Your education road map to state and federal politics
Michele McNeil covered education and state government in Indiana for a decade before joining Education Week as a state policy reporter in June 2006. Alyson Klein, who reports on federal education policy, joined the staff in February 2006 after nearly two years at Congress Daily.
Education Week launched a convention blitz by sending two teams of reporters to the Democratic and Republican conventions, armed with smartphones, laptops, video, and still cameras, with the goal being to deliver engaging, up-to-the-minute, and useful news . Response from readers was terrific, as gauged by the numerous comments we got.
A sampling of the best reader comments from the convention:
"Parents do have a choice. They elect a school board and can run for that office. Don't slay public education. It is the glue that holds education together." -- Don, John McCain Talks a Good Game on School Choice.
"I find this very amusing that just because she [Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin] was part of the PTA people assume that she understands school policies. It may make her a qualified fundraiser but anyone can sell skittles at a table in the front hall of the school." -- Paul, Delegates Praise Palin's Grace and Grit.
"I am also disappointed that Obama is parroting the mantra of the so-called reformers, 'higher standards and accountability.' I don't know about your state, but I think in my state, the higher standards are there. That's not the problem." -- Diane, Obama: Education is a 'Moral Obligation'.
"I'm a life long Democrat who believes that my party still doesn't understand that we can recruit great teachers to the schools that need them most, but we must, simultaneously, offer the highest quality professional learning for those already teaching." -- Ellin, ‘New’ Voice Speaks About Teachers at Convention.
"If teachers are not to blame for the sorry state of inner city education then maybe it is the urban Democratic mayors and other elected officials who are responsible." -- Rich, Union Tensions at DNC.
For a guy who came late to the game with an education policy plan, Sen. John McCain seemed to talk longer about education than Sen. Barack Obama did during his acceptance speech.
But what really stood out about McCain's speech was that he portrayed school choice as the bedrock of his education plan. But it's really not. McCain's education policy plan is far more complex as it tackles the issues of teacher quality, accountability, and school technology, and although choice does have a role, it's a limited one.
In that regard, McCain's school choice rhetoric is disconnected from his policy proposals.
In his acceptance speech, he said:
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
That's similar to what he said to the NAACP in Cincinnati, when he pledged "school choice for all who want it."
But he hasn't explained how the federal government would operate such school choice programs. What's more, in June, his chief education and adviser, Lisa Graham Keegan, told reporters that McCain doesn't want to use Title I money for private school vouchers.
What McCain's education plan calls for is a continuation of the existing District of Columbia voucher program. And, he says he supports choice within No Child Left Behind (but even there he's vague, and seems to support making the existing parental choices of tutoring and public-school transfers available to parents earlier.) It doesn't explain how to offer school choice for "all who want it."
As I was watching cable TV network coverage last night, at least two commentators held up his school choice rhetoric as an example of how he's telling the GOP what it wants to hear. And one pointed out that McCain's line about "education is the civil rights issue of this century" is a carbon copy of a President Bush line from 2000.
Of course, school choice makes for better speech material than ideas like accountability, data, and technology.
McCain Calls for School Choice and Shakeup of Education Bureaucracy
Sen. John McCain called for a shakeup of "failed school bureaucracies" and greater parental choice in education as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night.
"Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school?" Sen. McCain said at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul., Minn. "We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work."
The crowd gave those lines one of the loudest roars of approval of the nominee's lengthy acceptance speech.
Calling education "the civil rights issue of this century," the Arizona senator said that parents deserve to choose a new school for their children a public school "fails to meet its obligations to students."
"And I intend to give it to them," Sen. McCain said. "Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity."
The Republican nominee portrayed his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, as beholden to the existing school system.
"Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucrats. I want schools to answer to parents and students," Sen. McCain said. "And when I’m president, they will."
Julie Harris, an Arkansas delegate and mother of six children, cheered as Sen. McCain delivered the education segment of his speech.
The Springdale, Ark., resident homeschools three of her children, one attends a private school, and her two teenagers take courses at a local community college instead of their neighborhood high school. They had been homeschooled as well.
"I am all for parental choice," Ms. Harris said after the speech. "We actually have relatively few private schools in Arkansas. I really want to see more charter schools."
"I thought he hit the nail on the head," said Eric Happala, a Minnesota delegate and a business consultant from the town of Dassel. "I liked that he said schools should be accountable to students and parents."
And he praised Sen. McCain's call to expand school choice. "I think that's really going to resonate with the African-American community," Mr. Happala said. "They're often the ones whose children are stuck in failing schools."
Did Palin Cut Special Education Funding in Alaska?
Charges are flying around the Internet that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee who has a four-month-old son with Down syndrome, cut special education funding in her state. But a close look at budget documents by my colleague Christina Samuels shows that Palin actually increased state spending on special education.
Christina writes in On Special Education that these false charges spreading throughout the Web are driven by a misreading of the state's budget documents.
While at the Republican National Convention, Education Week reporters Mark Walsh and Alyson Klein spoke with school administrators, teachers, and parents about their views on Sen. John McCain and the GOP's education platform. Here is a sampling of what they said:
If Sen. John McCain wins the White House, he'll have an ally for his education agenda in Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.
McKeon was very "on message" in an interview with Campaign K-12 yesterday. Much of what he said about the future of the No Child Left Behind Act and school policy mirrored what Lisa Graham Keegan, McCain top education adviser, told me Tuesday about McCain and the Republican agenda.
Like McCain, McKeon supports federal accountability and assessment, but also stressed state's rights and local control, at least rhetorically. When I asked him how he might square those priorities with the federally driven accountability system at the center of the NCLB law, he mentioned a bill he introduced that would give states more flexibility in spending federal education funds—something McCain hasn't mentioned yet. (But it wouldn't surprise me if it became part of his education agenda.)
Like McCain, McKeon wants students in struggling schools to have more immediate access to supplemental services and school choice. He said he tried to get those provisions into a draft NCLB reauthorization bill that he crafted with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
And like McCain (and most Republicans) McKeon spoke enthusiastically about the need for performance pay for teachers.
McKeon also said that McCain and his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, differ on how much of authority the federal government should have over education—something Keegan told me on Tuesday.
"John McCain understands the office of the presidency," McKeon said. "He would not try to become school board president. He would become president of the United States. He would not try to tell us what time we should have recess and what books we should read at what time. When I hear the Democrats talk, it's more the getting into the details and more micro-managing out of Washington."
If McCain is in the White House, McKeon said the reauthorization bill would look "much like it would have been if we hadn't lost the majority" after the 2006 election. If McKeon had kept his job as chairman of the House education committee, he would have included growth models and flexibility for states in measuring the progress of students in special education and English-language learners in any plan to reauthorize the law.
Rep. McKeon complained about the lack of bipartisan cooperation in crafting that draft bill, which was released last August and faced immediate criticism from every corner of edupolicyworld. McKeon said he had a few major points he was trying to get Rep. Miller to sign onto, including on tutoring services. Miller did not "move one iota" on those proposals, he said.
"We just got to the point where we couldn't make any more progress," he said.
McKeon said he isn't sure that the bipartisan coalition that came together to pass the NCLB law in 2001 will stay intact if the Democrats remain in charge of Congress (almost all political experts predict they will). Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairmen of the education panels, weren't able to get a bill passed this Congress because "the unions hamper what they can do," McKeon said.
I reminded McKeon that NCLB faces opposition from some folks in his own party, including Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, a member of the education panel, who has introduced a bill that would permit states to opt-out of NCLB's accountability requirements. McKeon said that he is still unwilling to support that approach.
Hoekstra "wants to take off all the regulations and just give [school districts] the money," McKeon said. But, he said, as long as the federal government is using taxpayers' money to finance public education, it has a right to ask for results.
McKeon acknowledged that President Bush isn't going out with the highest approval ratings, but he said he believed that history will vindicate him—and the NCLB law.
"If an objective person were to go back and really look at" the rise in test scores, they would have to admit the law is working, he said. "The problem is it takes so long to evaluate" its effectiveness, since a student spends 13 years in elementary and secondary school.
He said NCLB has become a punching bag especially for the Democrats because "it was the GOP that did it, and they don't want to give us credit for it," he said.
McKeon wasn't always such a big McCain guy. Back during the primary, he was a huge supporter of Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who, perhaps more than any other candidate in the Republican party, championed NCLB and accountability on the campaign trail.
Sarah Palin cast herself as the PTA and hockey mom with bite on Wednesday night, using her much-anticipated speech before the Republican National Convention to define herself as a Washington outsider who will vigorously attack the Democratic presidential ticket.
"I was just your average hockey mom who signed up for the PTA," the Alaska governor said in accepting the GOP nomination for vice president. "I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my children's public education even better."
The speech was well-received at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
"This was a home run," said Crystal Kennedy, an Alaska delegate and a member of the Anchorage school board. "The country knows she means business."
Phyllis Gorman, a retired teacher and small-business owner from Edmond, Okla., seconded that sentiment.
"I think she spoke from the heart," Gorman, an Oklahoma delegate, said of the Alaska governor. "And she showed us she knows about being tough."
Gorman said she didn't know much about Palin's record on education issues. But on Topic A of the week—the pregnancy of Palin's daughter Bristol—the Oklahoman said the candidate was handling the situation "with grace."
"We would all prefer the daughter to be married or not be pregnant," Gorman said. "But that's life."
Palin’s service on the PTA gives her hands-on experience with school policy, said Cyndi C. Mosteller, a delegate from South Carolina.
“What other presidential candidate do you know that’s been in the education trenches like that?” Mosteller said.
And delegates lauded Palin’s pledge to serve as an advocate for children with special needs.
After acknowledging her infant son Trig, who has Down syndrome, the Alaska governor said, "Children with special needs inspire a special love."
"To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters," Palin said. "I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."
“I would say that her experience gives her insight” that most people don’t have, said Geneva Taylor, a Colorado delegate and a retired banker from Steamboat Springs.” She’s going to make sure that those types of children are taken care of.”
Is English-First the New GOP Lingo for English-Only?
That's what my colleague, Mary Ann Zehr, wants to know over at her Learning the Language blog.
Republicans made subtle, yet meaningful, changes in their party platform on whether English should be the official language of the United States, according to Mary Ann.
Despite Controversies, GOP Delegates Like Palin's Stances
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, right, will seek to define herself tonight as the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
The party's convention here in St. Paul has become defined by Sen. John McCain's surprise choice for a running mate, with her relative inexperience, the revelation of her daughter's pregnancy, and her views on sex education and teaching creationism all providing fodder.
Delegates at the Xcel Energy Center appeared firmly supportive of the Alaska governor.
Jerry Bowen, a Republican delegate and real estate agent from Franklin, Tenn., said he thinks the pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old daughter makes the Alaska governor an excellent spokeswoman for abstinence-only sex education, a policy that Bowen supports.
“I think Gov. Palin is the poster child for that message,” he said. “We can not condemn her daughter for being human and making a mistake.”
When McCain selected Palin, Michelle Steel, a delegate from Los Angeles, said she was “shocked, because I didn’t know who she was.”
But now she is excited by the Alaskan—particularly by the prospect of having a woman on the ticket.
Ms. Steel, who serves on the state Board of Equalization in California, said she isn’t troubled by Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy.
“You don’t know what [teenagers] are going to do,” said Steel, who has two young adult children. “You can’t follow them everywhere. … I think it’s time to drop it and move on.”
That hasn't happened, as the media has used the pregnancy news as the launching pad for stories on Palin's support for abstinence education (and just how her daughter's pregnancy is or isn't relevant), whether Palin could juggle the vice president's job with her family situation, and whether the governor was thoroughly vetted by the McCain campaign.
In an interview on Monday before Palin announced her daughter's pregnancy, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was slightly off-message from the McCain campaign's effort to portray Palin as experienced.
"I don’t really know her personally, and I look forward to getting to know her better," Spellings said. "She’s only been there in office for a year and a half or so."
The secretary said she was familiar with Alaska's record on education, including during Palin's tenure.
"They have done some really interesting things up there," Spellings said. "They have one of the best data systems in the country. They're one of our growth-model pilot states, one of 10. They applied for differentiated accountability, and they’ve got one of our [Teacher Incentive Fund] grants."
"They’ve got a long way to go, no doubt about it," the secretary added. "Their standards are fairly low, and their achievement lags the national average. Beyond that, I look forward to meeting her."
While attending the Republican National Convention on his first day as president of the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel spoke with Education Week reporter Mark Walsh about why he was at the RNC and how the NEA feels about Sen. John McCain's education agenda.
Keegan: McCain Supports Federal Accountability and GOP is on Board
As president, Sen. McCain will champion assessments and accountability, and he will be able to persuade the more conservative wing of his party, which disparages the No Child Left Behind Act as an unprecedented overreach of federal authority, to support those policies, Lisa Graham Keegan, McCain's top education adviser told me in an interview today.
She participated in the meetings last week during which the GOP hammered out its education platform and said she was surprised by the level of agreement in the room.
"I was amazed at how much coalescence there was around Sen. McCain's education agenda," she said."His agenda is the party's agenda."
But it was hard to pin her down on what kind of changes McCain would seek to the NCLB law. She mentioned growth models, which permit states to measure individual student achievement, rather than comparing different cohorts of students to one another. Okay ... but that the U.S. Department of Education already permits states to use approved growth models in their accountability systems.
And when I asked her how Sen. McCain's education policy would differ from President Bush's, she said that, "We've learned a lot from No Child Left Behind" and that McCain would seek more immediate help for students in failing schools.
"If we find out a child is not doing well, that child immediately gets tutoring, that child gets an option for a new school," she said.
I wonder if that means the prospective McCain administration would speed up the law's timetable of sanctions. Or would it just make it easier for parents to access the choice and supplemental services provisions of the law? Either way, that could be a tough sell to a Congress that in all likelihood will remain under Democratic control.
When I asked Keegan about that, she touted McCain's record working with Democrats on issues such as campaign finance reform.
"McCain is the right guy to do that," she said.
Phil Handy, who served as chairman of the Florida state board of education under Gov. Jeb Bush and is another top education adviser to the McCain campaign, was also on hand. He and Keegan told me that McCain sees the role between the federal government and the states as a partnership.
Keegan said that's a contrast from his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who has a more top-down approach, in her view.
"He has not taken a reform position at all," she said. "He's proposing a myriad of small [federal] programs."
And Handy reminded me that McCain has signed onto the Education Equality Project's statement, which seeks to advance the idea that schools are primarily responsible for student achievement and promotes greater accountability for teachers and public school choice. Obama has not signed that statement, a move McCain attributed to union opposition in a speech last month. So I guess they're still trying to get some mileage out of that.
Later that evening, Keegan addressed the convention. I was all primed for a speech on education policy, but she barely mentioned schools at all, except to say that McCain had supported her when she ran for Arizona school's chief.
"When I decided to run for state school superintendent in Arizona, folks were pretty skeptical," she told the delegates. "Nobody had ever run for that position before as a committed advocate for school choice. But John McCain was there for me. He even offered to be my campaign chairman."
The rest of her speech urged delegates to support hurricane recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast.
In another public appearance yesterday, at the forum sponsored by the American Solutions for Winning the Future, a nonprofit organization started by Newt Gingrich, Keegan positioned herself as a champion for accountability through testing.
"We are in serious denial in our country," Keegan said. She told a story about how she had "walk[ed] into a wealthy suburban school" and heard the principal say of the state math test for accountability, "you know what I couldn't have passed this test. And my response was 'shame on you.' They had to take me out with armed guards."
Rep. Michael N. Castle, a key moderate member of the House education committee, says that President Bush dropped the ball on education policy after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. But he expects that either Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama will support retaining the federal law's commitment to accountability if elected president.
"I believe very strongly we need a president of the United States who is focused on education," Rep. Castle, a Delaware Republican, said Tuesday at an education forum in Minneapolis. "I do not believe we've had that president of late."
Education requires a president who is willing to "bang on the table" to bring about major school improvement, said Castle, who is the ranking Republican on the early childhood, elementary and secondary education subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee.
"President Bush did that for a year or two with No Child Left Behind, but there wasn't the focus after that, and I have a problem with that," Castle said.
Asked whether opposition to the NCLB law would be enough to scuttle the law's accountability provisions, Castle said, "I don't think either candidate for president is going to let that happen."
In an interview, Castle said neither Sen. McCain, who will become the Republican nominee this week, nor Sen. Obama, the Democratic nominee, has discussed education enough thus far.
"These individuals need to elevate that aspect of their campaign," he said.
Castle said the election of McCain would bring a possibility of bipartisan action on renewing the NCLB law and other education legislation.
The Arizona senator "is a person who has always worked well with other people," Castle said. "I'm sure he would call in George Miller and Ted Kennedy to his office and whatever Republicans are there and say, 'How can we work this out?'—if he has the focus on education."
Don't expect to hear the federal school law cited much at the Republican convention, said Castle, who in July introduced his own bill to renew the law that would, among other things, allow all states to use growth models to measure individual student progress over time as the means of accountability under the law.
"You’re not going to hear it here," Castle said. "Politically, it’s not popular."
"If you look to Congress, you're going to find a lot of experienced members who support No Child Left Behind, Republicans and Democrats alike, relatively newer conservative Republicans who will not support it under any circumstances, a number of conservative Republicans who won’t support it, and a number of liberal Democrats who won’t support it," Castle said. "I think a majority of Congress would support the right changes in No Child Left Behind, but a very bare majority. Therefore, I don’t think you’re going to see it much in the campaign."
Gingrich Calls for 'Tripartisanship' to Improve Schools
President Bush isn't the only Republican who believes in high academic standards and aggressive accountability. That's the message that came across at today's event put on by American Solutions for Winning the Future, a nonprofit organization started by Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Education Equality Project and ED in 08 were among the co-sponsors of the event.
Gingrich's group used the issue of global competitiveness to galvanize support for policies, including alternative pay for teachers and rigorous curricula benchmarked against international standards. For education redesign efforts to succeed, they will have to be championed by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, Gingrich said.
"If you're going to get this to scale, it's going to have to be a tripartisan effort," Gingrich said. "What we're going to have here today is some people you've probably traditionally thought of as Democrats and some you've probably thought of as Republicans."
Gingrich especially seemed to get a kick out of sharing a stage with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the co-chairman of the Education Equality Project and a 2004 Democratic presidential candidate. Gingrich made sure that the two posed for a photo with the other panelists, including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings; top McCain education adviser Lisa Graham Keegan; and ED in '08's Roy Romer.
"Most of you didn't come here so that you could go home and tell your friends how much Al Sharpton impressed you," Gingrich joked. Sharpton and other members of the Education Equality Project had similar criticisms of unions at last week's Democratic National Convention.
Sharpton's speech garnered loud applause from the largely Republican crowd, particularly when he emphasized parental responsibility and took teachers' unions to task for what he perceived as their failure to embrace accountability.
"You cannot say schools must be improved but that we can not judge the performance of teachers," he said. "We cannot have any sacred cows in the room when our children are behind in math and science."
In his speech, ED in '08's Roy Romer subtly urged the more conservative wing of the Republican party to embrace the idea that, early in the next administration state school chiefs, governors, and the new administration should sit down together to craft high standards. He said that presidential candidates are often afraid of talking about education policy because they're worried about offending proponents of local control.
And Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who until was last week was widely speculated to be McCain's veep pick, talked about his own record on education redesign, particularly the need for merit pay, something he has championed in Minnesota.
In her speech, Secretary Spellings said that advocates for federal accountability need to do a better job selling their proposals, particularly to suburban voters.
"We haven't fully made our case to the American people," she said, adding that some voters have criticized the law for taking resources away from one school's "gifted flute program" and steering it towards inner city schools. "People don't get what's at stake for this country."
Part of the problem, she said, is educational policy lingo. When officials used terms such as adequate yearly progress and international benchmarking, "parents don't know what we're talking about," she said.
Keegan, who moderated the panel, didn't give a speech. But she did emphasize McCain's and her own support for accountability. "I'm proud to be working for [someone] who backs NCLB and its accountability requirements," she said. Which sounded pretty Spellings-esque, at least to me.
Every four years, it is a surprise to some people that the National Education Association has a presence at the Republican National Convention.
After all, the nation's largest teachers' union usually endorses the Democratic candidate for president, including this year, when it is backing Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. And the union is a regular punching bag for many Republicans and conservatives.
But the NEA always has delegates at the Republican convention, though always far fewer than member-delegates at the Democratic Convention.
This year, there are 40 NEA members among the almost 2,400 delegates at the GOP convention. At the Democratic convention, 200 NEA members were among the more than 4,000 delegates.
Dennis Van Roekel, who was in his first day on Monday as the new president of the NEA, pointed out that his union has some 1 million Republican members—nearly a third of the union's 3.2 million members.
"We want to encourage our Republican members to be active in their party," Van Roekel said at a downtown Minneapolis jazz club, where several unions led by the NEA were hosting a "labor salute to Republican supporters."
Days before the start of the Republican convention, the NEA invited some of its GOP members—four from every state—to a leadership conference in Minneapolis to train them in political activism.
"I know there will be criticism" of his union at the GOP convention, Van Roekel said, "but there are also voices of support among Republicans."
One of the participants in the leadership conference was Jerome Hoynes, a social studies teacher at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Ill. At the labor luncheon, he was wearing an "I am the NEA" button.
"I am proud to be an NEA member, proud to be a teacher, and proud to be a Republican," said Hoynes, who is not a convention delegate but says he would be an elector for Sen. John McCain should the Republican win the Illinois in November.
Hoynes said he was gung-ho for McCain because of the Arizona senator's "lifelong track record" and his status as a war hero. The teacher was less enthusiastic about McCain's support for private school vouchers.
"I'm sure that when he's elected, John McCain will be the type of president who listens to us," Hoynes said, meaning NEA members.
Van Roekel is a former Arizona teacher and an ex-president of the state's NEA affiliate. He said he has known McCain for 30 years and interviewed him for the state union's endorsement when McCain first ran for Congress.
Van Roekel said he was disappointed McCain declined to participate in the NEA's endorsement process for the presidential race. (Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was the only Republican who did.)
"We don't agree with a lot of his positions" on education issues, especially on vouchers, Van Roekel said of McCain.
"And he supports No Child Left Behind pretty much the way it is," Van Roekel said—something the NEA does not.
Now that the GOP convention is underway, the Republican party has given its official stamp of approval to an education platform that mirrors many of the K-12 proposals of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the nearly nominee.
The platform calls for merit pay for teachers, and for permitting principals to recruit the best educators "without regard to collective bargaining agreements." And it supports school choice options, including expanding charter schools and giving families access to private school vouchers that can be used at both secular and religious schools. It commends efforts by local school districts to recruit professionals from higher education, business, and the military to serve as adjunct instructors, if they are needed.
McCain has advocated a top-to-bottom review of all federal programs and the platform repeats this call, saying that policymakers must examine all programs at the U.S. Department of Education to make sure they are effective. It says that K-12 spending at the Department of Education has "shot up almost 41 percent to $25 billion" in less than a decade even though "the constitution assigns the federal government no role in education." And, in a nod to small government conservatives, it says that the federal government must "respect the role of states" and "better meet state needs."
McCain didn't mention the No Child Left Behind Act in his speech when he laid out his education proposals to the annual meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Cincinnati in July. And the GOP platform is just as vague about the federal school improvement law—the education portion also doesn't mention the measure by name. Instead, it calls for "accountability for student achievement; periodic testing on the fundamentals of learning especially math and reading, history and geography; transparency, so parents and the federal government know which school best serve their students."
That language isn't inconsistent with NCLB, but it definitely opens the door to changes in the law, which calls for testing in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
The platform also takes traditionally conservative views on issues that McCain hasn't mentioned much on the campaign trail. It supports "English First" instruction, apparently as opposed to bilingual education. And it says that the party will "energetically assert the right of students to engage in voluntary prayer in schools." The document also calls for replacing "family planning" programs for teenagers with increased funding for abstinence education.
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is glad that the No Child Left Behind Act wasn't reauthorized as scheduled last year, because "where we were headed would have been a bad reauthorization," she told Education Week today.
Her comments, in an interview on the opening day of the scaled-back Republican National Convention, were an apparent reference to a draft bill crafted by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. That measure would have permitted some states to use local assessments in their accountability systems, among other changes that were largely criticized by supporters of the current NCLB law as an effort to weaken accountability.
Secretary Spellings said over coffee that the additional time to craft a renewal of the school improvement law will help give the coalition that came together to pass NCLB a chance to regroup and continue to build support for the law's central principle of accountability.
Ms. Spellings agreed that education has taken a back seat to other issues, such as the economy and energy, in the presidential campaign. But she sees the lack of discussion of the No Child Left Behind Act on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver as a positive development.
"I usually operate in the no-news-is-good-news realm," she said. When asked why Sen. Barack Obama's criticism of the law on the campaign trail frequently met with enthusiastic applause, she said, "It's not a secret that lots of interests groups have spent millions tarnishing the [NCLB] brand."
Unsurprisingly, Secretary Spellings said she thought that Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the soon-to-be-official Republican nominee, would make a better education president than Sen. Obama, who officially became the Democratic nominee last week.
"I do not think he's going to be worried about the teachers' unions and the equities of grown-ups," she said of Mr. McCain. "NCLB was a necessary first step, and I think he recognizes that."
She said it's her impression that Sen. McCain, like President Bush, is "a different kind of Republican" on education issues, as opposed to some GOP conservatives who have sought to significantly scale back the federal role in education by allowing states to opt out of NCLB's accountability requirements.
But she also had kind words for the Democratic nominee. She said Sen. Obama "seems to understand the civil rights community and their equities," as shown by many leaders who favor strong accountability for schools, "versus the unions and their equities." She added: "I think it was bold for him to speak out on merit pay. Let's see it happen."
Hurricane Gustav has prompted a major shake-up of the GOP convention schedule here. But Secretary Spellings appeared to be going about her schedule as planned, although she said she had been in touch with Paul G. Pastorek, the Louisiana schools chief, to see if he needed any help. "Of course, we're prepared to do what's needed," she said.
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education helped ensure that students from New Orleans and other affected areas were able to temporarily enroll in other school districts.
Strong American Schools, the group behind the ED in '08 campaign to boost debate about education in the presidential campaign, has a full-page ad in this morning's St. Paul Pioneer Press that bluntly says, "Our schools are failing."
The ad, in the newspaper's special news section on the Republican National Convention, displays a ranking of national flags showing the United States as 21st in the world in science. (The fine print cites several assessments, including two from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.)
"The countries with the best schools attract the best jobs," the ad says. "If jobs move to countries like Finland and South Korea, your child's opportunities dry up. And so does our economy."
The ad calls for rigorous national standards, performance pay for teachers, and more learning time and support for students.
"Wake up the school board in your town and the politicians in Washington," it says.
Strong American Schools chief Roy Romer, a former Democratic governor of Colorado, is scheduled to take part in an education forum for convention participants on Tuesday. Romer and Strong American Schools also participated in the Democratic National Convention last week in Denver.
Meanwhile, also in today's Pioneer Press, University of Minnesota education policy expert Joe Nathan has this opinion essay, headlined: "Minnesota schools rank high, but are challenged by myth and complacency."
We had lunch today at The News Room, a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, where the news blaring from high-definition TVs was that the Republican convention was being scaled down because of Hurricane Gustav.
Neither President Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney will be coming to St. Paul to address the convention in person tomorrow, as scheduled. That means it's even more unlikely that anyone in St. Paul will utter the phrase "No Child Left Behind".
As some delegates were just arriving in the Twin Cities on Sunday, it was slowly sinking in that the Republican National Convention was not going be anything like what was planned. On the TV screens at The News Room, Republican officials were discussing their decision to limit Monday's opening session to a handful of critical activities, including the adoption of the party platform.
While there, we ran into Jo Marshall, the president of Somerset Community College in Somerset, Ky., and a GOP delegate. After some initial hesitation, she felt more comfortable being interviewed after we assured her that Education Week is an independent publication and not associated with either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers.
Marshall said many of the students at her school arrive unprepared for higher education and that there needs to be a smoother transition between high school and college, although she thinks states are in a better position to champion that effort than the federal government. And, while she likes the principles behind the No Child Left Behind Act, she hasn't seen strong evidence of the results yet.
Marshall said she hasn't heard either presidential candidate talk much about education in this election, but she praised Sen. John McCain for talking about the importance of bolstering support for community colleges. She hadn't heard Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, mention the issue at all, although she said she wasn't surprised
"After all, he went to Harvard," she said, in reference to where Obama attended law school. (He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University.)
What If You Threw a Convention Event and No One Came?
That's what happened Sunday afternoon in St. Paul, to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which had planned a high-tech civics forum to give local students and others an opportunity to discuss education redesign, among other election-related issues.
The event, which was to have been held on the eve of the Republican National Convention at the Higher Ground Academy Charter School, a preK-12 school in St. Paul, was canceled after only a handful of people showed up.
Brooks Garber, the federal policy director for the National Alliance, said he thought the poor attendance was due at least in part to the Minnesota State Fair, which wraps up tomorrow and was held just a few miles away from the school. He said that a similar event held in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week drew somewhere between 30 and 60 people. The alliance is co-sponsoring similar forums in coming months in each city holding a presidential debate.
The other co-sponsors for the events, dubbed the Outburst! Tour, were the University of Denver's Center for African American Policy and the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University in Washington.
Still, Campaign K-12 was able to interview two would-be participants, both of whom blog for HipHopRepublican.com, which is also covering the convention.They were asked whether they thought the issue of school choice could help the GOP's efforts to reach out to African Americans.
Richard Ivory of the Center for Urban Community Services, a New York City social-services agency, said that even though many urban black parents support school choice, such as charter schools, they still won't vote for Republicans, in part because many live in heavily Democratic areas. He said that Republicans needs to do a better job of making it clear that their party favors "empowering parents."
"Parents want more control over how their children learn," Ivory said. "But they don't necessarily know how to go about doing that."
Lenny McAllister, an information technology consultant from North Carolina, said that Republicans need to do a better job, both in African American communities and nationwide, of linking their "market-based" education solutions, such as expanding charter schools, to other issues, including crime and the economy.
The National Education Association sent out a statement this weekend on Sen. John McCain's decision to tap Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate.
Reg Weaver, the president of the NEA, was relatively complimentary of Palin, especially given that his union has endorsed McCain's Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Still, the press release could be called a back-handed compliment. It praised Palin's commitment to public education, while simultaneously calling attention to her scant time in the governor's mansion:
“While she is only in her second year as Alaska’s governor, she has thus far shown herself to be a supporter of children and public education. She comes from a family of educators. Her father was a teacher, her brother is a teacher, and her mother was an education support professional. In her less than two years as the state’s chief executive officer, she was able to increase per-pupil education spending, and she is opposed to sending public money to support private schools through political schemes like vouchers.Her selection, however, has certainly taken the issue of experience off the table for political debate.”
Palin, GOP VP Pick, Championed New School Finance Program
Sen. John McCain has reportedly tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee.
Gov. Palin, a Republican elected in 2006, helped champion an overhaul of the state’s school finance system, which supporters said channeled more money to rural districts outside Anchorage and helped stabilize school districts' budgets. The measure, approved by the Alaska legislature this year, also hiked spending for students with special needs.
Alaska has an unusual state-run performance-incentive program, which rewards school employees with payments for gains in student achievement. The program was initially signed into law by Ms. Palin's predecessor as governor, Frank H. Murkowski. The program is distinct in it that rewards many different kinds of school employees, including administrators, teachers, custodians, and secretaries, for increased student performance at their school.
Funding for the program has continued under Ms. Palin, according to the state's Department of Education and Early Development, which announced another round of awards in August.
Ms. Palin has also become known for juggling her duties as Alaska's chief executive with those of a parent. Well into her term as governor, she announced that she was pregnant, and in April, she gave birth to a son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. The governor was reportedly back at work days after the boy was born. She and her husband, Todd, have four other children.
With the Democratic convention days away, and the GOP confab immediately following, I wanted to let you all know that Education Week's Campaign K-12 will be on the ground in Denver and in St. Paul, bringing you first-hand coverage.
We'll be writing stories for our print and online versions of EdWeek, blogging here (of course!), and even experimenting with Twitter. We'll be carrying around trendy backpacks, filled with the latest audio and video equipment (which we may or may not know how to use) as we strive to bring you not just stories, but the sights and sounds of the convention as well. Stay tuned here for all updates, starting Sunday evening.
David Hoff of NCLB: Act II fame, pictured farthest left, and I will be dispatching from Denver.
Alyson Klein and Mark Walsh, who is pictured far right, will be reporting from St. Paul.
Will any of you be there? Are there any education-policy events we should be sure to catch? And furthermore, even if you're not going, what should we be on the lookout for as we comb the convention halls for stories and blog items?
