Wednesday, October 29, 2008

NEW RULES FOR GRADUATION RATES, ANNUAL REPORT CARDS, NAEP, AND TITLE I

Regulations recently issued by the Secretary have changed many NCLB-related processes and requirements, including but not limited to the following:

  • States and districts must adopt a new national standard for calculating and reporting disaggregated high school graduation rates as soon as possible, but by 2010-2011;
  • States and districts must include on their annual report cards the most recent NAEP reading and mathematics results for the state and to also include the participation rates for students with disabilities and for limited English proficient students;
  • States and districts must toughen restructuring penalties for schools at the end of the Title I SIP process.

The actual regulations are technically quite detailed, and will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow (October 29). A prepublication version is available at http://federalregister.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2008-25270_PI.pdf (This link may expire after official publication.)

TIP: These regulations were posted for public comment back in April. Even though these regulations affect about 16,000 school districts, the U.S. Department of Education reported that it only received 400 comments. A similar request for public comment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this year generated over 300,000 comments.

ANOTHER TIP: The announcement was made via a Webcast from South Carolina, which will be archived for later viewing. See http://www.scetv.org/index.php/video/live_event/secretary_spellings_webcast

 

Monday, October 27, 2008

CAP Hosts Event on Disconnected Youth and Working Adults

CAP Hosts Event on Disconnected Youth and Working Adults: On Friday, Oct. 17, the Center for American Progress hosted an event, "Disconnected Youth and Working Adults: Meet the 21st Century's Newest College Grads." The event centered on the release of two papers: Federal Access Policies and Higher Education for Working Adults by Derek Price and Angela Bell. According to Price, the core issue in the United States' failings to provide adequate post-secondary education options for working adults is that there is no communication across the education and labor systems. The second paper was Creating Postsecondary Pathways to Good Jobs for Young High School Dropouts: The Possibilities and the Challenges, presented by Linda Harris and Evelyn Ganzglass. They see the solutions to the problems for high school dropouts to also lie in the intersection of systems - the secondary, post-secondary, workforce, and adult education systems. When asked what their wish list was for a new administration, panelists responded that they would like to see: the reauthorization of the Youth Opportunity Grants and directing the grants to communities in need; the use of a high-priority topic, such as energy independence, to discuss disconnected youth and working adults as a national imperative; and implementation of an Office of Youth Policy at the executive level to help address some of the needed paradigm shifts.

 

Read more:

http://www.americanprogress.org/

 

U.S. News & World Report Hosts Summit on High School Reform

On Monday, Oct. 20, U.S. News and World Report joined with Intel Corp. to host an education summit focusing on America's high schools at the National Press Club. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, delivered what was called a "Keynote Conversation" to a diverse audience of education and business representatives. Klein said the most important improvement he made in New York City high schools was to make sure the standards and assessments in place properly measure a sufficiently rigorous curriculum and student performance. Klein believes a diploma must be an accurate tool for post-secondary institutions and employers to evaluate what a student has learned in high school. In discussing the influence of the No Child Left Behind Act on the system as a whole, Klein said the impact has been enormous. He said people who oppose the accountability provisions as requiring too much testing are wrong; testing will inform strategies for improving outcomes for students. Klein also spoke in strong support of national standards.

Moderating the first panel on the topic "Secondary Education: A Road Map for the Future," was Andy Rotherham, co-founder and co-director of Education Sector. Rotherham posed the first question to Mike Cohen, president of Achieve Inc., asking what is working and what isn't in the high school reform realm. Cohen said there is growing clarity about the mission of high schools and a growing consensus that everyone needs a meaningful high school diploma. The concern he raised is the lag time between this growing consensus and developing the capacity to change the current system. Turning to Rick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, Rotherham asked what challenges have been ignored to date. Hess spoke about the institutional structure and nature of public school systems that is hard to change or to overhaul. He referred to a human capital challenge that requires the re-tooling of the teaching workforce to meet labor force needs in the future. The current system simply will not attract the needed talent. Rotherham also asked the panelists what they think the next administration needs to do to address the crisis in America's high schools. Among the many suggestions offered were the removal of barriers between K-12 and post-secondary education; making high school curriculum more relevant to the workplace; providing incentives for states to develop high-quality, common assessments; establishing a blue-ribbon panel to identify good providers to work with high schools on strategic and innovative reforms; prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay teacher salaries, instead investing in more effective reforms; and the scaling back of the micromanagement inherent in the No Child Left Behind Act.

The event's second panel was "Business in the Classroom: Can Private/Public Partnerships Build Better Students?" Brian Kelly, U.S. News & World Report editor, served as moderator and asked whether the increased role of business in education has undermined local school board control. Ann Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, said no, citing the benefits of increased high school student attendance and lowered dropout rates in schools with a strong business presence. According to Bryant, schools partnering with local businesses results in more relevant curriculum and experiences for students.

The final keynote speaker of the day was former Gov. Bob Wise (D-W.Va.), president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, who said America cannot afford to perpetuate the model of heavy investment in the early grades and in post-secondary education, neglecting middle and high school.

Read more:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/promotions/intel/

Budget and Appropriations

With just over a week left until the election, most members of Congress remain on the campaign trail, and Capitol Hill is a pretty quiet place. But not everyone has left. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is working hard, along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and many committee chairs and ranking members, to build a case for quick action on a large economic recovery package. They got a boost for that plan this week when Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Board chairman, indicated he thought a targeted stimulus package would be necessary to kick the United States out of what is now called a recession.

Throughout the week, hearings were held on the Hill on topics of deep concern to the public: the impact of the Wall Street meltdown on 401(k) holdings, infrastructure needs across the nation and how the government might create jobs and assist unemployed workers. More hearings are scheduled for the week leading up to the election. President Bush, who had rejected an earlier economic recovery plan that passed in the House before the current recess, has also softened his opposition. Up to this point, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have sought ideas from members of Congress and the public about what to include in the package but have also indicated they won't try to move a bill that would be rejected by the Senate or vetoed by the president. A final decision will be made after Nov. 4.

Whether or not a large economic recovery bill moves quickly through the Congress during the November lame-duck session or is held off for the new Congress in January is a subject for speculation. What is certain is that Congress will have to act in the new year on a final budget for FY 2009. The current continuing resolution, set to expire on March 6, is preventing the wheels of government from grinding to a halt. Appropriations staffers acknowledge they are hard at work trying to resolve funding levels for programs that are treated differently in the House and Senate proposed plans for FY 2009 spending. They too will have to wait until after Nov. 4 to find out just how generous the new administration and the newly elected Congress will be and how much money they can allocate to agencies such as the Department of Education. Nov. 4 can't come soon enough.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

President Bush Signs Health Care Safety Net Act of 2008 into Law

On October 8th, President Bush signed the Health Care Safety Net Act of
2008, reauthorizing appropriations for 2008-2012 for community health centers and the National Health Service Corps program. The law supports various groups working to meet the health care needs of medically underserved populations and makes provisions for a national study of school-based health centers. The law requires the Comptroller General to conduct a study in the next two years about the health impact to students from school-based health centers. The study must include an analysis of the impact of federal funding on centers, cost savings to other federal programs that may be realized if services are delivered in school-based centers, the impact of centers in rural and underserved areas and an analysis of other sources of federal funding. The also law makes provisions for developing new centers to serve medically needy populations, accelerating quality improvements in community health centers, expanding the delivery of rural health care services, and addressing dental workforce shortages.

To view a summary of the law, please visit
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1343&tab=summary

To view the entire text of the law, please visit
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1343

Monday, October 20, 2008

Century Foundation Holds Briefing on Suggestions for NCLB

On Oct. 15, the Century Foundation hosted a briefing titled, "Getting Education Reform Back on Track," to discuss its new book, "Improving On No Child Left Behind." This book is designed to bring the major flaws of the No Child Left Behind Act to the political forefront to encourage the act's reform and reauthorization. In "Improving On No Child Left Behind," several authorities on education policy and reform criticize three different aspects of NCLB: the "under-funding" of NCLB; the provisions for standards, testing and accountability; and the problems students and parents face regarding school choice.

Providing an overview of the book's chapter on under-funding NCLB, John Yinger, one of the chapter's authors, explained that to achieve the goals established by NCLB, federal funding for NCLB programs must increase exponentially, although states' needs vary in efforts to reach the law's proficiency goals. For example, according to their research, the authors believe that while Kansas will need an increase in annual funding for Title I aid of about 18 percent to achieve 100 percent proficiency by 2014, Missouri will require an increase of approximately 1,077 percent.

The book's chapter on standards, testing and accountability criticizes states' development of rigorous content standards and high-quality student assessments. Lauren Resnick, of the University of Pittsburgh, discussed the chapter on standards, opining that clear, rigorous content standards and assessments linked to these standards should be developed on a national level.

In summarizing the final chapter of the book, Amy Stuart Wells, of Columbia University, criticized NCLB for not providing low-income students attending failing schools with the opportunity to attend a higher-performing school. The authors of this chapter strongly encourage inter-district school choice programs, urging the reauthorization of NCLB to provide higher-performing schools with funding to encourage the acceptance of low-income transfer students from low-performing schools.

More information:
http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=EV&pubid=237