While all eyes were on the Senate hearings about the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the House of Representatives was putting the final touches on its own bill.
Alyson Klein of Education Week here describes the House legislation. Testing, i.e., the status quo, would remain unchanged. Clearly, the Republican leadership has not heard the outcry of parents who are enraged by the excessive testing forced on their children by federal mandates such as they intend to preserve.
On testing: The bill would keep the NCLB law’s testing schedule in place, requiring states to assess students in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school in reading and math. And, just like under current law, science assessments would be required in three different grade spans. Unlike under Alexander’s bill, there’s no first and second option here for discussion. This isn’t a surprise, since both Kline, and Rep. John Boehner, the speaker of the House, want to keep the testing schedule in place.
On Common Core, the bill would prohibit the Secretary of Education from compelling states to adopt it and would leave states free to draft their own standards.
On Title I portability: Just as in Alexander’s bill, states would be allowed to use Title I funds in public school choice programs, by allowing Title I dollars to “follow the child.” This is not likely to make education organizations—which might otherwise embrace a smaller federal footprint—very happy. But it’s unclear just how much of a dealbreaker it is. Advocates for districts, including AASA, the School Superintendents Association, and the National School Boards Association continued to support the bill back in 2013, even after the portability provision was included. (We don’t know yet if that will be the case this time around, however.)
Portability no doubt would spur the expansion of charter schools, further destabilizing public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Anyone care to interpret this paragraph from the linked article? I don’t have the energy.
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The federal role would be to require the testing. States will then determine what constitutes “failing” ( or adequate growth) and what to do about it.
Alexander said the same thing in the Senate roundtable.
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“The legislation expands the entities eligible for funding to include additional statewide entities (charter school boards, governors, and charter support organizations) to foster greater charter school growth; encourages greater expansion and replication of proven, high quality charter school models; requires states to fund efforts to increase charter school authorizer quality allows the use of weighted admission lotteries to better serve disadvantagedstudents; clarifies a student can continue in a charter school program at another school in the same network without returning to the lottery;and adds a set aside in the national activities funding to support high quality charter management organizations in opening and expanding high quality charter schools.”
Wow. So we’re now going to subsidize charter management companies, charter school boards and “charter support organizations” at the federal level?
What’s a “charter support organization”, anyway?
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Of course, were going to subsidize the charters, I mean the banks. The engine of our political system is legalized bribery and influence peddling.
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The DC goal is 500 new charter schools a year, every year.
This is Mary Landrieu before she lost her Senate seat:
“This legislation will allow for more than 500 schools to open annually in the next five years, allowing that wait list of nearly 1 million students to happily be reduced.”
And that’s just the federally-funded building program.
It doesn’t matter who wins elections. The agenda is identical. Testing and sanctions for public schools, additional funding for charter schools.
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Chiara, a sure way to destroy public education and encourage the proliferation of fly-by-night schools run by non-educators
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“It doesn’t matter who wins elections. The agenda is identical. Testing and sanctions for public schools, additional funding for charter schools.”
Yes exactly Chiara – you are right. “The Plan” is static, who oversees it and the stewardship of The Plan may change but The Plan carries forward like a baton in a track relay.
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I like how there’s a special set-aside for “private sector” education which must be OUTSIDE the school system. Those greedy public schools might grab those programs unless we bar them from bidding.
That must be Rep Kline’s work. The for-profit college king.
More “Tutors with Computers” business opportunities, just like NCLB. That’ll be an absolute feeding frenzy of contractors.
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After this bill passes how long before we’ll start hearing those tax cutting, deficit hawks, austerity scolds screaming for increased education spending.
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The bill opens to the door to funds following the child to any public school, by-passing district school boards and the known needs for schools that enroll high concentrations of students who live in poverty.
In other words, Title I funds can morph into vouchers.
Kasich in Ohio proposes that charter operators of “high quality” be permitted to seek levies for those schools, aiding the development of two school systems.
So far, approval of the levy request would come from the school board. Sounds to me like an invitation for deep pockets to get charter-friendly people elected to school boards. It is not unheard of for the Koch brothers to do that.
On the disaggregation of test scores and not having to meet “adequate yearly progress” AYP. Most states have been coerced into reporting data in the manner required for NCLB, so the only major change might be in the penalties imposed on schools for not making AYP. There will be plenty of state-level pressure to keep some grading system that will do a triage on public schools so the overall effect is still about the same…unsatisfactory gains in scores and your school is closed and charters thrive. The overall effect is also to label students and teachers failures if they fail to produce tes scores in an acceptable range.
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Looks pretty bad.
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Assuming the Federal role in guaranteeing Civil Rights is Equity and to the extent possible Equality, doesn’t this abdicate that responsibility under the assumption that parents will be capable of making the most equitable choice for themselves and their children?
Even where there is no serious choice if just because of the physical realities of being surrounded by poverty is that all local choices have the same issues? I don’t understand how this purports to solve any existing problem except that maybe the DOE is now the Charter Support Network for the US?
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Thanks for the heads-up. I immediately dashed off an email to my House Rep stating my problems with the bill (maintain 3rd-8th-gr annual testsk & allowing Title I funds to follow a student into charter or voucher schools.
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Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
This is not unexpected. Look at who’s writing this! Any reauthorization will require more “flexibility” in the use of federal funds and, in all probability, at least as much testing. And with bi-artisanship the goal of both parties I expect some form of this legislation to pass and with Obama’s perspective on accountability it will be signed into law. Reversing this will require a tidal change in the electorate’s way of thinking. Years of hearing that “business is good and government is bad”, “the marketplace is good” and “regulations stifle creativity” has resulted in the public’s belief that deregulated for profit charter schools are superior to “government schools”. The pushback on standardized testing is evidence that SOME parents are beginning to see that current accountability model that relies heavily on tests is making schools into joyless factories that stifle creativity and reward compliance. The opt-out movement may be a way to reverse this trend… but asking parents like my daughter in NYC to opt out of tests that are used to determine their child’s placement in a magnet school seems a lot to ask. As the stakes for tests get higher opting out gets harder. It’s a vicious circle that needs to be broken or our public schools will become ever more un-equal.
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Wgersen, this is a time for civil disobedience. Opt Out is the best strategy. Direct action is needed to send a message.
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AGREE, Diane. Good advice.
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“Opt Out is the best strategy. Direct action is needed to send a message.” Opt Out would send a message, but would it “hit” them
where they live? MONEY… Opt Out PLUS a boycott/girlcott of any
and all of their products/services.
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TERRIBLE, most TERRIBLE. We have politicians who are USERS and IMMORAL. It’s all about them and their perks and $$$$$. SIC.
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Someone noted the “banks” in this posting. I would love to see the money trails being exposed.
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@Diane or anyone else who wants to weigh in. As most of you know I have no issue with testing/assessment. I personally think they should do away with all state level testing and keep a national “minimum” curriculum criteria. I do think that every student should be assessed for the “words per minute” reading capability and every test that requires reading (including math tests that require reading) should be adjusted to allow equal time on the exam based on reading ability.
In the business world they say what gets measured improves and the national push for reading certainly supports that. In fact, we have put so much effort into that that math ans science are often overlooked. If we lived in a world without technology we might be able rationalize the lack of need for them, but we do not! Fellow science teachers should be outraged that there is such a lack of focus on science.
But I digress. In Europe and even in Finland test serve two purposes. First, they highlight areas where better focus is needed. Second, they are a yard stick of student understanding. So this got me to wondering, given all the focus on testing, if we have any tests that truly test the depth of a child’s knowledge. That is, school tests test to age or grade but not the full range of knowledge. SAT’s test a broader range based on college goals and are heavenly skewed by reading ability. Even state and Nation testing is geared toward college readiness but not to depth of knowledge. Sure the longer you live the harder it becomes to test ones depth of knowledge.Not knowing the depth of a persons knowledge limits the effectiveness and efficiency of ones ability to teach that person. It becomes the blind leading the blind. Put another way. If I want to travel to Disneyland it does little good to know what state it is in if I do not know what state I am in.
SO are there any such tests being used in your state or district? How would you go about designing such an assessment/test? Lastly, Would you be in favor or words per minute testing to allow slower readers to compete on a level field?
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“Put another way. If I want to travel to Disneyland it does little good to know what state it is in if I do not know what state I am in.”
After you’ve typed “Disneyland” in Google Maps, just click on “My location” for the starting point. Make sure you’ve enabled location services, though!
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Q, Finland has no standardized tests until the end of high school. Finland trusts teachers to write their own tests because they know what they taught.
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Läroplansgrunderna bestäms av den finska Utbildningsstyrelsen. Den innehåller mål och centrala innehållet i olika ämnen, samt principerna för bedömning elev, specialundervisningen, elevvård och studievägledning. Principerna för en god lärandemiljö, arbets strategier samt begreppet lärande tas också upp i läroplanen.
What we call a national exam (bedömning elev) and what they call one are two different things. They do not have a national exam like ours less the government sees an issue. Then they do an exam and rather than people getting defensive with the findings they remember they are all there for the children and work toward a solution.
The Finnish National Board of Education draws up the national core curriculum. The core curriculum defines the objectives and core contents of the different subjects, subject groups, thematic subject modules and student counselling. (this is directly from there web page) Assessment guidelines are also included. Not only does the government oversee the curriculum of the public schools but also universities. By 2016, they are expected to not only have all schools aligned, but to also be aligned to EU standards for their universities. – Minna Harmanen
All of the information is here: http://www.oph.fi/ Also available in English with some lost in translation. You Can find a simple overview of the curriculum here:http://www.oph.fi/download/158820_national_core_curriculum_for_preparatory_education_for_general_upper_second.pdf
For those who do not want to read it, Finland operates much the way I would operate our Dept of Ed, along with a few key items from Germany, if it was up to me. In a broad brush sense: Finland public education operates much a like a university. In addition to core classes one takes classes based on their career path. (Not a fan of this part because students are tested for career paths) and they are pass fail. So classes are not really taken by age or grade but rather accomplished skill and social promotions are NOT given.
Hope this clarifies things so that we canst discussions and comparisons.
FYI, In most Scandinavian and European countries just because you want to be a teacher does not mean you will meet the early assessment where by ending your bid for that career.
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