June 30: The Rural School and Community Trust says that tying Title I funding to average salaries in local communities is no more equitable than tying it to state spending on education

• The advocacy group argues that this proposed fix won’t work any better for poor and rural schools than the current method would.
• A number of senators have already raised concerns that the proposed blueprint for reauthorization of ESEA shortchanges rural schools.

June 24: The Progressive Caucus, representing more than 80 Democratic representatives, released their wishlist for the ESEA reauthorization. A few of their ideas include the following:

• All reform models must include parental and community engagement.
• Measures of annual progress must be broad and flexible, and measures of student success should include non-academic achievement (i.e. participation, regular attendance, and, for some students, GED completion).
• Ensure that any evaluation of teacher effectiveness include multiple measures, not limited to a single high-stakes test.

June 16: Eight lawmakers had a closed-door meeting with Arne Duncan and Melody Barnes, the White House’s education point person. Ed Week reports after talking to a number of the lawmakers involved that they all said that NCLB needs to be changed, and they want to reauthorize the law “sooner rather than later.”

But none of them said that the reauthorization would be complete by the end of the current Congress, and no one committed to any timeline.

• The lawmakers included, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and Rep. Mike Castle R-Del.

May 20: Congresswoman Judy Chu, D-Calif., announced the framework of a bill that would dump the four school turnaround options in President Obama’s blueprint for the ESEA reauthorization in favor of a wider array of remedies coupled with a longer time frame—five years—for schools to turn around.

• Both of the major teachers unions support Rep. Chu’s plan, and during a HELP committee hearing, Rep. George Miller, the chairman also expressed his skepticism that the four turnaround models are the best way to fix failing schools.

 

 

May 5: Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., announces that he will retire at the end of the term.

• He is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee on education spending.
• He is also a major ally of the teachers unions and an outspoken skeptic of some of Sec. Duncan’s proposals.

 

April 28: Senator Enzi suggests that ESEA will not get reauthorized this year.

• Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said that he does not want to put the ESEA on an arbitrary timeline.

March 29: A group of researches on English Language Learners, called the Working Group on ELL Policy, released their recommendations for what the ESEA reauthorization should contain. (PDF)

• The group wants to see the reauthorized law do a better job of helping schools teach bilingual education. They said that it should take into account how long it takes English Language Learners to learn English, and how that process affects their academic progress.

March 18: Hearing in the House Subcommittee about the effect that the proposed reauthorization of ESEA would have on rural communities, and about how to define “college and career ready.”

• School district officials testified that the emphasis on teacher evaluations in the proposed plans would disadvantage rural districts that have much smaller enrollments
• Fairfax, Va., Superintendent said that there is a “train wreck coming” when the term “college and career ready” is trying to be defined.

March 17: Arne Duncan testifies before Senate HELP Committee about the administration’s blueprint

• Republican Sens. Enzi, Alexander and Roberts and Democrat Sen. Franken all voiced their enthusiasm for the proposed reauthorization.
  • However Sen. Alexander said that Congress shouldn’t try to tackle a comprehensive reauthorization this year and instead just try to fix the worst parts of NCLB.
• Republican Sen. Burr said he’s worried changing the Title I formula would shortchange the states.
• Republican Sen. Enzi said that none of the turnaround methods address the problem of rural schools.
• Democratic Sen. Murray said that making teacher training money competitive is not a good idea because she thinks programs won’t have an incentive to improve.

Source: Ed Week($)

The two major teachers unions weigh in on the blueprint.

• Weingarten (AFT): teachers get 100% of the responsibility and 0% of the authority
• Reoekel (NEA): The blueprint still relies on standardized tests to pick the winners and losers and this is a bad system that leads to scapegoating of teachers.

March 13: President Obama unveils blueprint for ESEA reauthorization.

Sections of the blueprint:

• College- and Career-Ready Students
• Great Teachers and Great Leaders
• Meeting the Needs of English Learners and Other Diverse Learners
• A Complete Education
• Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students
• Fostering Innovation and Excellence

Ed Week reports on changes and similarities between proposed Blueprint and NCLB.

• It gets rid of the requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014, replacing it with a “college and career-ready standard.”
• For school turnarounds, the bottom 5 percent of schools would be forced to use the Education dept’s four turnaround models that now govern the Title I School Improvement Grant program. The next-lowest 5 percent would be on a “warning” list and be required to take action using research-based interventions (but would not be mandated to use one of the four turnaround mechanisms).
  • States would also be required to identify schools with the greatest achievement gaps and take aggressive action to fix the problem. If, within three years, those students failed to improve, the department would require the state to take over the school’s Title I funding.
• Schools that fail to meet achievement targets would not be mandated to provide school choice or SES.
• It would distribute surveys to teachers to assess working conditions and school climate.
• Good teachers would be evenly distributed across high- and low-poverty schools
• The federal government will encourage funding equity, in part by requiring schools and districts to show how resources are being distributed among high- and low-poverty schools.
• States would be able to measure individual students’ growth rather than just being able to compare different cohorts of students to each other.

March 9: Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee holds first hearing on ESEA.

• Sen. Alexander, R-Texas, voiced his support for pay-for-performance for teachers.
• Sen. Harkin, D-Iowa, voiced his concerns over large class sizes and says that he thinks the federal government has stepped back in its commitment to lower class sizes.
• Sen. Franken, D-Minn., says that the testing regime under NCLB doesn’t make sense and wants to see assessments to gauge students’ progress throughout the year.

March 8: Sec. Arne Duncan promised to reinvigorate enforcement of civil rights laws in schools by issuing guidance and implementing new compliance reviews.

Source: Ed Week

March 1: Twenty-two Democratic senators sent Sec. Duncan a letter urging him to make sure that rural schools get a fair shot in all of the competitive grant money that the department has proposed (PDF of letter).

• Stresses that rural districts are worried that many of the department’s policy prescriptions (like charters and extended-day programs) don’t work in rural areas, and urges that the department consider other options like distance learning.
• Suggests establishing the Office of Rural Education that would look at policies from a standpoint of the rural districts.

February 22: President Obama announces plan that would require that schools who want Title I funding to certify their curriculums as college- and career-ready, and they can do this by adopting the “common core” standards or work with an institution of higher education to certify their curriculum.

• Provides big push to the state-led common core standards program, which Sec. Duncan says enjoys support from the state governors. Forty-eight of the states have signed on to the initiative but that does not lock them in to accepting the standards after they are drafted.
• The National School Boards Association voiced their disapproval with the proposal, saying that it amounts to “an unnecessary overreach by the federal government to coerce states to adopt a particular approach or be shut out of future funding for key programs.”
• The National Conference of State Legislatures also disapproved, saying that there is no evidence that these standards will lead to better student outcomes.
• The National Association of Secondary School Principals said that the proposal could result in a loss of federal funding for students in poverty if states opt not to revamp their standards.

Ranking Republican on House Education and Labor Committee, John Kline, is lukewarm about the administration’s proposal to make Title I funding contingent on states adopting college- and career-ready standards.

• He worries that it is the federal government exerting too much control on state and local education, and said that if the administration came out with national standards, “you’d have a rebellion” among House Republicans.
  • He said he’s not opposed to states working together to come up with common standards.
• He also shared a broad list of Republican principles (list), which include
  • Restoring local control, which would be allowing states and districts to set curriculum testing systems and academic standards
  • Empowering parents to play a greater role in selecting their children’s “learning environment”
  • Remove the “onerous federal requirements” on teachers to allow them to operate with greater autonomy
  • “Protecting taxpayers” by eliminating federal programs that don’t work.

February 1: Obama Administration releases his FY 2011 budget, signaling priorities for the ESEA reauthorization.

• He wants to get rid of Adequate Yearly Progress, replacing it with college- and career-ready standards
• The budget is an increase of $900M from FY 2010, to $49.7B.
  • Includes a $3B increase in competitive funding for ESEA, including $1.35B to continue Race to the Top plus $500M for the Investing in Innovation Fund.
  • Includes $950M in competitive grants to states and school districts that build comprehensive systems to recruit, train, prepare, retain and reward effective teachers and principals.
  • Includes $250M for Promise Neighborhoods to help communities create a support system around schools (health programs, pre-kindergarten, college counseling).

• It includes a proposal to consolidate more than a dozen curriculum programs into three broader competitive funds that emphasize: literacy, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), and a “well-rounded” education.
  • The STEM program would not consolidate programs it would create a new program to replace the $181M Mathematics and Science Partnerships program, and its price tag would grow to $300.A number of the consolidations would affect programs popular with Congress, such as Reading is Fundamental and Teaching American History, which raised concerns from Sens. Byrd, D-W.Va., Alexander, R-Texas, Young, R-Alaska, and Johnson, R-Texas,.
    

Source: Ed Week

December 7: Center on Education Policy released a report that found that the strategies that the Department of Education uses to turnaround failing schools are ineffective.

• The report studied what 23 school districts and 48 schools in six states learned during the past five years, and found that the five strategies did not offer much help to schools that were trying to improve after five or more years of failing to make AYP targets.

December 2: Department of Education circulates a PowerPoint presentation outlining its goals for the reauthorization of the ESEA (PDF).

September-December: Ed Dept. holds forums aimed at laying the groundwork for the reauthorization of the ESEA.

• In one forum, the department elicited ideas from a number of special populations—English Language Learners, special education students and homeless children—to find out how they want to see the law reshaped.
• In another forum, the department met with representatives of Native American tribes, who said that they they were interested in being able to apply for Race to the Top and that they needed a substantial infusion of federal resources to help their schools.
• In the kick-off forum, the department met with more than 200 advocates, including school superintendents, representatives of community organizations, the business community, union, and proponents of arts education and public school facilities.
  • Duncan said at that meeting that the reauthorization was a “high priority,” and said that while there is good about NCLB (the idea of holding schools accountable for showing annual progress, and for showing gains for racial ethnic and other subgroups), the criticism that NCLB unfairly labeled many schools as failures even when they are making progress is true, as is the criticism that NCLB places too much emphasis on test scores.

September 9: Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, assumes chairmanship of the Senate HELP committee, putting him an important role in the reauthorization effort.

Source: Ed Week

August 26: Sec. Duncan outlines plan for a $3.5B Title I school improvement fund. States would be able to award grants to districts that agree to adopt one of the four following models

• Turnaround Model: Replacing the principal and at least 50% of the 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 or management organization or an educational management organization selected through a rigorous review process. The restart school would be required to admit any former student who wishes to attend.
• School closure: District would close a failing school and enroll the students who attended that school in high-achieving schools in the area.
• Transformational Model: District would address four specific areas
  • Developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, which includes replacing the former principal
  • Implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies
  • Extending learning and teacher planning time and creating community-oriented schools
  • Providing operating flexibility and sustained support.

Districts would have a big incentive to adopt either of the first two models, because states could seek a waiver to allow them to restart the NCLB school improvement clock, and they would no longer be required to provide public school choice or SES.

Source: Ed Week

March 10: President Obama gives a speech outlining the details of his education redesign agenda

• Expand teacher incentive pay programs, as well as insist on developing new processes to get rid of ineffective educators
• Call for states to voluntarily adopt more rigorous standards.
• Improve professional development and mentoring for new and less-effective teachers
• Call for states to promote critical thinking, problem solving and other 21^st Century skills, and call for states to improve their assessments.
• Prevent drop-outs.
• Support for charter schools, and advocate for lifting or increasing charter school limits
• Expand pre-kindergarten.