March 6, 2012

• House Education Committee Approves NCLB Overhaul
• Illinois ASCD Promotes Whole Child Education
• Twenty-Six States and DC Apply for NCLB Waivers
• Obama Admonishes Governors for Not Making Education a Priority
• Secretary Duncan Schools on the Court

House Education Committee Approves NCLB Overhaul

The House Education Committee approved legislation that would gut the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) accountability system and highly qualified teacher definition and in its place give states free rein to establish their own methods to measure school quality and impose turnaround fixes. The bills (HR 3989 [PDF] and HR 3990 [PDF]) introduced by House Education Chairman John Kline (R-MN), passed on a strictly party-line vote with Democrats voicing their extreme opposition to the measures.

The bills' key provisions would

• Maintain current reading and math testing requirements—including disaggregating and reporting those test data by student subgroup—but eliminate the state science testing requirement.
• Scrap adequately yearly progress, giving states the authority to develop their own accountability systems using multiple measures of student growth and identification of achievement gaps.
• Eliminate federally mandated sanctions for low-performing schools and the School Improvement Grant program, allowing states to determine which schools qualify for state-designed interventions and supports.
• Replace the highly qualified teacher definition and requirements with state- and district-developed teacher evaluation systems that use multiple measures and incorporate student achievement data.
• Consolidate teacher-quality programs into a new Teacher and School Leader Flexible Grant that states could use to develop alternative certification, create induction programs, provide professional development, implement performance-based pay systems, and more.
• Remove state maintenance of effort requirements (which require states to maintain their own education funding at a certain level to access federal funds), cap funding for federal education programs at FY12 levels, and limit future funding increases to the rate of inflation.
• Eliminate more than 70 federal education programs, including subject-area grant programs as well as some programs that have never been funded.

The approved bills remove language found in previous iterations that set aside 10 percent of the Local Academic Flexible Grant funding for private school voucher programs and limited the U.S. secretary of education’s authority to address state standards, assessments, and accountability. They also clarify that the evaluation results of individual teachers will not be publicly reported or shared with parents. Despite these adjustments, the Democratic committee members sharply criticized the bills for dismantling equity in education by watering down accountability for the most vulnerable students.

Only one amendment passed—Representative Todd Rokita’s (R-IN) proposal to reduce staff at the U.S. Department of Education to align with the bills’ program eliminations. The amendment was approved on a party-line vote.

Kline said he’s spoken with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) about having the full House consider the legislation. But even if the bills are approved by the full House, differences must be negotiated with the Senate bill that passed out of committee in October. Senate Education Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) said he’s not going to move the Senate’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) legislation to the Senate floor until the House passes a bipartisan ESEA bill.

Read ASCD's letter (PDF) to Kline and Ranking Member George Miller (D-CA), which outlines the association's position on the House's ESEA bills.

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Illinois ASCD Promotes Whole Child Education

Illinois ASCD has been working hard to promote a whole child approach to education in the state. With ASCD’s support, it successfully introduced whole child resolutions in both the Illinois House (HR 0781) and Senate (SR 0545).

The resolutions recognize March as Illinois Whole Child Month, and call on parents, educators, and communities to work together to support a whole child education that ensures each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. The House resolution also encourages every Illinois school to celebrate Illinois Whole Child Month by adopting at least one of the five whole child tenets to promote and encourage throughout the month.

Voting on the resolution has not yet been scheduled, but we’ll be sure to share updates in future issues of Capitol Connection. If Illinois approves the resolution, it would become the second state to officially declare support for a whole child approach to education. Arkansas passed its own whole child resolutions (HR 1013 [PDF] and SR 12 [PDF]) a few years ago as a result of Arkansas ASCD’s persistent efforts.

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Twenty-Six States and DC Apply for NCLB Waivers

Shortly after the Obama administration announced that it’s providing NCLB waivers to all 11 states that have applied for such flexibility to date, 26 additional states and the District of Columbia submitted their own waiver applications in the second round of requests.

The 27 waiver requests will soon be posted online along with the names of the peer reviewers who will convene this month to review them. States seeking flexibility in this second round will be notified later this spring about whether they qualify for waivers.

This means just over a dozen states haven’t yet applied for a waiver: Alabama, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The Department of Education expects additional states to request flexibility by September 6 for the third round of review. Some states, like Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Maine, have said they simply need more time to develop plans that both meet the waiver requirements and respond to their unique state needs and contexts. Other states, like California and Montana, have criticized the administration’s waiver requirements for replacing one set of mandates with another set that would be costly to implement.

This week, California’s state board of education will consider a proposal by the state’s department of education to ask federal officials for direct relief from NCLB without going through the official waiver process. The state board could approve the department’s proposal or recommend the state apply for the waivers.

For its part, the Obama administration has made it very clear that any state not receiving a waiver will continue to be held to all NCLB requirements.

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Obama Admonishes Governors for Not Making Education a Priority

President Obama challenged the nation’s governors to invest more in education during a speech to the National Governors Association in which he asserted that no issue has a bigger effect on the economy, and that it is best addressed at the state level. He acknowledged the challenge of limited resources, but in a display of verbal finger wagging, added "that is no excuse to lose sight of what matters most. And the fact is that too many states are making cuts to education that I believe are simply too big."

In conjunction with his speech, the White House released Education Blueprint: An Economy Built to Last (PDF), a document that outlines a series of federal proposals to support U.S. students and future workers, including

• Investing in K–12 education by continuing to fund programs like Race to the Top and the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge that spur state innovations, and by offering more states flexibility from NCLB’s mandates
• Transforming the teaching profession through the administration’s new RESPECT Project and by providing resources to prevent further teacher layoffs and help rehire teachers who lost their jobs because of budget cuts.
• Preparing workers for relevant jobs by establishing training programs at community colleges that equip workers for skilled positions in high-growth industries.
• Making college more affordable by preventing student loan rates from doubling, making permanent the tax credit that provides up to $10,000 to help families cover the cost of college, and doubling the number of work study jobs over the next five years.

A number of these proposals may seem familiar, as they’ve been cited in the president’s State of the Union Address and FY13 budget request. But the catch is that many of these efforts depend on congressional funding, which is highly questionable in the current economic climate.

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Secretary Duncan Schools on the Court

NBA phenom Jeremy Lin isn’t the only basketball player who is elevating the status of Harvard hoops. Former Harvard forward and current U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan played in the 2012 NBA All-Star Celebrity Game last week, leading the East to a definitive 86–54 win. He ended the game with an impressive 17 points, 8 rebounds, and 5 steals.

While he was in Orlando, the secretary also participated in a panel at the NBA All-Star Technology Summit, where he discussed the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math education and the need for more successful minority tech entrepreneurs to be role models for young people. In addition, he joined Joshua DuBois, special assistant to the president and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, at a town hall meeting at Memorial Middle School to announce Together for Tomorrow, a new administration initiative to both spotlight existing community efforts to turn around persistently low-performing schools, and encourage new community engagement that aims to do this for other schools. Following the town hall, Secretary Duncan joined actor and hip-hop artist Common to talk with 8th graders about the importance of working hard and graduating.

Learn more about these efforts and watch a short video clip of Duncan’s sweet, behind-the-back pass to rapper J. Cole.

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