This is a scary possibility. The rewrite of No Child Left Behind was on track after months of work.
This is from the Washington Post:
— Even the rewrite of the No Child Left Behind education law, which everyone in both parties agrees needs to happen, might now get derailed. “In July, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill while House Republicans approved a GOP version — the closest they’ve ever come to a new law,” Lyndsey Layton writes. A bunch of conservatives opposed the House GOP bill because they don’t want any federal role in public education at all. “But to reach a deal with the Senate that could also win President Obama’s signature, House negotiators are going to have to compromise with Democrats, who insist the federal government must exercise some oversight of K-12 education.” Bob Wise, a former congressman and West Virginia governor who now runs an advocacy group, said the leadership shake-up means that the chances of a conferenced bill getting a lot of Republican votes is “slim to none.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, does this mean your hero and mine – Arne Duncan – gets to still issue those waivers and dictate sound educational reform policy? Maybe the statue will have to wait. I don’t think it’s good form to build a statue while he’s still king of American education, no?
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Open your mind a little. Your loyalty, astuteness, determination and courage are great, but this thing is more complex than you realize. This isn’t business, this is the human mind in development within social constructs and pretenses. And there is so much we still don’t know or understand.
http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F76%2F%3Fuuid%3D54655&cmp=eml-enl-eu-news3
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Open his mind?
What mind?
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My daughter’s teacher asked if we mind her being included in the portfolio of materials provided to obtain national board certification. She assured us it would be anonymous. I am taken back to the arguments made by Virginia’s Attorney General office as to why they couldn’t release SGP data by anonymous student to me. They claimed students might be identified – a FERPA violation – and they stood to lose $250M in federal funds. I can guarantee that any student with a unique first name in my daughter’s grade would be identified in that NBCT process. Her teacher’s school and grade are public information. The portfolio will include first names on the work. Rosters of schools are public information. Thus, apparently, every NBCT portfolio violates FERPA by revealing individual student work that can be traced to the student. Glad to see that board is so interested in protecting student privacy.
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Sorry, Mr. Moron Virginiasgp, but your little boy attack on the NBCT process is just like you: lame, impotent, forever growth stunted, and just plain hilarious.
Of course, any child videotaped would have to be OFF a do-not-videotape list, but any teacher and administer worth their salt going trough this process and overseeing it would have that checked first.
Try your deflated witch hunt somewhere else where people as imbecilic as you might believe in the same the myths your aerosol cranium has concocted . . . .
Oh, and Virginia, lay off the sniffing glue and hostess cupcakes and try purifying your otherwise polluted blood . . . .
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Cx:
Oh, and by the way, Virginia, lay off . . . .
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And the Do Nothing Congress continues. What a punch in the gut to democracy and public education.
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Politics in this country has ruined the way of life for so many of us- those of us who work for a living, pay taxes, take care of our own.
Politics is just another word for trying to screw the other party. Abolish any and all political parties and have people run on who THEY are and what they do.
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Wall Street will have it’s way with us all no matter what. There is no stopping it. I bet John Boehner didn’t quit, but was strategically removed. I’m so deflated by this news. Even our great California governor can’t do much with RttT bribes and blackmails controlling him. I wish we didn’t depend so much on so little federal funding.
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“Wall Street will have IT’S way…”!?! The correct word is ITS, not IT’S!!! Insert eye roll.
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Party affiliations were removed from ballots by law in some places years ago, such as in Chicago in 1999 for all mayoral elections. It made no difference. The Democrats have ruled Chicago since 1931.
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This looks like good news to me. I have never understood the support for the bipartisan federal take over of schools that is enshrined in the ESEA re-writes. It is only a slight improvement at the margins from NCLB. It still requires testing every year in grade school and middle school plus once in high school. It still demands standards. It still promotes privatization. It is a testing companies dream. NCLB is so broken it is hard to imagine it doing any more damage than this new bill will.
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Well said tultican! The federal government is going to fix nothing in education. In fact, it is hell bent on destroying public education as we once knew it. The trapped in failing schools narrative has begun to sicken me. The children are growing up in families struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. If the very wealthy had any true concern for those less fortunate, they would curtail their excessive spending and instead feed the hungry and house the homeless.They would build community centers with gyms, pools and auditoriums. They would sponsor cultural activities. Instead, they fund crooked deal after crooked deal to rob the inner city communities of their remaining real estate assets. Boehner Republicans are a dying breed.
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And I have never understood why NEA and AFT wanted a federal DOE. If anyone here knows (it was back in 1979 as I recall, and I was just going into university), please do enlighten me.
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The bipartisan support comes from the fact that the democrats have been bought and sold and now that they have the taste of big money, they are loathe to give it up. There are maybe 5 democrats whose voting records, for the most part, indicate otherwise. Other than them, the majority of then have been corrupted and just use the label to be right of center instead of radically right of center.
The DNP, therefore, is a sad joke. The GOP is a laughing stock. Together, they spell F-A-S-C-I-S-M.
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Maybe it’s better for the reauthorization not to occur before the election. Now there is potential for that to become a presidential campaign issue, which means candidates will be forced to take a public position.
I’m not sure I agree that Boehner’s departure is a reason that the ESEA will stall. It might be the other way around; The looming ESEA stall is an example of why Boehner is leaving.
He cannot lead his party to compromise; they won’t have it. And considerable compromise is what it is going to take to bring the Democratic Senate, which insists on accountability (test scores) and for Title I funds to stay where they are, and the Republican House which rejects accountability to the federal government and insists on Title I portability. Those are deep divides.
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Karen you have wonderful instincts. I am learning from you.
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Congress should be fired! And the rewrite = another pile of mule muffins anyway.
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Perhaps 2017 will inaugurate a president and a Congress who could lend honest ears to Fair Test, and end annual testing and financial supports for charter schools. The Clintons and Bushes are so powerful, though. And Capitol Hill reformsters on both sides of the aisle are dug in like ticks. (Sigh.) Go Bernie.
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I don’t want the testing enshrined in a new law. And I am ready to vote against the Democrats (still working out exactly what it’s going to look like) for the first time in my life — as a protest, a protest against the terrible education policies. If we get the feds out of the ed biz, then we can concentrate on getting our states under control — so I’m having a hard time feeling sad about the ESEA stall.
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Your comment is the only one that has the correct perspective. National Republicans are NOT friends of public education. However, conservative Republicans in Washington do not pose an existential threat to public education.
So many teachers and others involved in education have an unflinching loyalty to voting Democrat. The President is the greatest enemy of public education, and with friends like that, who needs enemies.
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Democrats are by and large NOT friends of public education either. Both parties ________.
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MitM, Does that mean you’ll vote for Republicans thereby endorsing their other policies?
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I will not vote for either party, but I will vote for Sanders, who may use the democratic ticket, but is an independent.
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Still working out what that looks like — green party Jill Stein has the right policies. But….not Jeb, for sure. Maybe Donald — at least you know what you’re getting. Not like “a vote for Obama is a vote for Gates”. LOL — WAAAAYYY too soon to know….
HOWEVER, at the state level (for my state), there is a core group of “old fashioned Republicans” that are working hard to end the testing, return local control to districts, end Corporate Capitalism (common core) in schools, end VAM (which to be fair hasn’t started yet in my state, but I gather it’s supposed to, soon). So, it is simply “incorrect” to state that Republican policies are worse than Obama policies. They are, in fact, the exact same policies.
And with all that said, if we’re going to have VAM, and Common Core, and the testing, then, I would like to have a voucher, please. That’s how that is going to work. The Republicans want — the Democrats are handing it to them.
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Jill is as good as Bernie, but she does not have a chance of getting any real exposure or chunk of real votes . . . . Bernie has been there and done that . . . He is – besides ourselves individually and collectively – one of our few last important hopes.
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This is really bad.
Defaulting to the Arne Duncan school of education with an unknown in the pres race is NOT a good thing.
Bernie wins we have a chance, but there is also the potential for a corporate Dino (Hillary) or a radical republican – which rep candidate would sign a bill that hurts charters/helps public schools.
With the still likely outcome being Hillary tho I vote Bernie, no rep candidate that’s good plus a possible continuing congressional deadlock that will keep NCLB waivers in place for the next presidential candidate’s DOE leader – even an imperfect bill is better than this model.
The only way things might get better is with Bernie, but almost all other outcomes are worse – and that doesn’t include how power might shift in congress itself this year.
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Well, it couldn’t have been a high priority for them because they let it sit for so long. It’s not like they get nothing done. They’ll work like mad in a bipartisan fashion if it’s something that’s important to them (or their backers).
The White House and Congress worked for a solid year on Obama’s trade deal and passed Fast Track with mostly GOP support. The trade deal was obviously a priority for them. NCLB is not.
My take on it is they don’t care because they’d rather have Duncan run the entire thing thru waivers anyway: 1. they all mostly agree with Duncan’s approach, despite political posturing to the contrary and 2. Duncan (an appointee) running everything insulates them from political accountability.
It works out well for them. They can now run on “fixing” NCLB for 2016, just like Obama ran on “fixing” NCLB in 2008.
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At some point I think you just have to admit the obvious- there isn’t that much difference between the two Parties on ed reform. They heighten the differences for political purposes, but the ideological split over federalism doesn’t have that much practical import for most people, especially now that Republicans control so many states and national ed reform “movement” policy is entrenched in so many states.
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Arne Duncan and what Mitch Daniels did in Indiana or Kasich in Ohio or Snyder in Michigan. Democrats make a big to-do over “opposing” vouchers because they have to draw SOME distinction but if they really do oppose vouchers (which I doubt) they’ve been extraordinarily ineffective in that opposition since vouchers are spreading like wildfire.
The Obama Administration COULD have prioritized different ed reform policy- they could have focused on prek or free community college, which “liberal” ed reformers claim to care about. They CHOSE to focus on standardized testing, teacher ranking schemes and charter schools. I look at what they do rather than what they say, and what they do is testing, teacher ranking and charter schools.
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Agreed, Chiara, that both parties have the same approach to Ed reform. But the Senate bill would strip the Secrettary of his power to dictate curriculum, assessment, or any other pedagogical stuff. Arne doesn’t want any bill.
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Very selfishly, why can’t they just leave Massachusetts alone? We’re consistently the top performer in the country and we used to have a very sensible testing regimen with MCAS and Title 1 testing. As a certified English and Reading teacher, I’m certainly not adverse to testing. Pre and post testing my Reading students actually gives me the opportunity to celebrate their growth with them. The testing I’ve employed for over 40 years is so different from the high stakes testing that now can so seriously affect the future of a teacher or school.
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Strugles,
If you don’t want to give up MCAS, contact Mitchell Chester, your state commissioner, who just happens to be chair of PARCC
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I think I will.
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Obama would never have signed the bill anyway. Not in a million years.
Seriously? It was a repudiation of his main man Arne.
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Arne . . . the cabana boy of Barack Obama.
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Hey, why on Earth isn’t there a Diane Ravitch Foundation? Is there no billionaire who would enjoy tax breaks from donating to education’s first true nonprofit? Why don’t unions have a super PAC? There are millions of us. If Colbert can do it… (If corporations are people, so are we!). Why don’t we start talking about ways of getting some real dough to Bernie Sanders, our last hope? Let’s fight fire with fire.
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There is NPE. it is a bona fide organization.
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