Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Mercedes Schneider Winds Up Her Close Reading of the Senate Bill to Reauthorize ESEA/NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2015 //
6

Mercedes Schneider has diligently slogged through all 601 pages of the Alexander-Murray bill. I am late posting this because I was traveling, so it lacks the acknowledgement that the Senate committee approved it unanimously with some amendments.

 

This is her final installment. It includes links to her previous five reports on the bill.

 

There is much to be learned here, but the central point of this legislation is to prevent the Secretary of Education from telling states and districts how to run their schools. Of course, this has nothing to do with civil rights enforcement. It is a reflection of how both parties feel about Arne Duncan’s intrusive mandates that dictated how states and districts are supposed to turnaround low-performing schools, as well as his advocacy for Common Core and for the two assessments he funded. If this bill passes in its current form (it must still be approved by the full Senate and House), Duncan will no longer have the power to tell states and districts what to do and how to do it.

 

This is vintage Lamar Alexander. He has always said he didn’t want a “national school board.” When he was Secretary of Education, he had a keen sense of federalism and didn’t want the federal government telling everyone how to run their schools, not even himself.

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

NSBA Applauds Senate Committee Approval of ESEA Bill

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
11

Here is the response of the National School Boards Association to the bill approved unanimously by the Senate committee. It must now be endorsed by the Senate, then be merged with a bill from the House of Representatives.

NSBA contact: Linda Embrey, Communications Office
703-838-6737; lembrey@nsba.org

National School Boards Association Calls ECAA Vote ‘A Great Victory’

April 16, 2015 – By unanimous vote, the Senate HELP Committee today reported out the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA), as amended. The three-day mark-up of the Senate’s legislation to modernize and reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) allowed committee members to consider and debate more than 50 amendments, with 29 adopted, 8 defeated, and 20 withdrawn.

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) encouraged a ‘yes’ vote on ECAA due to its bipartisan approach and “because the process was fair,” stating that “if you like the fact that we have the Department of Education running schools through waivers in 42 states, vote no.” Moments later, the Committee’s final vote was 22 to 0.

“Today marks a great victory for local and community leadership in public education,” said Thomas J. Gentzel, Executive Director, National School Boards Association. “Though there is much more work to be done, today’s powerful vote demonstrates that we are one step closer to rewriting the broken No Child Left Behind Act and modernizing ESEA.”

Selected highlights from this week’s mark-up of interest to local school board members include:

A voucher amendment withdrawn, but expected to be discussed during the Senate’s floor debate on the bill (Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.)
Grants to states to improve the quality and reliability of state assessments (Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.)
An amendment to improve data collection methods and systems, intended to reduce the burden on school districts (Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.)

A change of the funding formula ratio, to 80 percent poverty, 20 percent population, regarding funding for high-quality teachers, principals and other school leaders (Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.)

Related to the Burr amendment, a “hold harmless” provision for states that would lose funding due to the change in the funding formula (Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn.)

Related to the Casey amendment, a gradual decrease of “hold harmless” funding, phasing out the provision in seven years (Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.)
Some of the more contentious amendments – a voucher amendment introduced by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and an anti-bullying measure introduced by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) – were withdrawn, and are expected to resurface on the Senate floor.

While the Senate bill is “imperfect,” according to Gentzel, “it is something NSBA and our strong base of public school advocates can work to perfect moving forward.” Gentzel also noted that NSBA is prepared to remain steadfast in its opposition to privatization – vouchers, tuition tax credits, and non-locally authorized charters.

While the Senate HELP Committee action is another big step in the legislative process, Senators must agree to move ECAA to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote. Also still on the horizon is the House version (H.R. 5) which has been debated on the House Floor, with no final votes yet taken.

# # #

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is the leading advocate for public education and supports equity and excellence in public education through school board leadership. NSBA represents state school boards associations and their more than 90,000 local school board members throughout the U.S. Learn more at http://www.nsba.org.

Contact:
Linda Embrey, Communications Office
National School Boards Association
(703) 838-6737; lembrey@nsba.org
http://www.nsba.org

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

BREAKING: Senate Committee Passes ESEA Reauthorization

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2015 //
65

The Senate committee HEALTH, Education, Labor, and Pensions passed the Alexander-Murray bill today.

A note from Leonie Haimson:

“Senate committee passed ESEA re-write 22-0 today; a tremendous rebuke to Arne Duncan’s prescriptive & damaging ed policies. Feds will no longer be able to mandate or incentivize specific standards, school improvement strategies or teacher evaluation policies.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Mercedes Schneider: Part 4 of Her Close Reading of the Alexander-Murray Bill to Reauthorize NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
5

Here is Mercedes Schneider’s fourth installment in her monumental task of reading and analyzing the 600+ pages of the bipartisan Senate bill to reauthorize NCLB.

 

She writes:

 

 

As was true of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Alexander-Murray reauthorization is an assessment-centered document. A principal difference between this draft and NCLB is in the role of the federal government, with the federal role being much more prescriptive (and punitive) in NCLB. The Alexander-Murray draft mandates assessments; however, the particulars it leaves up to states without the punitive outcomes of NCLB.

 

Thus, state selection of assessments is critical. What a state chooses as its assessments largely determines the focus for the rest of the Alexander-Murray programs and “competitions.”

 

The “competitions” in the Alexander-Murray draft are optional to states; nevertheless, when coupled with a state’s choice of assessments (which could be assessments specific to the “competition”), state involvement in many of these “competitions” could mimic the oppression of NCLB or even US secretary of education Arne Duncan’s NCLB “waivers.”

 

A state could go the way of NCLB oppression. Or it could not.

 

It all depends upon the preferences of a state’s governor, or legislature, or board of education, or superintendent.

 

The Alexander-Murray reauthorization leaves room for states to implement assessment systems that require a lot less classroom time lost to testing, for example, or to even further downplay the importance of standardized tests by also incorporating projects and portfolios in the assessment process. However, the important piece here is that the states must be willing to pursue these avenues and include them as the official assessments selected for inclusion in the state ESEA application.

 

The state-level choice of assessments is critical in determining the degree to which education in that state will continue to be “NCLB-like” or even “Common Core-PARCC-SBAC-like.” Beyond that, the state’s choice of Alexander-Murray “competitions” can set the same NCLB/CCSS “stage.”

 

The mandate of annual assessment aside, under the Alexander-Murray draft, the state is the principal decision maker and therefore the primary entity for determining the degree of pressure brought upon public education by both the assessments it chooses and the ESEA “competitions” in which it participates for ESEA-related funding.

 

The state is even able to change its standards and assessments after receiving ESEA money by submitting the changes for re-evaluation by the US secretary– who does not have the authority to mandate a particular set of standards or particular assessments. According to the language of the Alexander-Murray draft, there is no rigid, seven-year lock-in to state standards and assessments. That noted, it would be best for a state to be certain about its choice of assessments at the outset of the application process for the proposed Alexander-Murray reauthorization.

 

Stay tuned. She will slog through this leviathan to the very end and inform us all.

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Peter Greene Watched Chris Hayes Interview Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2015 //
20

Chris Hayes interviewed Arne Duncan and Peter Greene reports on what happened.

You can imagine Arne artfully dodging and weaving when Chris asked straightforward questions. Arne insists that Common Core is confused with the unpopular tests (that Arne funded). Arne suggests that politicians are upset by Common Core but Real Parents welcome it.

“Hayes: I want to talk about Common Core for a second. (And he smiles a little smile, like “let’s do this silly thing, I’m going to ask a question, you’re going to sling baloney, it’ll be fun”). Are you surprised by how controversial Common Core (which he characterizes as “kind of an obscure issue in certain ways”) has become?

“Duncan: “It’s actually very simple. The goal’s to have high standards.” So, kids, the whole national consistency issue, the whole being able to compare kids in Idaho and Maine, the whole keeping everyone on the same page so mobile students will never get lost– that’s no longer the point.

“Duncan goes on to display how much he doesn’t understand about how this works. He talks about how, under NCLB, too many states dummied down standards. He says this was “to make politicians look good.” I’d be more inclined to say “to avoid punitive consequences for their schools.” If Arne had reached my conclusion (and really, given that he was in charge of a large school district at the time, it’s kind of amazing that he didn’t reach my conclusion) then perhaps he wouldn’t have figured that the solution was to make the consequences of high stakes testing even more punitive than before.

“Insert story here of how schools lied to students about how ready they were for college. So brave governors decided to stop lying to children. “Let’s have true college and career ready standards for every single child.” As always I wonder why reaching that conclusion leads to a next step where one says, “Let’s hire a couple of guys who have no real education experience, either pedagogical or developmental, and have them whip something up.”

As Greene shows, this is vintage Arne. Adroitly changing the subject, mouthing high-minded platitudes, never accepting that parents have valid reasons to be upset by the administration’s unvarnished support for high-stakes testing, closing schools, and inviting entrepreneurs to cash in on the educationmarket. NCLB went wrong, he admits, but he never acknowledges that Race to the Top was no different philosophically from NCLB and far worse in actuality when judged by the whipping it has given to schools and educators.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Mercedes Schneider on the Senate ESEA Reauthorization, Part 3

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2015 //
4

Mercedes Schneider continúes her close reading of the Senate reauthorization bill, crafted by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patti Murray. This is part three. The others are linked inside her post.

 

You will find this an interesting post. You will see that the bill penalizes states that cut their education budget by more than 10%; that it allows but doesn’t mandate merit pay; that it includes a big loophole for Teach for America; and much more.

 

Mercedes is going through this bill line-by-line. Members of Congress would learn much by reading her reports.

Categories Merit pay, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America

Dean Tim Slekar: The Néw NCLB Ignores Poverty

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2015 //
20

Tim Slekar is dean of Edgewood College in Wisconsin. He is a tireless activist against mindless reform. He blogs at Busted Pencils. He explained in a comment why he was disappointed with the Senate version of the reauthorization of ESEA/NCLB:

Slekar writes:

“I’m not really that thrilled because while it addresses the excessive authority of the DOE, I can not find anything that recognizes the role poverty plays in the achievement gap and once again we have a bill that thinks improving schools is primarily the job of standards, curriculum, teachers and tests. Tests, Tests, Tests. Is it an improvement to get the federal government out of the school improvement business? Yes.

“However, why do we have any faith that state governments will actually attack the achievement gap without the status quo “test and punish” approach. Remember test and punish is an ideology that is still rooted in a hatred and disdain for public schools.

“This hatred and disdain is clearly present here in WI with “accountability” legislation being introduced at the state level that gives the finger to the feds but then simply puts in place a state level “test and punish” accountability system that will never help children, teachers and schools.

“It continues the system—test and punish—approach that blames public schools for the achievement gap. And there is nothing that allows the people to hold the state legislature accountable for purposely ignoring poverty and in a lot of cases creating the political culture that creates poverty.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty

Mercedes Schneider’s Close Reading of the Senate Bill to Revise NCLB: Part 2

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2015 //
12

Mercedes Schneider is reading the 600+ pages of the Senate bill drafted by Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Patti Murray. It is a tough job, and I am glad she has the patience to do it.

 

This is her second installment, and you will find in it a link to the first close reading of the bill, which went to page 136.

 

She picks up a few points she wants to add to her review of the first 136 pages, and she adds commentary on another 25 pages. Her pace has slowed down, either because she teaches high school English full-time, or because the tedium of reading legislative language is slowing her down. A few points she touches on that are important: 1) the bill allows public school choice, but does not require it; 2) the bill does not refer to “failing” schools (a favorite term of the reformers); 3) the bill reiterates the principle that federal funds must “supplement not supplant” local funding; 4) the bill again prohibits federal interference in local efforts to improve schools, another slap at Arne Duncan’s overreach.

 

You can be sure she will read the proposed law to the very end, and we will all be better informed. You can also be sure that most members of Congress will not read the legislation as closely as she does.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Vicki Cobb: How to Teach Children to Hate School

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2015 //
45

Vicki Cobb is a prolific writer of science books for children. She has written more than 85 nonfiction books. As a child, she attended the celebrated Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village, where experiential learning was valued. Today, she dedicates herself to educating children about science and the joy of learning. Imagine her surprise when she conducted a workshop and discovered that the children did not share her enthusiasm for school.

 

Here is her assessment of the legacy of today’s school reforms.

 

The other day I was doing a program for a group of 4th-6th graders at a local public library. I introduced myself to them by telling them how I had LOVED school so much when I was a kid that I basically recreate it for myself everyday as I write my books. The kids’ reaction to my confession was a unanimous, vociferous, vocal expression of how much they disliked school. I was startled. After all, I’ve told this to children many times before at school visits. Was this because the venue was not in school and they felt freer to express themselves? Or has something changed to make school more onerous? These were privileged kids from an affluent public school district. Could it be because they had just finished a month of standardized testing? What’s going on here?

 

This is just the latest piece of evidence that something is rotten in American education. It seems that many people in a position of power believe that education is too important to allow professional educators do their jobs because they have failed to produce a consistently excellent product of people who are college and career ready after twelve years of schooling. They believe the way to excellence is to first write a law decreeing “No Child Left Behind” or “All Children College and Career Ready” to set a policy, without consulting anyone who actually teaches children. And then to test, test, test, to see if these impossible standards have been met. Meanwhile, they are creating a population of quietly submissive students and teachers who narrow the curriculum to what they hope will be on the test while administrators are cutting art, music, physical education programs and librarians to pour more of their limited financial resources into test prep and test grading….

 

Let me take this opportunity to remind us that human beings, from the moment they appear on this earth, are born to learn. A baby is as smart as s/he will ever be. Through infancy every day is filled with wonder and discovery. And although there are hard lessons along the way, as learning progresses, so does mastery. We know from research that there are many different learning styles but eventually we all learn to walk and talk and think . As we get older, if we’re lucky, we discover a passion that drives us to master more skills and contribute to society. But the skill of high performance on a test, is not an essential skill. There are many other metrics for success — the number of patents held by Americans, for example. The current “reformers” for education are simply imposing ill-conceived laws of the state and federal governments on schools as if we were a dictatorship not a democracy.

 

Deep in my bones I know that I would not be creating science books for children if I had grown up in one of today’s repressive schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Joy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Real Education, Standardized Testing, Students

A Reader Comments on Senate Plan to Revise NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
40

A reader comments on the just-released “Every Child Achieves Act of 2015″:

 

 

“KNIFE PULLED OUT HALFWAY:

 

“The bill needed to eliminate mandatory annual tests and the last 12 years shows why. The claim that we needed these tests to figure out which kids are behind is preposterous. Same for demographic data – struggling classrooms need smaller class sizes, wraparound services and restoration of arts, not measuring and reporting to the Feds. It’s far enough in the rear view mirror to admit: NCLB was a total failure that made a generation hate school, narrowed curriculum and targeted teacher unions. It set the stage perfectly for rich vendor paydays, privatization and charter schools.

 

“Mission accomplished.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »