End It, Don’t Mend It: What to Do with No Child Left Behind

CATO Institute

EXCERPT from Executive Summary, September 5, 2007

by Neal McCluskey and Andrew J. Coulson

"Virtually all of those analyses have assumed that the law [No Child Left Behind] should and will be reauthorized, disagreeing only over how it should be revised. They have accepted the law's premises without argument: that government-imposed standards and bureaucratic "accountability" are effective mechanisms for improving American education and that Congress should be involved in their implementation...

"We find that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective in achieving its intended goals, has had negative unintended consequences, is incompatible with policies that do work, is at the mercy of a political process that can only worsen its prospects, and is based on premises that are fundamentally flawed. We further conclude that NCLB oversteps the federal government's constitutional limits treading on a responsibility that, by law and tradition, is reserved to the states and the people. We therefore recommend that NCLB not be reauthorized and that the federal government return to its constitutional bounds by ending its involvement in elementary and secondary education."

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Get Congress Out of the Classroom

The New York Times

By DIANE RAVITCH

October 3, 2007

EXCERPT:

The main goal of the law ¬ that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 ¬ is simply unattainable. The primary strategy ¬ to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year ¬ has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools. Unfortunately, the Congressional leaders in both parties seem determined to renew the law, probably after next year’s presidential election, with only minor changes. But No Child Left Behind should be radically overhauled, not just tweaked.

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Proficiency Illusion

National Review

By Liam Julian

October 4, 2007

EXCERPT:

"One of the biggest flaws with NCLB, for example, is its insistence that all students - 100 percent - be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That won’t happen, of course. But no politician has the stomach to amend this irrational goal to a more manageable 70 or 80 percent, fearing that inevitable question: “Which 20 percent children don’t you care about?”

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Making No Child Left Behind Worse

The Heritage Foundation

By Dan Lips

EXCERPT:

An early draft of the new NCLB bill suggests that congressional leaders are working to make the already flawed program worse. As is well known, No Child Left Behind's problems are myriad. The law dramatically increased federal authority in education, eroding state and local control and imposing a heavy bureaucratic burden on school systems across the country. Its high-stakes testing requirements created a strong incentive for states to engage in a "race to the bottom" by weakening standards and making tests easier to pass. And few children have benefited from NCLB's very weak school choice options. These lackluster reforms were purchased with dramatic increases in federal spending. But even the current version of No Child Left Behind is significantly better than what Congress is now discussing.

School advocates worry that inaction may extend current law for 3 years.

By David J. Hoff

Education Week

Published in Print: November 7, 2007

For all the discord over the No Child Left Behind Act, supporters and critics agree on one thing: It should be fixed, and quickly.

Now it’s looking increasingly likely that Congress won’t make much progress in addressing the law’s flaws this year, endangering the prospects that the task will be completed before President Bush leaves office.

Efforts to revise the law are mired in backroom negotiations in both the House and the Senate and show no signs of gaining the momentum necessary to ensure completion of the reauthorization in 2008.

With Congress’ agenda filled with other tasks, including a potentially protracted fight with President Bush over spending on education and other domestic programs, it will be difficult for lawmakers to meet their self-imposed goals of ensuring passage of NCLB bills in both the House and the Senate this year, followed by a compromise version the two chambers can approve in early 2008.

“It is unlikely that we will be able to get a bill off the House floor this year,” Tom Kiley, a spokesman for Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said in an e-mail. “However, we continue to work hard on the legislation, and we continue to meet with Republicans and education organizations.”

In the Senate, there is more optimism about passing an NCLB bill in 2007.

“We’re negotiating [and] still hopeful it can get done this year,” said Melissa Wagoner, the spokeswoman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Deadline Looms

Despite wide agreement that the NCLB needs revision, negotiating which changes to make will not be easy.

Lawmakers are “trying to find the center … in a way that preserves what’s meaningful in the law but doesn’t lose what makes it worthwhile,” said Gary M. Huggins, the director of the Commission on No Child Left Behind, a private, bipartisan panel organized by the Aspen Institute that proposed a long list of changes to the law in February. “That’s a heavy political lift.”

But, Mr. Huggins added, it’s important that Congress make progress on the reauthorization soon. He and other supporters of the law acknowledge that its accountability rules need to be tweaked, such as by using students’ academic growth over time, rather than comparisons of different cohorts of students passing through a given grade, to gauge schools’ and districts’ progress.

Renewal Efforts in 2007

Significant events this year for reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act:
• Jan. 8: President Bush marks the fifth anniversary of signing the law by meeting with the chairmen of Congress’ education committees and urging them to produce a bill to renew the law this year.

• Jan. 24: The day after the president’s State of the Union address, the Department of Education releases its “blueprint” for NCLB reauthorization, proposing to give vouchers to students in persistently low-performing schools.

• March 13: The Senate and House education committees hold a rare joint hearing on general issues facing the NCLB law. Throughout the spring and summer, both panels individually hold hearings on specific issues such as accountability, teacher quality, and supplemental educational services.

• July 30: In a speech at the National Press Club, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House education committee, says the law “is not fair, not flexible, and is not funded.” He says he wants his committee to approve a reauthorization bill by the end of September.

• Aug. 28: Rep. Miller and his Republican counterpart release the first installment of a draft bill to reauthorize the measure, covering Title I of the law. A draft bill covering other sections is released Sept. 6.

• Oct. 15: President Bush says he would veto any NCLB bill that would “weaken” the law’s accountability requirements.

• Nov. 1: The month begins with no formal committee action on the next version of NCLB and little time left on the congressional calendar in 2007. Political experts say it would be difficult for Congress to complete reauthorization while the political world is focused on the presidential nominating process.

SOURCE: Education Week

If such changes aren’t made soon, he and others predict, too many schools may be unfairly tagged under the federal law as needing improvement.

Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress in raising achievement in reading and mathematics, whether for students overall or certain subgroups, face increasingly tougher sanctions under the law.

Many school officials at the local level and their representatives on Capitol Hill want more significant changes to NCLB than Mr. Huggins does, and they too want Congress to act soon to amend some of the law’s rules and align them with states’ accountability systems.

“At times, it’s very frustrating operating under the dual system that’s been established” under the federal law and Texas’ own legislation, said Randy Mohundro, the superintendent of the 700-student DeLeon Independent School District, about 80 miles west of Fort Worth.

What’s more, Mr. Mohundro said, the law’s requirements for assessing students with disabilities and English-language learners virtually ensure those students’ failure. “We’re causing kids to fail tests that they’re not ready to take,” he said.

At the beginning of the year, President Bush discussed the future of the law with the chairmen and Republican leaders of the House and Senate education committees. They all agreed that they would work toward reauthorizing the law.

Although funding authority for the law technically expired Sept. 30, the law includes a clause that automatically renewed it for the 2008 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

“We’ve all agreed to work together to address some of the major concerns that some people have on this piece of legislation, without weakening the essence of the bill, and get a piece of legislation done,” President Bush said after the Jan. 8 meeting. That occasion marked the fifth anniversary of Mr. Bush’s signing of the law, which he considers one of his top domestic accomplishments.

While the president and congressional leaders at the meeting didn’t announce a timetable for reauthorization, most Washington policy experts said it would be best to finish an NCLB bill in 2007. The presidential-nominating process will begin in earnest with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in early January, and will dominate the political world, making it hard for Congress to pass large, difficult bills such as the NCLB renewal.

If Congress doesn’t act soon, the current version of the law could stay in place for another three years.

Just as it’s difficult for Congress to enact major bills during a campaign season, particularly with a president nearing the end of his second term, the arrival of a new president can also delay the schedule. With a change in the White House, it often takes a year or more to finish detailed bills such as the NCLB law that have been left hanging since the previous administration.

Now ... or 2010?

President Bush signed the NCLB law two weeks before the first anniversary of his inauguration. It took almost two years of President Clinton’s first term for Congress to produce a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The NCLB law is the latest version of the 42-year-old ESEA.

State and local officials don’t like the prospect of waiting until 2010 to make significant changes to the law.

“State officials and others would be disappointed if Congress failed to act on the issue,” said Ronald R. Cowell, the president of the Education Policy and Leadership Center, a Harrisburg, Pa.-based group that works with Pennsylvania schools.

In addition to the headaches of implementing a law they consider flawed, local officials fear that large numbers of schools would be declared in need of improvement under the current NCLB accountability system. Many of them wouldn’t deserve that label, argued Reginald M. Felton, the director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association, in Alexandria, Va.
“What does that do to the public buy-in for public education?” he said.

By Cynthia G. Brown, Robin Chait

Center for American Progress

October 1, 2007

Recent research has demonstrated what we all know—great teachers are critical to high levels of student achievement, particularly for low-income and minority students. Yet today poor and minority children are least likely to get our best teachers.

Congress is considering proposals for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would provide federal incentives to reform the teacher compensation systems in high poverty schools.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller has spent his career fighting to improve the quality of America’s teaching force—and, at the same time, to protect the rights of American workers to join a union. As part of his plan to fix Title II of the No Child Left Behind Act, he and Ranking Committee Member Howard McKeon have proposed a grant program for school districts that pay more to the highest-performing teachers who commit to stay in the highest-need schools for at least four years.

This is an important initiative that deserves support on both sides of the aisle—especially from progressives who believe in strengthening public education for low-income students.
Unfortunately, critics of the proposal have been spreading misleading information that has obscured the facts. Let’s take a look at some of their claims.

CLAIM: The federal government, through this proposal, would mandate the use of test scores to evaluate teachers.

FACT: The new proposal for Title II, Part A does not mandate the use of test scores to evaluate teachers. It is a voluntary grant program in which states and districts can choose whether or not to participate. If they choose to participate, growth in student achievement, rather than absolute student achievement, is used as one measure for evaluating teachers. Consequently, teachers aren’t penalized for teaching low-performing students. And test scores are not the sole measure used to evaluate teachers—classroom evaluations conducted by multiple professional educators must be used as well.

CLAIM: Teacher compensation is a matter of collective bargaining subject to state and local law and not federal law.

FACT: The proposed Title II provides protections for collective bargaining—it does not override it. Employment contracts are negotiated and agreed to at the local level and are subject to state law.

CLAIM: Decisions about how to evaluate teachers should be made at the local, not federal level.

FACT: The Title II proposal requires districts to design their own evaluation programs working in collaboration with teachers. While the programs are subject to some general guidelines, most of the decisions about how teachers are evaluated will be made at the local level.

Moreover, the federal role in education is and should be about addressing issues of educational equity and ensuring that students in high-poverty schools receive a high-quality education. Performance pay is one tool districts can use to attract outstanding teachers to high-poverty schools. Many districts will welcome this federal support.

CLAIM: Performance pay programs are premature because methods to determine the value that individual teachers add to student learning haven’t been thoroughly researched and evaluated.

FACT: Performance pay is still a new idea, but the record from recent research and experiments around the country is encouraging. Recent summaries of research on performance pay programs demonstrate that these programs have positive effects on student achievement.[i] An evaluation of 130 schools participating in the Teacher Advancement Project, a comprehensive professional pay system that includes pay for successful performance, found that these schools are now getting better results than similar schools.[ii] Programs developed in consultation with teachers in Denver and Minnesota are also proving effective and popular among teachers.

Until we find a better way to attract and retain great teachers in our highest-poverty schools, we need to keep trying promising reforms, including performance pay.

CLAIM: Attention and resources are better spent on reforming the whole school, improving working conditions for teachers, and providing professional development.

FACT The proposed Title II does provide funding for professional development. Part B is a large formula grant program for states that support professional development activities in the neediest schools. Moreover, districts that participate in the Part A performance pay program are also required to improve working conditions for teachers. Title I of NCLB provides significant funding for whole school improvement.

CLAIM: Performance pay programs will spark unhelpful competition among teachers and create a disincentive for them to collaborate and share information.

FACT: Research has found that performance pay programs do not create negative, competitive environments if the programs are designed appropriately and with teacher input. Moreover, nothing in the performance pay provisions in the Title II proposal stops districts from providing awards to all teachers at schools that show gains, not just to individual teachers. As we know from endeavors ranging from military service to athletics, commitment to the team and recognition of individual excellence are perfectly compatible.

Democrats, Republicans and teachers see flaws in Calif.'s Rep. Miller's proposal to renew the 2001 education law. He's not giving up.

By Nicole Gaouette

Los Angeles Times

October 30, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has never been one to back away from a brawl -- he once warned an adversary that if he wanted to fight, it was going to take a while, so he'd better bring lunch. But as Miller pushes to renew the landmark education law known as No Child Left Behind, he faces so many fights that the fate of the bill is increasingly in doubt.

As chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Miller is sparring with Republicans who see his proposed changes as an unacceptable watering down of the law's core standards.

Teachers object to his proposal to link pay to performance.

Even his fellow Democrats -- particularly freshmen who campaigned against it and members of the Congressional Black Caucus -- are giving him a hard time, largely for not doing enough to soften the law's most rigid requirements.

Some critics of the law say the emphasis on math and English testing has squeezed teaching time for history, science and other subjects. Others say that the law is too strict and punishes schools that are doing a fairly good job.

"People have a very strong sense that the No Child Left Behind Act is not fair, that it is not flexible and that it is not funded," Miller said in a recent speech. "And they are not wrong. The question is what we are going to do next."

The 2001 law, President Bush's hallmark domestic achievement, is supposed to be renewed every five years, although it remains in effect even if lawmakers fail to do that.

Democrats pledged to rewrite it this year, but time is short and political tensions are high. Congress plans to adjourn for the year in a few weeks. And some Democrats are loath to give Bush a victory on No Child Left Behind when he refused to compromise on the Iraq war.

The administration has also made clear it wants just minimal changes.

No Child Left Behind was designed to end what the president called the "soft bigotry of low expectations" by forcing schools to track data on low-income and minority students and holding the schools accountable if those pupils did not do well. Schools also have to show that all students are making adequate yearly progress in math and English, or face tough sanctions.

Miller drafted 1,036 pages of proposed changes with the committee's lead Republican, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of Santa Clarita. But as Miller has tweaked that proposal to appeal to Democrats and teachers, he has lost Republicans.

The balance he seeks is between those who think the law's standards are too rigid and those who want them as tightly defined as possible.

A 33-year veteran of the House, Miller is known for his pragmatism, his ability to make a deal and his close ties to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), all of which may help him find an answer in the few weeks he has left.

"We're certainly not in full agreement," Miller said, mentioning talks with committee Republicans. "Not between my caucus and their caucus, not between Mr. McKeon and myself. Whether we can reach an agreement remains to be seen. We're pushing as hard as we can."

McKeon said he was hopeful that he and Miller could reach a compromise, but he expressed concern "that some provisions in the draft would weaken accountability, allowing schools to mask a lack of achievement in the fundamentals of reading and math and obscure the information provided to schools and communities."

For Miller, who has made children a focus of his career and has long advocated greater teacher accountability, working on the first No Child Left Behind bill was a natural cause. A staunch liberal, he was an odd partner for Bush, but they worked closely enough for the president to dub the burly former football player "Big George."

In the five years since Miller and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) helped write and pass No Child Left Behind, they complain, the administration has never fully funded the law in a way that would help schools meet their additional burdens. Republicans counter that few laws are fully funded.

The law has frustrated some parents and teachers who dislike its effect in local schools.

Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Md.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, has told Miller that his draft continues to overemphasize standardized tests.

The cost, Wynn says, includes "extraordinary pressure placed on students and the loss of important instruction in music, art and other elements of a well-rounded education."

Some critics say that too many schools are sanctioned under the law. Schools that fail to meet goals for three years must offer students free tutoring or the chance to switch schools. After five years of failure, the law mandates, a school must be restructured with a new staff or new leadership or be converted to a charter school.

Miller's draft bill would broaden measurements of students and schools -- for instance, letting states measure how much students improve over a year and not just whether they meet the bar set by No Child Left Behind.

Miller also wants to expand the standards by which schools are judged beyond math and English scores -- a shift McKeon strongly opposes. Under Miller's proposal, up to 15% of an elementary school's evaluation could be based on assessments of history, science, and civics and government classes. For high schools, rates for graduation, dropouts, attendance and college enrollment could be considered too.

Some of the strictest sanctions would be relaxed under Miller's bill. For example, it would loosen a rule that puts an otherwise successful school on probation if a small group within it -- such as learning-disabled children -- fails to meet the standards.

The draft would also change the way English-language learners are evaluated, allowing them to be tested in their native language for up to five years instead of the current three years, and permitting a two-year extension for some. Republicans say this would mean a child who spoke no English could enter the public school system in fifth grade and graduate from high school without ever being evaluated in English.

Teachers unions have objected to Miller's proposal to allow high-needs school districts to give $10,000 bonuses to outstanding teachers and up to $12,500 for teachers of math, science, special education and other subjects that are short of instructors. Criteria for the awards would be developed with input from the unions.

Critics of the unions say teachers are trying to avoid accountability. The unions say Miller's plan -- which McKeon backs -- is not workable.

"You can be a better teacher than I am, but based on conditions that you have to work in, it makes it much more difficult for you to do the same job," said National Education Assn. President Reginald Weaver. "Plus, paying teachers based on student performance hasn't really made a difference in how students achieve."

In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans are in talks about the bill, and Kennedy hopes to begin formal discussions in the education committee in the next few weeks.

Miller, meanwhile, continues to search for a compromise that can win enough support to pass the House.

"We would be wrong to waver when it comes to the existing goals and standards of the No Child Left Behind law," he said. "We would also be wrong if we failed to respond to the serious concerns with the law raised by people who sincerely care about America's educational future."

Bridging Differences

Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have found themselves at odds on policy over the years, but they share a passion for improving schools. Bridging Differences will offer their insights on what matters most in education.

October 30, 2007

This Is Not Good Education

Dear Deb,

There are times when I feel that we are on the same wavelength, and times when I know we are not. Right now, my frustration is multiplied because in the course of your last mini-essay, I found myself alternately agreeing and disagreeing with your assertions.

I said that many people who have spoken out about the recent round of NAEP scores seem not to have read the report in which the scores were embedded. I expressed the wish that the commentators would take the trouble to read the report before characterizing what they read in the newspapers, which is third-hand at best. This observation sent you into musing about how the original sources themselves are “an interpretation of data,” and how we all rely on the writers that we trust—or happen to agree with.

But that was not my point. The NAEP data are an original source for those who wish to discuss the latest round of national tests. They are not an “interpretation of data.” They are the data. I assume that you mean to say that you are unimpressed by NAEP, that you do not like the content of the NAEP frameworks or the methodology of the NAEP assessments. That is fair enough. But that is a different discussion from the one I raised.

Policymakers in Washington and the state capitols are influenced by the every-other-year reports from NAEP about state and national progress. It is your right to dismiss NAEP out of hand, but the people making important decisions about education policy are on a different trajectory. They look at the numbers and they see a reality that you dismiss as trivial and unimportant. Maybe you are right and they are wrong.

My point is that if public policy is going to be affected by NAEP—and I believe it is (and should be)—then at least the people who write about the NAEP scores should read the data and not rely on second-hand or third-hand accounts. Like the tests or hate them, they are the best measure we have right now. As the recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (“The Proficiency Illusion”) showed, the state tests vary widely and randomly in terms of their expectations and standards.

As I said in my last post, the progress on NAEP in most areas has been slight or insignificant from 2003-2007. I take this to mean that NCLB has had trivial effects on student achievement in reading and math, the subjects tested every other year. Now that the president and the U.S. Department of Education have made it their business to show that federal legislation can and will raise test scores, every release of NAEP data is accompanied by a press statement from the U.S. Secretary of Education that magnifies slight gains as huge achievements.

This is troublesome. It is troublesome because the federal government’s role as the honest, impartial collector and distributor of information gets corrupted when it acts as a cheerleader. And it is troublesome because it is unrealistic to expect test scores to make major leaps in a few years. When they do, one should suspect chicanery of some kind.

NAEP shines a light on state testing practices, as the Fordham report shows. Many states are reporting unrealistic leaps in achievement and high levels of proficiency to satisfy the absurd demand of NCLB for a trajectory that will bring every child to "proficiency" by the year 2014. NAEP shows how unlikely it is that any state will meet that goal and how inflated most of the states' claims of achievement are.

You make a transition from national testing to the dangers of a national curriculum. We have discussed this often. Like you, I would like to see schools where children have time to build, to create, to explore, to experiment, to play. I would like to see kids in the primary grades building castles and fortresses and stores with blocks. But unlike you, I don’t think this kind of playful learning is at odds with a national curriculum.

What is really frightening today—due in large measure to NCLB—is that we have a national testing mania without any curriculum at all. So now our schools are obsessed with preparing to take tests, getting good scores on tests, and then starting the test prep all over again. Out the window goes any thoughtful or playful engagement with history, literature, or the arts, as well as time for physical education (in many New York City schools, children are lucky to have one period a week for physical education). This is outrageous. This is not good education.

So here is where we find our differences and we find our agreements. Unlike you, I am not frightened by a national curriculum and national testing; I believe we already have both, supplied by commercial publishers of textbooks and tests. And what we have is low-level and antithetical to good education. Where we agree is that we have a vision of what good education is and should be. Even if we don’t agree on every detail, we do agree that what we have now is far from good education.

Diane

October 25, 2007

What Frightens Me About a National Curriculum

Dear Diane,

Your frustration about folks avoiding original sources is reasonable. Especially when it's actually easily available. But, of course, the "original source" itself is an interpretation of data. In short, we fall back on easier, less time-consuming ways. ("We" being me. See the back-and-forth comments about—presumably—the same data between Erin Johnson and myself.)

In fields that I don't feel deeply connected to, I mostly look for the experts I "trust". There's no way to be an expert in all the subjects I need to have an opinion about! So I go along with the consensus in some cases (like climate) and rely on "my" experts (generally via the magazines I read) on foreign policy and economics—e.g. Richard Rothstein, or Paul Krugman. So why should I expect folks to do otherwise about schooling?

But it's why it is so easy to get myths out there into the public sphere as though they were facts. In our field, there's the myth about the good old days. It rests in part on how often opinion leaders of all political stripes refer casually to the "decline" of public education; ditto for the assumption that most other nations are doing better at something called "schooling" or "education" without our having stopped to define what either means. We fall back on test scores whose contents and assumptions few question, whose methodology even education reporters know little if anything about, not to mention the narrowness of the measures—or the way scores are set. We use a language that assumes that being well-educated is a zero-sum game, in which the progress of others has to injure us.

We trust these assumptions because to think otherwise would require going against the grain and becoming an expert oneself. Rothstein's piece in American Prospect is not the first masterly complicating of the economic/schooling myths, but precisely by complicating it he loses part of his audience. For example, he reminds us that we "forget" that there's a 20-30-year gap between when the tests are administered and when that age group has an impact on the economy. In the information age, resources are also not evenly distributed. While, for example, FairTest—the only national organization that is in the business of being skeptical about test data, has a budget of less than half a million, the three or four leading testing agencies each spend many millions on promoting the idea that tests are the one true measure. (Disclosure: I'm on the board of FairTest.)

It leads me to wish we had a very different way of spending those 13-20 schooling years—preparing people to assess the events that surround them, independently sorting out pros and cons. I'm for the "liberal arts"—but not at the expense of "making sense" of the world around us, those "habits of mind" we build our curriculum around at schools associated with the Coalition of Essential Schools. The traditional liberal arts might even support such habits, if we designed them with this in mind. It would, for example, take a very different definition of advanced mathematics. The public's much-criticized lack of interest in advanced math may, in fact, betray their good sense, not their bad. Calculus-driven math may be foolish-driven math, that mis-prepares us, leaving us disarmed before the realities of our world. Perhaps a "statistics-driven" math would be equally tough and "advanced" but more suitable for a democratic citizenry?

In short, what frightens me about a national curriculum is not merely that I think it's more exciting to teach based on the particular interests and events that swirl around the young but because I think I can even "cover" more stuff of importance if I begin with what grabs our interest—from dinosaurs, mummies, castles, to modern Iraq or climate claims. I can better engage kids with the world they live in—including its history—if I make that the central aim of my work. Diane, it seems unlikely we can get a national consensus around the kind of experimentation that many of us think needs to take place. Nor should we! But suppose I'm right, that more "coverage" of the traditional fare won't make us either scientifically more sophisticated or mathematically more at home in this world? I'm not interested in banning traditionalism, but I'm also not interested in prohibiting us from the kind of exploration that needs to take place. Nor do I want to leave it all to private schools to experiment with the age-old conundrums. I think there are responsible ways to engage in this work, not just in private but also in public schools.

Our scientific future depends, I believe, on our remaining a nation that appreciates "play"—the non-utilitarian (or at least not immediately so) mindset that we're born with. We are systematically cutting ourselves off from the roots of human intellectual inventiveness. We need to find the equivalent of a generation-old practice of taking cars and radios apart to see how they work and building fortresses out of whatever is on hand. Computer-programmed games can't replace the old chemistry sets. Finding the modern equivalents requires us to experiment, not to return to the 1896 Ivy League consensus, great as it was. Some of us were lucky to have had both, but too many kids today have neither. They thus develop an acquiescent mindset or else a merely rebellious one, but an insufficiently curious and self-disciplined one.

As I meet with teachers and principals and parents I hear a lot of anguish and fear. Of course my sample is biased, but…. Read Dan Brown's book, "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle" for a moving account of why we may be entering an era of temp teachers.

Deb

Education Week

Reading Aid Seen to Lag in ELL Focus

By Mary Ann Zehr

Educators and experts across the country who work with English-language learners are moving toward a consensus that the federal Reading First program needs to be refined to become more effective for children acquiring English.

Administrators in several big-city districts with large numbers of such students are stepping up their training of teachers on how best to teach second-language learners to read under the No Child Left Behind Act’s flagship reading program, which serves grades K-3.

Last school year, the 410,000-student Chicago public school system established a new position at the district level for a bilingual specialist to coach teachers at the city’s 17 Reading First schools with large numbers of ELLs on how to tailor reading instruction to such students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, where 38 percent of the 708,000 students are ELLs, started an institute for Reading First teachers this school year on reading strategies for ELLs.
And since last school year the 1.1 million-student New York City school system has been providing workshops and coaching to Reading First teachers and administrators on the same topic.

The U.S. Department of Education’s 11-member Reading First Advisory Committee has enough concerns about whether ELLs are getting what they need under the $1 billion-a-year program that it set up a subcommittee to look into the issue last week, according to Kris D. Gutiérrez, a committee member and a professor of social-research methodology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“My opinion is we have a long ways to go to meet the needs of English-language learners under the current policies and practices of Reading First,” Ms. Gutiérrez said. Among the program’s problems, she said, are that students’ reading skills are tested before they learn English, the literacy curriculum is too narrow, and teachers are not prepared to work with ELLs.

Education Department officials, asked last week if Reading First is working for ELLs, said “state-reported annual performance data show that many Reading First sites are showing improvements in reading fluency and comprehension for their English-language-learner students,” according to an e-mail message from Elaine Quesinberry, a spokeswoman for the department.

New Language

Concern about how to refine reading instruction for English-language learners also has spread to Capitol Hill.

A draft bill to reauthorize the NCLB law, put forth by the House Education and Labor Committee, calls for Reading First programs to be “linguistically appropriate”—a term not included in the current federal education law.

Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, a Texas Democrat and a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was one of the lawmakers who helped get the phrase into the draft, according to Elizabeth Esfahani, his press secretary. The phrase is mentioned 11 times in the draft.

A number of reading experts and educators said that even though “linguistically appropriate” is a vague phrase, its addition to the law would likely be beneficial for English-learners.

“The advantage of the new [legislative] language is it’s going to nudge states and districts, as they submit their plans, to stress more how teacher training and coaching will lead to teaching English-language development better,” said Russell Gersten, the executive director of the Instructional Research Group, an educational research institute in Long Beach, Calif.
Mr. Gersten headed a panel for the Education Department to write a“practice guide” for education of English-language learners, released in July, and has been a consultant for Houghton Mifflin Company’s reading textbooks.

Margarita Calderón, a professor and research scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, agrees with others who say Reading First has not worked well for ELLs. The additional language “would be an improvement,” she said, “because schools will have to be accountable and show they are doing this in a linguistically appropriate way.”

But, aside from agreeing on the need for more teacher training, educators’ views of how Reading First needs to be improved sometimes contradict each other, particularly on whether students’ native languages should be used to teach reading.

Mr. Gersten said teachers should teach English structures, such as “compare and contrast” or “cause and effect,” and help students practice them. It’s also helpful for teachers to preview reading lessons with students to ensure that they know what a story is about, he said. Pictures or Web sites can be useful for previewing, Mr. Gersten noted.

But he said it would be a mistake for the words “linguistically appropriate” to steer schools to use students’ native languages for reading instruction. He hasn’t found studies concluding that bilingual education is more effective than English-only methods to be persuasive.

On the other hand, Miriam Calderón, who is not related to Margarita Calderón and is a policy analyst at the Washington-based National Council of La Raza, said her group lobbied members of Congress to add linguistically appropriate to Reading First particularly for that purpose.

And Johns Hopkins’ Margarita Calderón believes that including the term “linguistically appropriate” in the law could encourage the teaching of reading to ELLs through their native languages at the same time they are learning English.

Varying State Policies

While reading experts favored the proposed changes in Reading First for ELLs, state education officials in several states with large populations of English-learners were indifferent. Officials in Arizona, California, and New Jersey all said they already are implementing Reading First in a linguistically appropriate way.

Their approaches, all approved by the Education Department, differ widely, however. State plans vary in how they implement the Reading First program for English-language learners.

Arizona

• Requires instruction and materials to be in English.

• No approved list of materials school districts must choose from.

California

• Requires school districts to select materials from an approved list that includes textbooks in Spanish and English. No separate textbooks designed for English-language learners.

• No separate block of time for English-language development.

New Jersey

• Requires that schools provide reading instruction in Spanish if they have a critical mass of Spanish speakers who are ELLs.

• Requires school districts to select materials from an approved list that includes textbooks in Spanish and English and has separate English-language development textbooks tailored for ELLs.

• In addition to the regular 90-minute reading block, schools must teach English-language development to ELLs for a minimum of 30 minutes each day.

SOURCES: State education departments in Arizona, California, and New Jersey

New Jersey, for instance, requires that Reading First schools provide instruction to ELLs in Spanish, while Arizona requires that all Reading First instruction be in English. California permits schools to use Spanish instruction for Reading First in bilingual classrooms that meet state restrictions for using that educational method.

New Jersey also requires schools to select Reading First materials from an approved list that includes core materials in Spanish or English and has separate materials for teaching English-language development to ELLs.

But California has not adopted separate materials for ELLs, and the state board of education’s refusal to enable such an adoption is controversial. In the state’s next adoption process, however, textbook publishers will have to meet specified criteria to address the needs of ELLs. For example, they will need to provide ideas for teachers to preview reading lessons for ELLs.
Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, the executive director of Californians Tomorrow, a coalition of 17 groups that advocate in behalf of ELLs, said the increasing gap in reading achievement in California between native speakers of English and ELLs demonstrates that the nearly 6-year-old Reading First program isn’t working.

As evidence, she said the achievement gap in reading between native speakers of English and ELLs in Los Angeles schools, the state’s school system with the most ELLs, has stayed the same or widened from last year to this year at every grade level tested. Ms. Spiegel-Coleman, who just retired as director of the multilingual-academic-support unit of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, criticized the Open Court Reading materials used for the program, and also said the instruction gave students little chance to practice English. The core language arts series is published by SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Julie Slayton, the executive director of strategic planning and accountability for the Los Angeles school district, said the Open Court materials are high-quality, but noted that the quality of instruction “varies widely.”

David L. Brewer III, the superintendent for LAUSD, said in an e-mail message that, like any other materials, Open Court “gets results when skillful teachers use it properly.” He said the Open Court program “will need to be modified somewhat to better accommodate ELL students, especially teacher professional development,” which he expects to happen in the next textbook-adoption cycle.

The addition of the phrase “linguistically appropriate” to the federal education law, Ms. Spiegel-Coleman believes, would force California officials and school districts to do more for ELLs.
“California has a reading initiative, and Reading First is just more of the same—more assessments, coaches, more intensity, more monitoring.” She added, “You can’t do the same old thing. If you have kids who don’t speak English in Reading First who aren’t doing well, you have to do something else.”

by John Cronin, Michael Dahlin, Deborah Adkins, G. Gage Kingsbury
10/04/2007


"The Proficiency Illusion" reveals that the tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

The report, a collaboration of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association, contains several major findings:

States are aiming particularly low when it comes to their expectations for younger children, setting

elementary students up to fail as they progress through their academic careers. The central flaw in NCLB is that it allows each state to set its own definition of what constitutes "proficiency."

By mandating that all students reach "proficiency" by 2014, it tempts states to define proficiency downward.

Although there has not been a "race to the bottom," with the majority of states dramatically lowering standards under pressure from NCLB, the report did find a "walk to the middle," as some states with high standards saw their expectations drop toward the middle of the pack.
In most states, math tests are consistently more difficult to pass than reading tests.

Eighth-grade tests are sharply harder to pass in most states than those in earlier grades (even after taking into account obvious differences in subject-matter complexity and children's academic development).

As a result, students may be performing worse in reading, and worse in elementary school, than is readily apparent by looking at passing rates on state tests.

Click here to read the full report.

October 3, 2007

Contact: Heather Reams

Director of Communications

Association of American Educators

1-877-385-6264

heather@aaeteachers.org

Teacher Survey Sheds New Light on Performance Pay Debate

Alexandria, VA—Today the Association of American Educators (AAE), the largest national independent non-union teachers’ association, released its second survey on No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Survey results showed distinct differences in opinion with teacher labor unions, particularly with regard to performance pay and the use of “growth models” for accountability, both of which give teachers credit for student academic gains made during the school year.

The 1,286 respondents, all of whom are active classroom educators, appear to agree with the language that is currently in a draft bill of NCLB in Congress that encourages districts to implement some kind of performance-base pay system for teachers.

“Teachers know better than anyone what parts of NCLB work and what parts need to be improved or removed all together,” said Gary Beckner, AAE Executive Director. “This survey shows, however, that there are thousands of teachers who do not agree with the agenda for NCLB that is being pushed by the teacher unions.”

Some results of the survey are as follows:

70% of respondents say that traditional compensation systems based simply on the highest degree earned and time in the system should be improved upon; 63% say they would accept additional compensation based on the tested academic growth of their students over a school year; 59% say they should receive a bonus if their students achieve higher student achievement gains than other teachers teaching the same type of students; Members stated that student achievement gains and classroom evaluations were the top two measures of their work.

“Clearly educators want to be evaluated and compensated just like other professions,” said Beckner. “If teachers want different pay options to reward them for good work, they should have them.”

When teachers were asked about “growth models” for accountability, 81% supported adding a growth model component to NCLB.

A growth model gives credit to teachers and schools for academic gains each student makes from their initial baseline during the school year. This is especially important for teachers working with students who begin the school year several grade levels behind. Most educators agree that this is a more fair and accurate representation of a child's true academic progress.

The majority of teachers – 84% – agree with both the state and federal criteria for Highly Qualified Teacher status.

The responses were not all positive. Teachers believe that it is an unrealistic goal for all students to be on grade level by 2014.

Complete results of the survey, which ended on September 17, can be found at http://www.aaeteachers.org/AAE%20Survey%20October%202007.pdf

Dedicated to the academic and personal growth of every student, the Association of American Educators is the premier educators’ network that advances the teaching profession through teacher advocacy and protection, professional development and promoting excellence in education so that educators receive the respect, recognition and reward they deserve. AAE has members in all 50 states and welcomes professionals from all education entities. www.aaeteachers.org

They are giving schools, teachers and students more reasons than ever--there were already too many--to neglect the humanities, to marginalize the arts, and to skimp on the social sciences. Moreover, they miss at least half of the true wellsprings of American competitiveness, which are not just skills but also knowledge, habits of mind, modes of inquiry, traits of character, among others. (For a longer exposition of this point, see our original essay and the longer Fordham volume that we edited, Beyond the Basics.)

The stir we did not anticipate came from friends worried that we had abandoned results-based accountability, turned against testing, and even declared war on standards.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. We support those important education reforms as ardently as ever. But we're also more mindful than ever of the truism that "what gets tested gets taught" and are alarmed that too narrow a conception of what schools are accountable for, by way of results, yields too narrow a definition of what teachers are responsible for imparting to their pupils. Good tests are efficient ways to determine how well students have learned what the curriculum sets forth. (That's why we admire the Advanced Placement exams, for example.) But bad tests, and an over-emphasis on test results at the expense of solid instruction across a balanced curriculum, can lead to damaging ends. There we stand.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Diane Ravitch

Conventional wisdom holds that this landmark law cannot be revamped--though it could probably be extended as is, just to keep the money flowing--absent a fairly broad consensus. Miller and Pelosi could indeed bring a bill before the House and possibly ram it through on a near-straight party line vote (though such a move would likely provoke more Democratic defections than GOP supporters) but it would come unglued in the Senate, where it's essential nowadays to have 60 firm votes for anything controversial. Which this would surely be.

The United States Congress these days is a near-to-dysfunctional institution. It accomplishes little of anything and less of importance. Call me cynical after too many years inside the Beltway but it appears to me that, on any but the most routine matters, lawmakers now act only when at least one of three (overlapping) conditions is met-and not always then. (1) There's a bona fide national crisis (e.g., 9/11, Katrina). (2) There's a huge public outcry. Or (3) there's a full-fledged Washington-style scandal needing to be redressed.

NCLB satisfies none of those conditions. Yes, a flock of educators, a pride of politicians, and a bestiary of policy wonks are unhappy with it, but nobody could claim that a crisis exists. Most people still have scant awareness of it, and there's surely no clamor from the public at large. And it has no Washington-style scandal associated with it. Sure, one could argue that the variability and slackness of state standards is an education scandal, that the unkept promise of public-school choice is a scandal, etc., but that's not the same as saying that someone has walked off with the payroll or is profiteering at children's expense. (To see a true, action-forcing scandal at work, observe what's been happening--and what's been revealed--about college student loans, which may finally lead to reauthorization--four years late--of the Higher Education Act.)

But Congressional dysfunction isn't the whole story. There's also perilously little agreement on what ails NCLB and how to cure it. Indeed, I submit that today there is near-consensus on precisely one point: the desirability of some sort of "growth model" for determining AYP, i.e. the proposition that schools' performance should be judged by examining the additional academic "value" that they add to their pupils rather than (or in addition to) the absolute number of kids reaching a single fixed standard. Here, too, however, even if there's rough agreement at the conceptual level, widespread discord still prevails on just about every element of how growth models should be designed and implemented--and how many places are capable of doing it.

Regarding other aspects of NCLB, there's no shortage of advice. A five foot shelf of books, studies, reports, commission recommendations, etc. is rapidly accumulating. (I plead guilty to having helped contribute half a linear foot or so.) Its very amplitude attests not only to the length and complexity of the law but also to the disputed nature of what, exactly, is awry in NCLB 1.0 and what are the essential attributes of version 2.0. Even more important, underlying all the technical specifics are four immense (my granddaughter would say "hunormous") dilemmas that go to the heart of the matter.

Is NCLB's goal itself naïve and unrealistic? Politicians pledge that no child will be left behind, yet I don't know a single educator who seriously thinks 100 percent of U.S. children can become "proficient" (according to any reasonable definition of that term) by 2014 in reading and math. Indeed, exemptions have already been made for seriously disabled youngsters. In truth, getting American kids from their current 30 percent or so proficient level (using NAEP standards) to 70 or 80 percent would be a remarkable, nation-changing achievement. Yet I can't imagine a lawmaker conceding that this would be worth doing. The first thing hurled back at him would be "which 20 percent of the kids don't matter to you?"

Is the program upside down? It's no surprise that we at Fordham think NCLB 1.0 inverted a fundamental design principle: Congress opted to be tight with regard to means and loose with regard to ends--trusting every state to set its own standards while micro-managing any number of measurement systems and highly prescriptive sequences of school and district interventions. Far better to promulgate a single national standard and assessment system, then trust states, districts and educators to devise their own means of getting there on their own timetables. But half of Congress will recoil in horror from the freedom and flexibility implied therein while the other half will be put off by uniform standards.

Is the architecture usable for this purpose? As Gadfly has noted before, in 1965 it made sense, indeed was practically inevitable, for Uncle Sam to distribute his new education dollars via the traditional structures of state education departments and local school systems. Four decades later, however, the main focus of federal policy is altering the behavior and performance of those very institutions in ways they don't want to be altered (while also still distributing dollars to and through them). It's beyond imagining that the old multi-tiered architecture can satisfactorily handle the new challenges. Yet nobody is thinking creatively about alternative structures by which NCLB's goals might more effectively be pursued.

Can the federal government successfully pull off anything as complex and ambitious as NCLB in so vast and loosely coupled a system as American k-12 education? Unfortunately, the executive branch is as dysfunctional as the legislative. It can't keep our levees strong, our bridges standing, or our airplanes on schedule, much less provide health care to the needy or root out terrorists in our midst. Sure, we ask it to do too much and we're terrible at prioritizing. That said, however, let's face the reality that education is even harder to change because it's so decentralized and so many of its street-level bureaucrats can ignore, veto, or undermine the plans of distant rulemakers.

So long as these monster questions lack agreed-upon answers, I don't see much hope for an NCLB 2.0 that's markedly better than NCLB 1.0.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

High-Achieving Students From Lower-Income Families Fall Behind, Study Finds

By Catherine Gewertz

Education Week

The educational accountability movement’s keen focus on bringing all students to academic proficiency risks leaving behind a group of particularly promising students: high-achieving children from lower-income families, a report released today contends.

The study analyzes national data to track the school performance of about 3.4 million K-12 children who come from households with incomes below the national median but score in the top quartile on nationally normed tests. It finds that they start school with weaker academic skills and are less likely to flourish over the years in school than their peers from better-off families.

Civic Enterprises LLC, a Washington-based research and public-policy group, and the Lansdowne, Va.-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which co-produced the “Achievement Trap” study, urged researchers and policymakers to better understand the dynamics that allow high-achieving, lower-income children to fall behind, and to focus concerted attention on ways to help them.

“By reversing the downward trajectory of their educational achievement, we will not only improve their lives but strengthen our nation by unleashing the potential of literally millions of young people who could be making great contributions to our communities and country,” the report says.

The report’s release coincided with testimony by one of its authors before the education committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on possible revisions to the No Child Left Behind Act. Joshua S. Wyner, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s executive vice president, urged federal lawmakers to broaden the law’s focus so that schools are held accountable for improving the performance of higher-achieving as well as lower-achieving students.

Hobbled From the Start

Higher-achieving children from lower-income families enter school with a disadvantage that shows up in their national test scores, the report says. More than 70 percent of 1st graders who score in the top quartile are from higher-income families, and fewer than three in 10 are from lower-income families.

In the ensuing years, the higher-achieving lower-income children are more likely to lose ground, according to the study. For instance, 44 percent fall out of the top quartile in reading between the 1st and 5th grades, compared with 31 percent of high achievers whose family income is above the national median, which was $48,200 in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
They are also more likely to drop out of high school or not graduate on time than those from economically better-off families, the study found. The difference persists through college and graduate school, with lower-income students less likely to attend the most selective colleges or to graduate.

The report does offer some optimistic notes. Of the higher-achieving students, it says, 93 percent of those from lower-income families, and 97 percent of those from higher-income families, graduate from high school in four years. Those rates are much better than the 70 percent of all students on average that researchers estimate get their diplomas on time. But the data still show too many “unrelenting inequities” that harm the prospects of capable children from lower-income families, the authors say.

The data also suggest the distance still to be traveled in understanding and addressing the dynamics in racial achievement gaps.

Among lower-income students, Asians showed a significantly better chance of staying in the top quartile in math during high school than did other students, and African-American students were the least likely group to rise into that top tier in reading or math, according to the report.
Michelle M. Fine, a professor of social psychology and urban education at the City University of New York, said she welcomed the examination of how economic class can affect children’s education. But addressing the needs of all disadvantaged children, she said, entails a more nuanced examination of how race and class intersect to influence their performance.

“Something is clearly working for those lower-income Asian kids that isn’t working for the lower-income black kids,” she said, referring to the racial-performance breakdowns among lower-income students in the report. “A class-only analysis isn’t going to give us the whole picture.”
Solutions must go beyond the policy thrust advocated in the study, she said, to systemic improvements in districtwide school financing, equitable distribution of highly skilled teachers, and access to quality preschool.

House Plan Embraces Subjects Viewed as Neglected

By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

Education Week

Advocates for broadening the curriculum hope a draft House proposal for reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act will give a boost to history, art, music, and other subjects that they believe have been marginalized in many districts under the 5½-year-old federal law.
The draft of changes to Part A of the Title I program , released by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, RCalif., and key colleagues late last month, features potential incentives for states to test students in core subjects other than those now required—mathematics, reading, and, beginning this school year, science.

“It’s a good start … and encouraging that Congressmen Miller and McKeon are showing sensitivity to the criticism that there has been a narrowing of the curriculum” under No Child Left Behind, said Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, and a former aide to House Democrats. “If school districts can include testing in other subjects [in gauging how well their schools are doing], it allows them to pay more attention to those other areas.”

A report released in July by the CEP, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, found that most districts have significantly increased instructional time in reading and math in the hope of improving student achievement and helping schools meet goals for adequate yearly progress, or AYP, under the federal law. The law requires testing in those two subjects annually in grades 3-8 and once during high school.

As a result of that emphasis, nearly half the nation’s school districts pared down instructional time in other critical subjects by more than two hours each week, according to the report. ("Survey: Subjects Trimmed To Boost Math and Reading," Aug. 1, 2007.)
Other surveys and reports have confirmed that trend.

Grants and Measures
The preliminary House Education and Labor Committee plan would allow states to include student scores from state tests in history and other subjects as additional measures of how schools were performing. Those test scores would be given a fraction of the weight of math and reading results in determining AYP. The use of multiple measures would give states more information on school performance, said Mr. Miller, the chairman of the committee, whose ranking Republican is Mr. McKeon.

“We address the question that’s been raised, … whether NCLB is driving the narrowing of curriculum by school districts responding [to the law] simply by teaching to the test,” Mr. Miller said in a conference call with reporters last week. “Instead of using one multiple-choice test on one day,” he said, “we ought to allow schools to provide additional information that would give a more comprehensive and accurate picture of how schools are doing.”

The discussion draft also proposes a grant program for districts to strengthen instruction in “music and arts, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, history, geography, and physical education and health as an integral part of the elementary and secondary school curriculum.” It does not specify funding levels or say how many grants would be available.
According to Martin West, a professor of education at Brown University in Providence, R.I., who has studied the impact of the NCLB law and state tests on the school curriculum, the prospective grants would likely be less of an inducement to enhancing state testing programs than the multiple-measures provision.

“The testing proposal is potentially important to states that might want to consider testing in other subjects,” he said, “because doing so under the current NCLB creates a divergence between the state system and federal system.” The Miller-McKeon draft plan “would remove an important disincentive,” Mr.West said.

Some educators said they were encouraged by the plan.
“The notion that only very practical training equips you to deal with life and the world that we live in goes against every educational tradition for thousands of years,” said Theodore K. Rabb, a professor emeritus of world history at Princeton University and board chairman of the National Council for History Education, in Westlake, Ohio. Mr. Rabb asked the council’s membership this past summer to write Congress about their concerns over reductions in history education.
“This proposal is the most encouraging single thing that has happened lately,” he said, “that [lawmakers] are beginning to realize that there is a problem.”

Debate Over Merit Pay Heats Up

By The Associated Press in Teacher Magazine

Washington

The head of the nation's largest teacher's union and a top House Democrat had a testy exchange Monday over the inclusion of merit pay in an updated version of the No Child Left Behind education law.

California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, criticized National Education Association President Reg Weaver for rejecting the merit-pay proposal.
The exchange occurred during a hearing into the renewal of the five-year-old education law, which requires annual testing in reading and math and imposes sanctions on schools that fail to hit progress goals.

Miller included the teacher pay plan in draft legislation circulating on Capitol Hill.
The proposal would give bonuses, worth up to $10,000 in most cases, to "outstanding" teachers. The proposal doesn't spell out who would be eligible for the extra money but says raising student test scores must be a factor.

Weaver said that level of detail should be bargained locally, not spelled out by Congress. The NEA has long opposed linking individual student scores to teachers' pay, though many local teachers unions across the country are agreeing to such proposals. Most notable is a popular plan in Denver.

Miller noted that Weaver previously supported teacher-related legislation that included the same merit-pay proposal, but Weaver said the union gave general support for that overall bill, not the pay plan specifically.

That nuance didn't sit well with Miller. Growing visibly angry, he said: "You can dance all around you want. You approved the language."

The union, which has more than 3 million members, is actively lobbying against the draft legislation. The union is influential, particularly with Democrats who often benefit from the NEA's political backing.

"Our members are united and will stand firm in our advocacy for a bill that supports good teaching and learning and takes far greater steps toward creating great public schools for every child," Weaver said during the hearing.

The draft bill also would change the law to allow schools to get credit for tests in subjects other than math and reading. And it would measure the performance of individual students over time rather than comparing the scores of students in a certain grade to students in that grade the year before, a change that is generally popular.

Miller said he hopes the full House will take up the renewal of the law this fall. Senate lawmakers also are in the process of writing legislation.

Sep 06, 2007 by Julie Rose

(KCPW News) The top education official in the nation continues to use Utah's public school system as evidence that No Child Left Behind is necessary. In a speech yesterday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings suggested that Utah officials oppose No Child Left Behind because it judges the state's public schools too harshly.

Associate State Superintendent Brenda Hales bristles: "Every state has a unique population and unique challenges," says Hales. "That's where you get in to trouble - when you have big government trying to dictate how states should perform. It almost becomes a 'Big Brother' situation."

Utah education officials and lawmakers have been vocal in their disdain for federal education mandates found in No Child Left Behind. Secretary Spellings yesterday said states need to embrace the goals of the law rather than making excuses for why it won't work. Hales says the basic goal of improving student performance is worthy.

But Utah officials take issue with the federal government claiming it knows best: "We've always felt like No Child Left Behind's goals are meaningful and essential, but how we meet them should be decided on a state level," says Hales.

Low-income and minority students in Utah continue to lag in basic skills, but Hales says the state is working to address the gap. Federal officials have denied many of Utah's requests for flexibility in how it qualifies teachers and handles school testing.

Utah Congressman Rob Bishop has vowed to fight reauthorization and revisions of No Child Left Behind set for debate next year.

Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge.

September 6, 2007

Spellings Letter; Teacher Quality Draft Later Today

Thanks to the Ed Trust, here's a PDF of the Spellings letter to Miller that she promised yesterday, listing problems she and others have with the M&M discussion draft. Speaking of which, Miller said that Title II and the rest would be posted sometime today, which will help us see whether the teacher quality elements of NCLB are going to be strengthened or -- is such a thing possible? -- weakened. (There's a nod to teacher quality in the form of an attempt to close the equitability loophole in Miller's Title I proposal, according to EdWeek's David Hoff, but if they couldn't do that in 2001 they don't seem likely to take care of it now.)

Weighing Miller's NCLB Proposal

Three different takes on how Cong. Miller's proposal is going over. Compare and contrast:

'No Child' Loopholes Decried Washington Post

Should suburban schools that barely miss federal learning targets be allowed to escape penalties, while inner-city schools that never even hit the dart board are required to give free tutoring and let students transfer to better schools?

Secretary of Education Criticizes Proposal NYT

The education secretary criticized a Congressional proposal to soften provisions of the President’s Bush signature education law.

Spellings Criticizes No Child Proposals AP

The administration and congressional lawmakers agree on one key change. They want schools to measure the performance of individual students over time rather than comparing the scores of students in a certain grade to students in that grade the year before.

New NCLB Bill "Isn't Wonkery," Says Chairman Miller;
Criticisms Are "Hokum"

The public mud-slinging between Spellings and Miller is really heating up. Makes you wonder what they say about each other behind closed doors. And, substantively, it bodes poorly for a strengthening of the current NCLB law.

Responding to Spellings' criticisms read to him by USA Today's Greg Toppo at a conference call with reporters today, Chairman Miller said that what he's trying to do with NCLB isn't just "wonkery" (as Spellings describes it) but rather much-needed changes to an imperfect law. "I know she wants to add confusion and doesn't like the debate," said Miller of Spellings. He also repeatedly mocked the "99.9 percent pure" claim Spellings once made (fire the writer who came up with that one), and called claims that multiple measures would muck up accountability "hokum."

Obviously, Miller's got to do what he's got to do, and -- this sentence is already so vague -- is going to go ahead and do it. But still it's sad to hear him denounce the current NCLB system which he created and defended for so long, now using much the same language as his detractors had (ie, a single test on a single day determining AYP). Such is politics. Somewhere, Joel Packer is smiling.