Creepy Congressman Wants To Eliminate Digital Divide For All The Wrong Reasons
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“It’s regrettable that the Bush Administration has made the renewal of the No Child Left Behind school reform law far more difficult by its failure to fully fund and implement it. The President is right that we must continue to hold schools accountable for results. But over the past five years of working with this law, we have learned more about what works and what does not work and we should take those lessons into account. While we press forward with school reform, practical changes to the law are needed to ensure that we do not lag in our commitment to helping every parent, teacher and child succeed.”
So he wants more money, plus a new law that takes the past five years "lessons" into account, plus other "practical" changes. Sounds like he's not so excited about the Secretary's ideas, or the Miller proposal. Setting things up for a Kennedy bill, no doubt.
Continue reading "On The HotSeat: Former Committee Insider Charles Barone" »
"Disaggregation is the key to comparability," writes former Miller staffer Charlie Barone in a new analysis of NCLB then and now. "Comparability is the key to assessing equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is the key to closing achievement gaps."
If anything is certain, it's that NCLB will get a new name when it's reauthorized points out this Washington Post article. It's been that way in the past, and will all but certainly happen again due to the law and President Bush's current unpopularity (Education Law Could Leave Behind Its Name). Check out some of the names that are being proposed -- it's easier to make fun the current name than make up a catchy new one.
Having successfully fixed our nation's campaign finance system, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is rolling up his sleeves to help fix NCLB. Thanks, Russ. I'm sure the committee staff appreciate your jumping in like this. Not that I was ever particularly nice to committee staff myself. Yes, of course, they should have taken your language into their bill. Every Senator's prerogative, etc.
If you're not already sick of the NEA-Miller story, there's a new Klein-Hoff EdWeek piece up online today that fleshes out some of the events of the past week. Included are not only the whole he-said, she-said about the TEACH Act language that you probably already know, but also some interesting tidbits like how the NEA made sure to have folks from each of the House ed committee members' districts at the Monday hearing, the toe-the-NEA-line responses of some Dem House members about the issue.
That leaves two questions: Why did Miller include the merit stuff in the first place, and what's going on between the NEA and CTA? I don't know if Miller had to include the merit pay stuff to have any chance of McKeon's support, or for other reasons. But fighting the merit pay thing and revamping the AYP system at the same time (and comparability) continues to seem to me to be biting off more than necessary. Or I'm missing something -- Miller puts in the merit pay stuff just to give something for the NEA folks to focus on, hoping to preserve the standards and accountability provisions. Let me know if you've got it figured out.
UPDATE: From Mike Antonucci: "EIA has the exclusive tip that "Sammy the Bull" Gravano will be called in as a surprise witness. Gravano will reveal that "multiple measures" and "growth models" are mobspeak for racketeering of Title I funds."
Continue reading "What To Make Of This Tentative Witness List" »
More interested in what happens next on the teacher quality front? Check out the latest discussion draft from the Miller camp, which includes Title II and all the rest:
I can't wait to hear what you think.
UPDATE: That didn't take long. EdWeek summarizes here ("The draft proposal also would keep intact most of the current NCLB law’s reporting requirements on whether teachers are “highly qualified” and add new requirements that states identify the districts and schools most in need of highly qualified teachers."). The Ed Trust crows below ("The provisions of the Title II discussion draft released yesterday by the Education and Labor Committee are a critical step forward for teaching and learning in classrooms throughout the country, especially the classrooms of low-income and minority students.")
During an early afternoon press conference call, EdSec Spellings reiterated her concerns about the M&M (Miller and McKeon) discussion draft and said she was sending them comments in the hopes that they were still open-minded. She called the current NCLB and its 2014 goals "righteous, proper, and do-able." Some of the differences between the two positions seem relatively minor -- what form differentiated interventions should take, for example. Others -- multiple measures and other changes to AYP seem more problematic to Spellings.
Right on schedule, CQ Today has a piece about how the Dems are focused on helping the freshmen keep their seats (Democrats Put Freshmen in Spotlight). Doing so makes obvious sense for the Dems, but not so much for NCLB supporters given the newbies' understandably skeptical views of NCLB. It's not entirely wishful thinking to say (as some do) that the freshmen ran against Iraq and -- to a much lesser degree -- NCLB.
Continue reading "(You Are) Live-Blogging The Big Miller Speech Today" »
Think the Dems are allocating education and social services money any better, or differently, than those big bad Republicans did? Think again.
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Thanks a ton to a brave reader for sending in the Miller memo to House freshmen from earlier this month, which outlines where things are (or were) on the House majority side at least. As you can see, the two-page memo (PDF) dated July 7 outlines nine key proposals and asks for feedback. The proposals range from the obvious ("Allow states to use growth models that recognize progress over time," improve test quality, prioritize schools with the most problems) to the highly controversial ("Allow states to use more than test scores to measure student learning and school performance") to the ho-hum ("Address the high school dropout crisis and take comprehensive steps to turn around low-performing high schools," increase funding, etc.). This explains some of the recent weeks' twists and turns, including the new left-right coalition to save NCLB and -- most obviously -- the Friday the 13th letter to Chairman Miller from concerned parties.
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The last time the Senate reauthorized the HEA was a long time ago. I was still working for Jeff Bingaman and we thought that we could really, finally, get ed schools to do a better job on teacher prep. But now the Senate has passed its version of the bill -- no House companion to go along with it, and congrats to everyone there for getting that done.
The implications for NCLB as I read them are bad, however. With two weeks left before August recess and a big education bill in hand, no one on the Senate side at least is going to feel any great rush. And we still don't have any bill language (do we?) from Kennedy or Miller to look at, though I know it's out there and you can send it to me anonymously at thisweekineducation at gmail dot com. Last but not least, there's the exhaustion factor. Many of the same folks work K12 as well as higher ed.
AFT John reminds us to read Congressional Quarterly a little more often, especially when it includes tidbits about the increasing unlikelihood of a summer bill introduction and markup for NCLB (Slouching towards 2009). Not enough July left, and not enough of a majority for either party to push something through.
Appropriations: On Wednesday, July 11, the House Appropriations Committee completed mark-up on a $607 billion Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that will set funding levels for education, health and labor programs for FY 2008. The bill allocates $62.6 billion for the Education Department, an increase of $2.3 billion over current funding. Overall, the total bill is roughly $7 billion more than that approved for FY 2007. Go to: http://appropriations.house.gov. The measure next moves to the House floor for consideration. The Senate has yet to move on its version of the bill.
New Reports: Today, the Center on Education Policy released a report examining the kind of assistance that schools identified for improvement under NCLB receive and how effective district and state officials believe that assistance to be. Moving Beyond Identification: Assisting Schools in Improvement is posted on the Center's home page (www.cep-dc.org) under "What's New."
As I first pointed out two weeks ago, the Kennedy report on Reading First was not a "Congressional study" in the sense of something like CRS or the GAO would do, despite being described as such in the press. It was internal, and partisan from the start. The good folks at the Title I Monitor have dug into this further, exposing some of the report's problems. RL Colvin over at Early Stories thinks that's a good thing. I agree.
Looking for some dry but informative weekend reading? Check out these CRS reports from Open CRS: School and Campus Safety Programs, Head Start Reauthorization: A Side-by-Side Comparison, The ESEA, as Amended by the No Child Left Behind Act: A Primer, and High School Graduation, Completion, and Dropouts: Federal Policy, Programs, and Issues. From Open CRS.
The Times (Spellings Rejects Criticism on Student Loan Scandal) and Post (Education Secretary Defends Loans Record) both take it pretty easy on Spellings, whose performance was to my view neither particularly effective or especially believable.
I think that this is in part due to the ongoing tendency in the press to take it easy on her and also because it was mostly Miller and other Dems, not Republicans, who challenged her. This is in a stark contrast to the treatment that, say, Alberto Gonzalez is getting during his Hill appearances, where it is Republicans who are ridiculing Gonzalez as much as anyone else.
You can watch a video of the testimony from yesterday here.
UPDATE: EdWeek notes Spellings' uncertainty and refusals to take strong action on the Reading First front here.
How much longer will the Congressional Republicans defend her, and when will the press get out from under the Spellings spell?
Wearing a somber black top and pearls, EdSec Spellings endured repeated interruptions, refutations, and harrumphs from a worked-up Chairman Miller in the first leg of this morning's oversight hearing (now on break, video here).
Essentially, Spellings is claiming that the student lending program is complex and not entirely under her jurisdiction, and that taking lenders to court would have been difficult. For show or for real, Miller is lambasting the USDE for not having told the lenders to stop, and pointing out that many lenders did so without going to court.
"Nobody at the Department of education showed up at the front door and said you can’t do this," said Miller, who called Spellings' arguments a crutch, not plausible, and unacceptable. And we haven't even really gotten to Reading First yet.
I love all the infighting and maneuvering that's going on behind the scenes leading up to Thursday's student lending and Reading First hearing. It's so very familiar and delicious. On Tuesday, the USDE announced that its top student loan officer had resigned -- giving Spellings the chance to tell Miller that appropriate action has already been taken on that front. (Nearly everyone associated with Reading First is already gone.) Then she gave some sort of a friendly pre-interview to Andy Rotherham on Wednesday, where she apparently repeats much of her defense from EWA last week -- some of it word for word. On Wednesday, Kennedy's office released its own Reading First report (EdWeek, AP), reminding everyone that it's not just Miller who's on the case -- and perhaps pressuring Miller not to ease up on the gas pedal.
UPDATE: Some more stories:
Four Officials Profited From Publishers, Report Finds Washington Post
House Passes Ban on Gifts From Student Lenders NYT
Federal Student Loan Official Is Resigning NYT