hunting.

So while it's not surprising that Obama would choose private schools over the D.C. public schools for his kids, it's also not surprising that Duncan—who is now a prominent, national leader for America's public schools —is choosing public schools for his own children. In his interview with Alyson today, he told her he will send his kids to public school and was zeroing in on the northern Virginia area, which is known for its very good public schools.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Arne Duncan, the brand-new Secretary of Education, said today that he would consider using $15 billion in proposed federal incentive grants to reward states for setting more "rigorous" standards. The money would be available to him under a broad $819 billion stimulus package that passed the House, with no GOP support, last night.

"There's a series of things we're looking for," in allocating those funds, Duncan told me, in the first of a round of one-on-one interviews he gave to reporters. He indicated that the Department would want states that receive the funds to have a comprehensive data system, strong assessments, and rigorous standards. "With this fund, we really have a chance to drive dramatic changes, to take to scale what works, invest in what works."

Given his emphasis on standards, I asked him whether he might use the fund to push for national or more uniform, rigorous standards. He left the door open for that. "Sure, absolutely," he told me (though without committing himself.) "Lots of folks are already thinking this way. We want to reward rigor and challenge the status quo."

—Christopher Powers/Education Week

I asked him about some of the reform-oriented programs in the stimulus package. He wasn't specific about which items the administration had pushed for until I brought up the $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund in one version of the bill, which doles out grants to districts for alternative pay programs, the $25 million for charter school facilities, and the $250 million state data systems.

"That stuff's hugely important to me,"Duncan said.

Those provisions were included in the House version of the stimulus package, but not in the Senate measure, to the consternation of some folks in Edu-Think-Tank Land.

Duncan was largely viewed as a compromise candidate who could bring together two disparate groups in the Democratic party. Some say there is one faction led by the unions and other education organizations, and another led by civil rights groups and some urban superintendents. (You can read more about the perceived division here.)

"The press likes controversy, pitting folks against each other," Duncan said. "We have to dramatically increase our [academic] expectations" he said, but he also talked about addressing children's social needs as a part of a boosting achievement. "If they're hungry we need to feed them, if they don't have clothes you need to give them clothes. ...We need to absolutely push as hard as we can on both of these agendas. These are not in competition with each other. They are absolutely complementary."

I also asked him whether he might be interested in revisiting the broad new Title I regulations put in place by Secretary Margaret Spellings during her last year on the job. He said he wasn't ready to talk about that yet.

And, unfortunately, I wasn't able to get him to spill the names of any folks who might be coming into the Department in sub-cabinet positions, such as Deputy Secretary of Education. He said he was looking for "folks who are absolute innovators, who are visionaries." He said the personnel "picture would get a whole lot clearer over the next two weeks." So stay tuned on that, I guess.

Before our interview, Mr. Duncan told me he is considering sending his children to a public school in Northern Virginia. Greg Toppo, over at USA Today, has more.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We don't know yet who is going to serve in the U.S. Department of Education under brand-new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, but we do know the names of some "acting" staff, thanks to an email sent out by Fritz Edelstein, formerly a senior adviser at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

According to Edelstein, Duncan held a meeting this morning with:

Matt Yale, who will be Deputy Chief of staff and worked with him in Chicago
Peter Cunningham who has worked 6 years with him in Chicago and will be Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach
Margot Rogers, who will be the Senior Counselor to the Secretary; she has worked in DC for 17 years
Melanie Munzer, who will be the White House liaison responsible for arranging political appointments
Tony Miller, who will be Chief Operating Officer; he has worked at McKinsey consulting and most recently for a private equity firm in Los Angeles
Ann Whalen. who will be his Special Assistant as she was in Chicago
Jonathan Schnur. who has been working on the stimulus legislation; he now heads the New Leaders for New Schools; he worked under Secretary Riley and also at the White House under President Clinton

There's been a lot of speculation that Schnur, who has been accompanying Duncan to events around town, may be tapped for chief-of-staff. This list certainly gives credence to those rumors.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Senate confirmed former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education yesterday. The confirmation isn't a surprise, given the warm reception Duncan got from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. But, now that Duncan is officially in place, we may start hearing about some of the other positions in the Department of Education.

In the meantime, this afternoon the House Appropriations Committee is going to consider the $825 billion stimulus package, which would provide more than $120 billion for education programs. Check back at edweek.org, and this blog for the latest.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Arne Duncan, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Education, got flowers and chocolates from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee at his confirmation hearing this morning.

Well, okay, not really...but it wouldn't have surprised me.

Every senator, from liberal Democrat Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland to Sen. Tom Coburn, a small government conservative, went out of their way to say that Duncan was extremely qualified and would be a great Secretary of Education. In the hearing, they praised everything from Duncan's record in Chicago to his jump shot to his children's good behavior.

And Duncan lived up to his reputation as a compromise nominee. It seems he's mastered President-elect Obama's approach of answering questions on education policy without going too far into the weeds or tipping his hand in one direction or the other.

He endorsed merit pay, but said it needs to be done in collaboration with unions. He said he'd re-examine teacher quality and student assessment, but that he supports accountability and standards and has high expectations for all students.

The only thing he said that may have angered the NEA or the AFT is that he supports the Teacher Incentive Fund, which doles out grants to districts to create alternative pay programs. He said it was one of Secretary Spellings' greatest achievements. NEA thinks the program needs to be tweaked so that teachers and unions have more input into the plans (they did in Chicago, under Duncan).

Duncan also praised "education entrepeneurs" such as Wendy Kopp of Teach for America and Jon Schnur of New Leaders for New Schools and said that the Department needs to be willing to "challenge the status quo" if it isn't working. Some might say that's more in line with some civil rights groups and urban school superintendents than with organizations for practioners.

But you had to read between the lines to catch that...and it's tough to say yet how it will translate into policy or personnel.

Either way it looks like there's very little chance that Duncan won't sail through the confirmation process.

You can view the fireworks-free hearing here.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

He'll have to share the spotlight, though, with Hillary Clinton, whose confirmation hearing as Secretary of State is the same day.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Edweek.org is hosting an online chat today about Arne Duncan's selection as Obama's education secretary. Yours truly is moderating, and as our guests, we have the esteemed Ricks: Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and Rick Kahlenberg, an author and a senior fellow at Education Sector.

The chat is from 11 a.m. to noon Eastern Standard Time, and all you need is your computer to follow along. To submit questions, go here, or to follow along during the chat, visit this page. There will also be a transcript available shortly after.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My colleague, Catherine Gewertz, covers Chicago Public Schools as part of EdWeek's urban beat, and has been talking to folks all day about Arne Duncan's selection as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of education, and what it means for federal education policy. There's a bigger EdWeek story that's forthcoming. What follows is a sampling of reaction she's hearing.

Michael Klonsky, a longtime Chicago activist and the director of the Small Schools Workshop, praised Mr. Duncan's support of small schools in the city. But he also said he has been concerned that as part of the work of growing the small-school concept there, Mr. Duncan has helped fuel a trend toward using private companies to manage schools. He said he has also been troubled that Mr. Duncan and Mayor Richard M. Daley have eliminated local school councils at some schools, making it harder for parents and the public to influence and access the goings-on at their schools.

"I am hopeful that once he is out from under the thumb of Mayor Daley and the political machine here, and is working with Obama's people, who I like and respect, Duncan can be liberated to do the things that I know are in his heart as a democratic educator," said Klonsky, who has helped incubate small schools in Chicago and elsewhere. "He can be a great spokesman for urban public education, even more now on a national scene where he's not chained to the ideology of the political machine here. I don't think Arne is an ideologue. He's a pragmatist at heart and a democrat."

Julie Woestehoff, the executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, said that Mr. Duncan's temperament lends itself to his new position. But she also cautioned people to look at Chicago's success from all angles. "So much of what is happening in Chicago is around test prep," she said. "Every teacher in Chicago will say they feel their entire job is test prep. The reality has been that [school] closures have been chaotic and disruptive and have harmed children. And the replacement schools have really not proven themselves to be much different from the schools they replaced. We don't think the result is worth the uproar."

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union has released its statement: “Since becoming CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan has grown in his awareness of the problems facing America’s public education system, especially the conditions existing in large urban settings such as Chicago. With this background, he is well positioned to assume a national role in addressing the many issues that affect the day-to-day teaching of our nation’s school children."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a few minutes ago, President-elect Obama officially tapped Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan as the next education secretary.

In listening to his remarks, it's clear that Obama wants a no-excuses leader who isn't afraid to make tough choices to increase student achievement. Obama, as part of his announcement today in Chicago, touted Duncan's on-the-ground experience making those tough decisions:

When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn’t blink. He’s not beholden to any one ideology – and he doesn’t hesitate for one minute to do what needs to be done. He’s worked tirelessly to improve teacher quality, increasing the number of master teachers who’ve completed a rigorous national certification process from 11 to just shy of 1,200, and rewarding school leaders and teachers for gains in student achievement. He’s championed good charter schools – even when it was controversial. He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs – even when it was unpopular.

Clearly, Duncan is widely respected for his reform ideas and strategy at the district level. But the education secretary job is very different. He'll have to figure out how to bring his ideas to scale, working as part of an incredible bureaucracy that, in the end, is only responsible for about 9 percent of K-12 education funding.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another education reformer, who has graced magazine covers, is on NPR's Diane Rehm show now. Listen to the conversation with Washington D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee here.

Here's what Rhee had to say when Rehm asked her about the choice of Arne Duncan as education secretary:

One of the biggest advantages to a Mr. Duncan being the new secretary is the fact that he has been an urban superintendent for many years now...so he understands firsthand the challenges we face in running school districts, some of the tweaks that need to be made with No Child Left Behind, etcetera. So from that vantage point, because he has that experience coming in, he is going to run that department in a way that will have, you know, good positive ramifications on the ground level, at the school level.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Chicago-area media, bloggers, and educators may know Arne Duncan best, so I've summed up their coverage below:

The Chicago Tribune notes that Obama didn't let the Illinois corruption scandal with Gov. Rod Blagojevich get in the way of Duncan's pick. The article describes Duncan as a "renegade" who backed such ideas as boarding schools and a gay-friendly high school. And the writer reminds us that all is not rosy—that a glaring achievement gap still exists.

The Chicago Sun-Times, in a commentary, says Duncan earned his stripes in Chicago. Meanwhile, Sun-Times reporter and blogger Lynn Sweet says Duncan had well-connected boosters within the Obama inner circle.

Chicago's NPR station talks to a former city teachers' union president, who isn't as effusive in her praise as others seem to be.

Catalyst Chicago details Duncan's track record, with a healthy, skeptical eye, especially toward high school reform efforts. Duncan gets high marks for making public a "treasure trove" of student data, but is dinged for not being more transparent on CPS spending.

Phyllis Lockett, President & CEO of The Renaissance Schools Fund, the
strategic partner to the Chicago Public Schools for Renaissance 2010, said in a statement:

Under Arne Duncan's leadership, the Chicago Public Schools district has
pursued an unprecedented effort to open new schools of exceptional
quality in our highest need communities. Arne had the courage to close
schools that were not performing, and has helped to develop a pipeline
of strong education entrepreneurs in Chicago. He is an innovator and
his leadership has encouraged Chicago's business community to invest
significant resources in new schools development.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Arne Duncan talks about his mom's afterschool program, how basketball skills translate to leadership skills, and what his school reform strategy is. The video below is courtesy of Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and was posted Dec. 4, 2008:

Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Even before President-elect Obama makes Arne Duncan's selection as education secretary official, early reaction around the blogsphere is very positive. A sampling:

"Golden era for charter schools"—Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli has five interesting observations about Duncan: that his selection is good for charter and private schools but bad for governors (although I might have to quibble with his assertion that the era of gubernatorial leadership in education is over). Meanwhile, Checker Finn's first observations are that he's a terrific pick.

"Who would replace Arne?"—Wonder folks in Chicago, including Alexander Russo, who also details Duncan's strengths and weaknesses. Among his strengths: improved test scores, great public-speaking ability, and the kind of staying power a lot of other urban sups don't have. Among his weaknesses: Hasn't been a candidate for the Broad Prize and failed to win concessions from the Chicago Teachers Union.

"A relief to Linda Darling-Hammond"—Diane Ravitch notes this at Bridging Differences, referring to the editorial page firestorm that's been raging over LDH, Obama's main education transition point person.

"A fan" of NCLB—So says our own David Hoff.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Arne Duncan, the chief executive of the Chicago school system and a basketball buddy of Barack Obama's, is the president-elect's pick for secretary of education, according to sources.

As Chicago schools CEO, Duncan tapped a panel to craft curriculum-based assessments to guide teaching, bolstered spending on anti-violence prevention measures, and tested out a program allowing teachers to evaluate one another.

Duncan supports the basic framework of the No Child Left Behind Act. In testimony before a congressional committee in 2006, he called on lawmakers to "maintain the law's high expectations and accountability" but to amend the law "to give schools, districts, and states the maximum amount of flexibility possible."

Duncan helped get a federal waiver allowing the Chicago school sytem to offer tutoring services mandated for students in struggling schools under the NCLB law, something it was not otherwise eligible to do because the district as a whole had not made adequate progress under Illinois benchmarks.

Duncan may also help the bridge the divide over education in the Democratic Party. He was the recommended choice for education secretary of Democrats for Education Reform and has won praise from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

We've heard from one source that Arne Duncan, the CEO of Chicago's public schools, will be announced on Tuesday as President-elect Barack Obama's pick for secretary of education.

UPDATE: The New York Times has confirmed this as well.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)