Marc Dean Millot at edbizbuzz writes up last week's annual meeting of the Education Industry Association, which featured the House education committee's ranking member, Howard "Buck" McKeon.
McKeon told the education industry folks how the fall election might affect NCLB authorization: If voters elect a Democrat to the White House and Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress, "You will be laying off people."
Jobs are just a side concern, I'm sure. Kids are the top priority for McKeon and the education industry, right?
UPDATE: I may have overplayed the archness here as at least one commenter seems to have missed the point. So, yes, let me say that I am aware that some union critics love to play up the kids vs. adults angle. That was kind of the point? Also, Marc Dean Millot asks, "...isn't there a shared economic interest here between teachers and SES providers for preservation of the program?" I can say only that I haven't heard from AFT members or leaders that preserving SES is a priority.
Or in the words of Education Minnesota member and Congressman Tim Walz:
"I'm pleased that this was President Bush's last State of the Union speech. The American people are demanding change in Washington's priorities and while the Congress has made some progress, the President has been a consistent roadblock. Tonight we heard more of the same from the President. What we need is a change in priorities.
AFT President Ed McElroy's statement is printed in the post below. As for me, the paragraph of the speech that struck home was:
"The No Child Left Behind Act is a bipartisan achievement. It is succeeding. And we owe it to America's children, their parents, and their teachers to strengthen this good law… I ask you to support a new $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids. We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential… now let"s apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing schools.”
I like that Bush explicitly linked his plan to destroy the public school system with the idea of Pell Grants. That's appealing to liberals. And, of course, conservatives like George Bush are always shortchanging the Pell Grant system just as once they're done using poor kids as a bludgeon with which to beat down teachers they'll lose all interest in funding vouchers and return to their usual starve the poor attitude.
For a less snarky but more data-filled and equally spot-on analysis of the SOTU, the must read is over at the Drum Major Institute, which turns each such address into an opportunity to try to broaden the conversation. The education part has some nice stats on how much more work needs to be done. And, if you're an educationista who wants to get a good overview of the other issues, it's one-stop shopping.
I saw something awhile back from a blogger implying that the AFT had helped kill NCLB reauthorization last year, and I've seen a few similar comments from other bloggers and even in the media. So, I want to set the record straight.
My colleagues sweated blood trying to find an honorable way forward on this bill, because, well, Our members really, really don't like the current law. Our members want it changed, which is, you know, what happens during reauthorization.
So, in 2005 and 2006, AFT officers and staff held townhall meetings with AFT members (and also at times with Members of Congress) to discuss the effects of the current law. AFT's policy committee, along with AFT staff, then used the information from the meetings to produce recommendations for reauthorization. Officers and staff ran the recommendations by a task force of affiliate leaders, revised them, worked out the kinks, and produced a final document, which was sent to Members of Congress. Oh, and we started a blog, too.
In 2007, with Democrats in the majority, there was a push for reauthorization. AFT staff met with congressional staff, and AFT officers met with congressional leaders, talking about what changes were needed and going back and forth with possible legislative language.
On Labor Day weekend last year, while I was enjoying the three-day holiday, many of my colleagues were in the office, analyzing the first portion of the discussion draft that was released. They weren't crazy about what they saw in the draft. Also in early September, AFT Executive VP Toni Cortese and our director of legislation were preparing congressional testimony.
The discussion draft for the rest of the law came out shortly after, which meant another round of caffeinated analysis of legislative language. Class-size reduction? There's a typo and an omission there. Really, you didn't know that? Maybe you should've read the discussion draft as carefullly as my colleagues did. Think the language on comparability is clear? Think again. Have you done any runs on the effects of multiple measures to see if anything would change? Our researchers and policy people did.
There were more meetings between AFT staff and congressional staff and meetings between the big guns.
My colleagues Cheryl, Tina, Toni, Jane, Michele, Justin, Tor, John (not me), Patty, Howard, Nancy, Earl, Beth -- and probably a half-dozen others I've missed -- ate, breathed and slept NCLB last fall and for much of the past two years or so.
In 2001-02, it took presidential leadership, arm-twisting, etc. to get bipartisan backing for the bill. But where was the bipartisanship this time around? Rep. McKeon seemed to run away from the draft even though his name was on every page. Who was going to get the Republicans to fall in line? Who was going to get them to agree this time to accept, again, an expanded federal role in exchange for greater accountability? The AFT?
I learned this: Reauthorizing a seriously flawed law is hard, but pointing fingers after reauthorization fails is easy. If you weren't there every step of the way, if you haven't thought through the consequences of every line of legislative language, if you haven't heard from people who work in classrooms, if you think that changing AYP always equals "weakening accountability," then you're just talking out your wazoo when it comes to NCLB reauthorization.
In any case, my colleagues, who apparently are gluttons for punishment, are back at it again, ready to work with Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first enacted during LBJ's tenure. And they're hoping the song turns out better this time.
I want to try to tie two interesting bits of Internet thread together here. The first is the discussion of Title I targeting that David Hoff, Kevin Carey, Mike Dannenberg and my colleague John have been having (Hoff here, and the rest here).The second is Dana Goldstein’s piece on Ossining’s schools.That’s because I think Ossining becomes a good lens through which to view improved targeting.
There is, of course, an obvious upside to targeting. In the context of a rising tide, I want to push money as aggressively as possible to the kids who need it most.This matches my desire to have an accountability system which identifies schools that need the most help and provides it to them. The question is: what do we do if we’re not in a rising tide?Title I funding in New York state has, on average, had a real increase of a bit more than 3 percent a year since NCLB.But, when you adjust for inflation, what’s been happening in the last three years is that the Empire state is giving back some of the initial investment. These numbers look at the averages, but they don’t tell you much about targeting.
Goldstein’s piece focuses on a program for African-American males and raises questions about racial and gender integration.But she’s writing about a lot more than that. On Ossining itself:
But today, like many post-industrial communities, Ossining can't seem to revive its downtown. Locally owned shops flounder. Palatial downtown Victorians have been split into low-income rental units inhabited mostly by African Americans and recent immigrants, while wealthier and whiter residents have fled to newer homes and subdivisions in the hills.
Goldstein documents that the district has become poorer and more at risk. Private contributions from a foundation backed by some parents pay for the program she’s discussing. Ossining is one of 150 school districts with real Title I funding increases since 2002. But only eight districts had smaller increases. Targeting means that 488 other districts, some of them not really that much different from Ossining, had cuts.
My first point is that we shouldn’t be satisfied to have arranged the deck chairs optimally when it means we’re taking chairs away from kids who we’d all agree need the support. My second point: one of the victories of NCLB is that it shines a light on performance of at-risk subgroups in those districts that predominately serve whiter more middle class populations. Better targeting of funds couples this specific increased attention with specific disinvestment. There are some moral and political questions to ponder here.
UPDATE: Mike Petrilli e-mailed to say that his comments to Ed Daily didn't apply to IASA and that he didn’t say President Clinton broke with the unions over IASA but over accountability in general in the 1990s.
In a recent Education Daily, the Fordham Foundation's Michael J. Petrilli is quoted as saying the "teachers unions" -- which, presumably would be the NEA and the AFT -- didn't support NCLB's predecessor in 1994, but is it true?
Here's the full sentence: "President Clinton, he [Petrilli] pointed out, broke with the teachers unions in supporting 1994’s Improving America’s Schools Act, the first ESEA legislation to attach accountability consequences to tests."
It's true that AFT President Al Shanker had some problems with an early version of the bill, which he expressed in a July 1994 column. But, as I noted earlier this year, by October 1994 the AFT was sharply critical of those trying to block passage of the bill, saying, "America's children and parents deserve better than to be pawns in this cynical, partisan, scorched earth warfare."
Maybe Mike Petrilli has more information than I do about what happened at the AFT in 1994. Or maybe Petrilli was misquoted. [Looks like the latter. See above.] But one thing is for sure: Fordham opposed motherhood and apple pie in 1994. And you can quote me on that.
The full text of the AFT's October 1994 news release is after the jump.
Sure, you can keep up with Congressional goings-on by reading the Hill publications or watching CSPAN, but, for infotainment value, I like The Fritzwire, produced by Fritz Edelstein, a former colleague of mine at the U.S. Department of Education. Fritz has been on a roll lately while tracking the appropriations process. Here's a sampling:
Dec. 11: Most everyone is fit to be tied. Republican leadership in the House is refusing to negotiate even though numerous senior Republican members of the Appropriations Committee want to. Obey is really mad. He is asking – what are they smoking...?
Dec. 12: Will they or won’t they adjourn for the holidays on December 23? Is it possible there will only be a CR and Congress will have to come back the first week in January to complete the bills? Will we have just another CR or what? Will anyone blink...?
Democratic leadership has decided to scrap an omnibus spending package that would have covered FY08 funding for 12 of the 13 federal agencies and will move forward with efforts to approve remaining appropriations at the levels requested by the Administration. The new strategy comes as a result of an anticipated veto by President Bush on the omnibus spending legislation due to “excessive” discretionary funding levels....
Dec. 13: Yesterday, the President vetoed the SCHIP legislation for a second time. The new bill changed the eligibility formula as requested by the President but held the increase for funding increase to $35 billion over five years. How compassionate is this? Will Congress go for a third try?
Later in the Day --- How should one put it – the Democrats caved or surrendered to the President’s position on the budget. They are dropping the demand to increase spending by $22 billion. The House will not include IRAQ funding but it is likely the Senate will restore it. Discretionary spending will increase about $3.7 billion. Which programs will take the biggest hits????? In essence the President refused to compromise and he may veto this bill anyway.
Maybe I think Will is a libertarian because I recently served on an NCLB panel with Neal McClusky of the Cato Institute. Or, maybe it's because of this part of Will's recent column on NCLB:
NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly -- 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism's subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12.
McCluskey said essentially the same thing on our panel, but, when someone from the Cato Institute says it, I yawn, when Will says it, am a little more concerned. People actually read the Washington Post and some care what Will thinks (sorry Neal).
Talk of getting rid of NCLB, and therefore ESEA, is problematic because the resources provided by the law are a lifeline for most urban districts. We seem to forget that "supplement not supplant" is not just a bureaucratic expression, it means that NLCB funds, and especially Title I, are designed to even the school finance playing field for districts with more limited resources. On our panel, MCCluskey argued, as he does in his book, that as a society, we have gotten nothing out of ESEA. I countered that without ESEA, the achievement gap would probably be even greater.
Mike Petrilli offers a different critique, that leaving accountability to the states does not ensure that you will end up with a better system. Petrill writes:
While NCLB may be inciting the Michigans of the world to keep their standards low (so as to meet the law's fairyland mandate of "universal proficiency" by 2014), it's far from clear that repealing or gutting that law will encourage the Wolverine State or its peers to suddenly raise the bar dramatically. They had low standards before NCLB, and they would probably have low standards after.
My concern is somewhat different than Petrilli's: leaving accountability to the states is no guarantee that diverse, urban school districts will be treated any more fairly than they are by NCLB.
I'm trying to resolve some apparently conflicting information I've seen recently about Title I funding.
Here, Education Week's David Hoff writes about NCLB's "success in targeting Title I money."
The same article quotes former Kennedy staffer Michael Dannenberg, "The increase in targeting of federal aid in NCLB is a success story that nobody knows about."
Also quoted is Ed Sector's Kevin Carey, who seems to imply that, since enactment of NCLB, low-poverty districts no longer receive more per-pupil Title I funds than high-poverty districts.
So, the smart people seem to agree that NCLB (along with changes in appropriations) has led to better targeting of federal dollars to poor students.
Great -- except another group of smart people seems to be suggesting that no such change has occurred. Here, the authors of the National Assessment of Title I Final Report, write:
"At the district level, Title I targeting has changed little since 1997-98, despite Congress’ efforts to target more funds to high-poverty school districts by allocating an increasing share of the funds through the Targeted Grants and Incentive Grants formulas."
And the same targeting problem occurs at the school level:
At the school level, Title I funding for the highest-poverty schools also remained virtually unchanged since 1997-98, and those schools continued to receive smaller Title I allocations per low-income student than did low-poverty schools.
There are a few possibilities here. First, we're talking about two timespans, so it's possible that trends during the Hoff-Dannenberg-Carey timespan of 2002-07 are different from those during the National Assessment span, 1998-2005. Second, we could be talking apples and oranges. Maybe, in my ignorance, I've confused a few Title I funding streams. Third, there's an inside-the-Beltway belief that federal education funds are being better targeted for poor children, but, whatever the change, it's made little difference outside the Beltway.
The last one is troubling, so I'd like to find out the real scoop. Messrs. Hoff, Carey and Dannenberg, please enlighten me.
UPDATE: David Hoff and Kevin Carey respond thoughtfully. Thanks. David on his blog, Kevin Carey in our comments section. UPDATE II: Mike Dannenberg offers further elucidation in the comments. Thanks, all.
Over at the Swift & the Changeable, former Miller staffer Charles Barone claims that the teacher unions are running around taking credit for the demise of Miller-McKeon, while Eduwonk charges we haven't taken enough bows.
I find all of this blogging about whether the teacher unions should "crow" to be quite silly. Did Congress listen to the concerns of the AFT? Sure, because we represent MEMBERS, the people who are actually in the classroom, dealing with this law. Duh. Plus, what is there to really crow about? Our members want to see changes in NCLB, so prolonging the law's reauthorization hardly serves them well.
The truth of the matter is that Miller-McKeon was hoisted on its own petard, crushed by its own weight--pick your metaphor. And, as I have written before, the "discussion draft" had a lot more wrong with it than the performance pay language, namely that it did not fix AYP.
And, really, what's the point of crowing? Politics is about relationships, so it's hard to see where slash and burn lobbying really gets you in the long run. We all will be here for another day of NCLB 2.0 and, as well we should, the AFT will continue to represent the interests of our members to Congress.
One thing is for certain in the aftermath of Miller-McKeon--I doubt we will see another "discussion draft" in the near future for any piece of federal legislation that is up for reauthorization.
Update: Check out Sherman "The Oracle" Dorn. The man makes sense.
Rep. George Miller on President Bush, NCLB and Funding
November 7, 2007 04:25 PM
Rep. Miller issued a statement today citing President Bush as an obstacle to improving NCLB.
When it comes to No Child Left Behind, President Bush has just one message, and it boils down to this: Stay the course.
All across the country, teachers, school administrators, school board members, and parents are voicing their concerns with the law. They don’t think it makes sense to stay the course. They don’t think it makes sense to preserve the status quo.
They think the law needs significant improvements, and they are right. Unfortunately, the President couldn’t see it more differently. He thinks the law is nearly perfect….
It is difficult to see how we get a reauthorization bill done in this Congress as long as the President continues to oppose both common-sense improvements to the law and additional education funding.
Dana Goldstein at TAPPED mourns [link is below] the death of the Miller-McKeon "discussion draft" and implies that the teacher unions helped kill it, because they oppose the draft's proposal to pay teachers more to teach in hard-to-staff schools. Here’s what’s wrong with Goldstein’s analysis:
1) The AFT does not oppose differentiated pay. As we have discussed multiple times on this blog, the AFT has national policy supporting additional compensation for the following (note #2 and #6):
1. knowledge and skills that advance and/or address high-priority educational goals; 2. schoolwide improvement; 3. achieving National Board Certification; 4. mentoring new and veteran teachers, providing peer assistance and review, serving as lead teachers, etc.; 5. teaching in shortage areas; 6. agreeing to teach in hard-to-staff and/or low-performing schools; 7. assuming additional responsibilities; and 8. instructional practice that meets mutually agreed-upon high-quality professional standards.
Several of our affiliates, including the UFT, have developed such incentives in collaboration with the school district-herein lies the rub. It works if you do it with teachers, not to them.
2) The AFT did not object to the Miller-McKeon proposal to pay teachers more to teach in hard to staff schools, we objected to the federal mandate that student test scores must be used to determine whether teachers get the incentive. In other words, the Miller-McKeon proposal did not simply say, “look, teaching in a hard-to-staff school is a tougher assignment for which teachers should be compensated,” it said, “it’s a tougher job and, if you take the assignment and don’t improve student test scores, you don’t get the extra money.” It’s an important distinction. The bare-faced reality of the situation is that it is hard enough to get teachers to go to hard-to-staff schools, even with a financial incentive. If you make the incentive contingent on student performance on a test, which may or may not be aligned with the curriculum, it frankly becomes a disincentive. That said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t tie an incentive to measures of good teaching.
3) The differentiated pay issue aside, the major problem with the Miller-McKeon draft is that it DOES NOT FIX AYP. That is the bottom line. Yes, it included multiple measures and a growth model, but schools can still fail AYP based on ONE subgroup of students. Diverse, urban schools have multiple subgroups that count towards AYP—they may make progress overall, for students with disabilities, for low-income students, and Black students, but if they fail to make progress for English language learners, they FAIL AYP. If anything, Miller-McKeon made the situation worse by requiring that schools not only make progress on test scores for every subgroup, but that they also make progress on the graduation rate for every subgroup. A diverse, urban school could make progress on student test scores for every subgroup AND make progress on the graduation rate for all but ONE subgroup and it would FAIL AYP. If folks don’t see how this accountability system is a problem, I’m not sure if they are really trying to understand the reality of what is happening out there in our schools.
(URL for Dana Goldstein's post is http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=11&year= 2007&base_name=nclb_pushed_to_the_back_burner#050947)
AP reports that Senator Kennedy is back at work after his surgery, and it sounds as if he's hit the ground running. When President Bush called to wish him well, the Senator "used the chat to lobby him about the No Child Left Behind law. Kennedy played a key role crafting the five-year-old education law, which faces a tough renewal fight in Congress."
The chances that NCLB will move this year just got slimmer. Ed Daily reports that, when asked yesterday about reauthorization, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "I’m hopeful I can do it. I don’t know if I can by the end of the year."
I noticed Jenny D. had been a-commenting at Eduwonk, so I stopped by her place today, and she turned me on to a new (for me) Web site, Peter Answers.
Peter Answers is a virtual version of the Crazy 8 Ball toy from my childhood, and Jenny D. promised "scary correct" answers, so I was hoping for something definitive. See the straightforward response on the image of the old-school Crazy 8 Ball? That's not what I got when I asked the all-important question: "Will there be a new NCLB law before 2009?"
Here's what Peter Answers' answered: "I don't wish to answer this question." Hmmm...next time I'll just ask Michele and her merry band of 12 D.C. insiders. Way back in January, all but one said the law would not be reauthorized until before 2009.
Folks with differing positions on NCLB reauthorization are uniformly dissatisfied with the multiple measures proposed in the Miller-McKeon discussion draft. On one side you have, oh, let's just say Amy Wilkins of Ed Trust who commented when the draft was released:
The efforts to dumb-down the definitions of progress and success by well-financed and ill-informed defenders of the status quo are gaining traction. Americans who share the goal of closing the achievement gaps have cause for concern.
On the other side you have, well, let's just say "the well-financed and ill-informed defenders of the status quo" who think the proposed multiple measures are too prescribed and will not enable schools to demonstrate the progress they have made. Is the fact that neither side is happy a sign that House staffers actually got it right? Probably not, because the problems with multiple measures extend beyond how they are defined. It's virtually impossible to understand a) how they work and b) how they interact with the current AYP provisions, the proposed growth model or proficiency index. And don't even get me started on the indecipherable weighting system.
The multiple measure provisions are a mish-mash and, if enacted as written, would be sure to give many a state department of education staffer indigestion. And, as others have said, making AYP more complicated and less transparent can hardly be a good thing.
As a sometimes spokesperson for the AFT, I occasionally find myself saying something awkward, unfathomable or just plain stupid. Apparently, I'm not alone. Here's a line from an article ($) earlier this week by Education Daily's Steve Sawchuk.
"McKeon’s name is on every page of the draft, but spokespersons for McKeon and Boehner said neither has officially endorsed it...."
Oh...kay. Once I'm done pondering -- and it may be awhile -- I'll move on to that other important question that's been troubling me: Why Do Pirates Love Parrots?
Everybody Has Recommendations for NCLB Reauthorization
October 16, 2007 04:40 PM
Even the Education Department's Inspector General. But it's a safe bet that the IG's recommendations are unique in that they call for a tougher stand on airguns:
"In particular, the law should [i]nclude as weapons covered by the statute (in addition to the ATF definition of a firearm): imitation firearms capable of projecting an object with deadly force, such as airguns (i.e., BB guns and pellet guns); antique firearms; and replicas of antique firearms...."
And, yes, the IG also has something to say about Reading First, SES and public school choice. Read the IG's recommendations in their entirety here.
Last Thursday, this article appeared in Roll Call about Republicans blaming Chairman Miller for not wanting to compromise on draft NCLB legislation. Hot on its heels comes this article from Congressional Quarterly about the pushback Miller is getting from House Dems. If I were a bettin' gal, I would stick to my prediction on the chances NCLB will be reauthorized this year.
P.S. This post is not meant to imply a "Separated at Birth" between Chairman Miller and Kenny Rogers.
Rick Muir, president of the AFT local in Anderson, Ind., doesn't think NCLB is working.
Muir was among the AFT members who came to Washington last week to speak to members of Congress about the No Child Left Behind Act.
The local paper, the Herald Bulletin, interviewed Muir after he got back to God's Country Indiana.
And although Congress has set a deadline of Jan. 1 to reform NCLB, Muir said they should take their time to "get it right."
"In my heart, I know something must be done," said Muir. "The system we have, the rules and regulations, it’s just not working."
According to the paper, Muir called for less paperwork, more funding, a system that rewards schools for making progress, and equitable treatment of rich and poor school districts.
Close, a health teacher in East Islip and president of the East Islip Teachers Association, writes:
To close the achievement gap and to ensure that, indeed, no child is left behind, Congress must recognize the importance of reducing class size; increase the training and retention of highly qualified teachers; expand access to early childhood education programs; and provide adequate funding for improved school facilities and materials.
She questions the way Congress is going about reauthorization:
While the dedicated teachers in my district embrace accountability and understand the value of fair tests that measure student progress, we are deeply concerned by the apparent rush to reauthorize NCLB. Speeding a revised NCLB through Congress could make a problematic law even worse. It's important that Congress listen to teachers and make sure that, this time, it gets the law right.
Reasonable enough, but Eduwonk doesn't like the lede, something about children not being test scores, and Eduwonk wonders about whether there's anyone who thinks children are test scores. Fair enough, but isn't the point of that phrase that the law places too much emphasis on test scores? And the wording isn't what's important, is it?
Let's keep our eyes on what really matters, which is, well, the subject of the op-ed: NCLB reauthorization. And it sounds to me as if she's on the right track.
AFT President Edward J. McElroy discussed NCLB and performance pay for teachers in a letter to the editor of the Post which appeared Saturday. The letter was a response to thisPost article.
Here's an interesting nugget for those trying to oversimplify the reauthorization debate:
The AFT's position on this issue [pay for performance] has been widely mischaracterized. That fact, and the No Child Left Behind law's teacher compensation provisions, have become red herrings, drawing attention from other provisions in the law that are equally consequential. Reauthorization is the time to rectify problems with the law, including how student progress is measured, accountability for providers of supplemental educational services and meeting the needs of our most disadvantaged schools and students.
The "teacher unions'" opposition to federally mandated pay for performance may be a convenient frame for a cartoon on NCLB reauthorization. But that's wrong on two counts. First, as McElroy writes:
A number of AFT local unions have helped develop professional compensation plans that consider test scores as one of several factors in how teachers should be compensated. Those plans were developed at the local level with teacher acceptance -- not by the federal government.
Second, note that McElroy identified other needed NCLB fixes -- for AYP, SES and interventions for struggling schools -- as "equally consequential."
Kevin Carey at The Quick and the Ed offers two solutions to the comparability conundrum: 1) stop paying teachers for years of experience and instead use the funds for performance pay or salary bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools; or 2) hire more teachers in high-poverty schools to reduce class size. While acknowledging that his first proposal is controversial, he breezily writes of his second:
And while it also might mean increasing class sizes in the lower-poverty schools, this would on balance be a net-plus tradeoff, since the veteran teachers would presumably be better able to handle a few more students per class.
Carey, however, makes no mention of how his proposal would go over with another key constituency: parents. Class size reduction is very popular with parents--as long as their kids are the ones who get the smaller classes. In a zero sum game, as comparability is, parents will fight as hard--evern harder--for resources.
To make comparability work, particularly in urban school districts where virtually all schools are Title I schools, an infusion of new funds is needed. Otherwise you are just robbing Peter to pay Paul. And, why bother to rob Peter when he isn't much better off than Paul anyway?
Eduwonk thinks comparability--equity in resources between schools--is the "sleeper" issue of the NCLB reauthorization. The funny thing is, comparability is actually the kind of issue that can keep you up at night.
Let's start with the basics: should states and districts be required to spend the same amount of money at schools poor kids attend as those that other kids attend? Yes. Should that be true within districts and between districts? Yes. Is the greatest disparity in spending between districts, not within districts. Yes.
But for the sake of argument, let's focus on within district spending, as comparability does. Advocacy groups like Ed Trust counter that the current comparability provision in NCLB is meaningless because it excludes salary differentials. In other words, comparability masks, rather than uncovers, that schools with a more senior teaching staff spend more on teacher salaries than schools with a more junior teaching staff.
Their solution, manifest in the Miller-McKeon bill, is to require districts to have equal average per pupil expenditures of state and local funds for teacher salaries between Title I and non-Title I schools. Sounds reasonable and just, no? But how do you get there? Anticipating the objections of other education groups, the new comparability language also states that the provision does not require the forced or involuntary transfer of teachers. Again, sounds reasonable and just, right?
The problem is twofold 1) saying transfers are not required is not the same as saying they are prohibited and 2) getting teachers to move between schools is no easy task. Can it be done through incentives? Sure. Will it be done that way in all of the school districts that have comparability problems? Not likely. Will some school districts force teachers to move? Probably.
At this point, you might be asking yourself, hasn't this issue arisen before, maybe in the context of desegregation? Yes, it has. In the 1967 Hobson v. Hansendecision, Judge Skelly Wright ruled that the District of Columbia public schools deprived African-American and poor students of their right to equal educational opportunity. In 1970, Judge Skelly further ruled in Hobson II that per pupil expenditures between schools had to be equalized.
So what happened? As documented by Larry Cuban in the Educational Administration Quarterly back 1975, the school board opted to transfer 300 teachers. And did it work, did schools with the poorest kids get more experienced teachers? Not according to April Witt of the Washington Post who, in her piece this past summer on the storied history of the DC public schools wrote, "a study later found many of the best, most experienced black teachers moved to schools in white neighborhoods." Teachers decided to leave the District rather than be forced to teach somewhere they didn't want to teach.
Although Hobson happened over 35 years ago, it serves as an object lesson on how the new comparability requirements might play out in some districts. Those advocating for changes to comparability should be wary of unintended consequences, even when the goal is as noble as getting more resources to poor kids.
"Teachers unions, wary of anything that would infringe on the ability of their more senior members to teach where they please,"
These characterizations make it appear that teachers are leaving high poverty schools for the wealthiest schools in the district, and that explains disparities in teacher quality, which I think is the wrong lesson. I recall being a discussant at APPAM on a Boyd, Lankford, Wykoff and Loeb had a paper that found that NYC teachers with good qualifications in low performing schools were between three and four times as likely to transfer out of New York City and were twice as likely to leave the teaching workforce than teachers with lower qualifications. They were only slightly more likely to transfer within the system.
I think we have a problem attracting and retaining good teachers in high poverty schools.But I think we’re overstating the importance of moves within a district as a cause. Doing so lets us paint teachers in wealthier schools as guilty of bailing out on kids in high poverty schools, making it easier to promote weighted student funding and the Ed Trust’s comparability proposal as simple remedies for the original sin of seniority clauses in contracts. But the implicit morality tale misses the point and masks the underlying problem, which is how we create working conditions that will keep the teachers we want on the frontlines in high poverty schools. On this underlying issue, by the way, I think the Ed Trust has some other good ideas that should be front and center in the discussion. Instead a lot of well meaning people seem intent on creating a Rube Goldberg device that will magically bring us to these ideas.
I do fear Walsh’s take on the politics of teacher comparability and the likely consequences are pretty close to the mark. I’ve given the Gadfly a hard time before, (here and here). But good for them for posting this. Now if they can just get the fellow they placed at Achieve to tell me what I get “when the union places incompetent teachers”?Frequent flyer miles? A stock option? Or did Matt Gandal put him up to this as some sort of hazing?
And while I’m critiquing Kevin Carey in this post, he’s right on about right wing anti tax mania here, and while I was on leave he had this gem.
Lisa Caruso covers the politics of the NCLB reauthorization in this week's National Journal. The subtext of the article is who speaks for whom in the debate--and whose voice carries the most political clout.
AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese argues that regardless of whether teacher unions are conveived of as a special interest group, "Congress should hear from teachers." While Andy "Eduwonk" Rotherham may not disagree, he thinks teacher unions are "no different than any other lobby in Washington" and, at times, only represent the interests of their members, not those of children. My view, simplistic as it may sounds, is that what is good for teachers is good for children.
The National Journal piece is particularly intriguing in that it highlights the rift within the civil rights community over NCLB, one that, as Caruso observes, raises:
delicate questions about who speaks for minority chidren. The pro-testing groups, which are led by white activists, laid down their marker with a July 13 letter urging Miller and McKeon to resist weakening the law with additional, nonacademic measures. In response, 23 other groups representing a coalition of ethnic and racial minorities fired off an August 7 letter calling for an array of assessments to chart students' progress.
La Ruth Gray, government relations liaison for the National Alliance of Black School Educators, praised her civil-rights colleagues on the other side of the testing debate for their advocacy for minorities. "But sometimes we have to speak for ourselves, " Gray said. "We recognize that a large number of young people are still behind. We just don't want you to judge our kids by a single test."
Groups on both sides of the debate genuinely believe that they are speaking for children, so this issue could be one of the more contentious as reauthorization proceeds.
This week's Education Gadfly includes a very provacative guest editorial from Major Kate Walsh, head of the National Center for Teacher Quality. Walsh argues that the proposed comparability and equitable distribution sections of the Miller-McKeon bill are a bunch of hooey, because she believes that teaching experience is not a proxy for good teaching. Her piece definitely reads the way Major Walsh talks (I have had it with you nincompoops!), but it certainly can't make her popular with Ed Trust and others who have made comparability their number one priority in the reauthorization. Then again, I'm not sure Major Walsh cares.
Ed Week provides the latest installment in the comparability debate. For the uninitiated, the comparability provision of NCLB requires districts to document that, in Title I schools, the services provided with state and local funds are comparable to those provided in non-Title I schools.
What Ed Trust and others are arguing is that if schools are not required to demonstrate comparability in teacher salaries--meaning the same amount (presumably within a range) is spent at Title I and non-Title schools--than comparability has not been met. The Miller-McKeon bill would require schools to do so, which might require districts to come up with ways to get more experienced teachers, who earn higher salaries, into Title I schools.
What is interesting to me about this debate is that it is divorced from the issue of having highly qualified teachers in every school. One of the major thrusts of NCLB 1.0 was to ensure that all schools were staffed with highly qualified teachers, both new and veteran teachers. Now, it seems, the debate has shifted to getting experienced teachers into Title I schools.
Ed Daily($) reports that Cong. Miller may be reconsidering the 2014 deadline for all students to reach 100 percent proficiency. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation gives credit to Ed Trust for opening up this possibility. In its August 29th press release on Title I of the Miller-McKeon discussion draft, the Ed Trust's Amy Wilkins said:
The 2013-14 deadline for proficiency is a powerful disincentive to raising standards. If we are going to ask states – and students – to climb a higher mountain, we need to give them more time to get there . . ."
Like Petrilli, I was struck by this shift in position, that Ed Trust had let go of this "bright line." I would also agree that it is very important to Miller that any proposal to shift the deadline pass the EdTrust/Kati Haycock "sniff test." At the same time, Miller had expressed doubts about the deadline as early as January 2006 when, in this NPR story, he said:
Will we have a hundred percent of our children proficient in 2014? Not very likely. Should that be the goal of this nation? Probably so if you really believe in the dignity and the worth of each of these children.
And, as both Jack Jennings and the AFT's Toni Cortese point out in the Ed Daily article, if Miller wants states to be able to use real growth models, he will have to rethink the proficiency deadline.
So, yesterday's hearing on the Miller-McKeon bill--er, discussion draft--was, shall we say, interesting. AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese testified, as did Reg Weaver, President of the NEA.
Their testimony on Title II of the "discussion draft" led to a lively exchange with Congressman Miller, who contended that both the AFT and the NEA were involved in negotiations on the TEACH Act, the original House bill that essentially became Title II of the discussion draft.
Cortese acknowledged that the AFT was pleased with many features of the TEACH Act, but pointed out that in our June 2005 letter to Congress we had voiced serious concerns about the pay-for-performance provisions of the bill. Here is the relevant paragraph from the AFT letter:
While the AFT is supportive of the overall bill, we do have a specific concern about its support for programs that use student test scores to evaluate teachers. We are concerned that such “value-added” programs have not been thoroughly developed, researched and rigorously evaluated. Given this, we agree with you that it is essential that teachers be a part of any decision to use a value-added system. We hope that measurement systems will become more refined and credible in the future. Nevertheless, we believe that more research, study and psychometric guidelines are necessary before this evaluation tool is used to reward teachers.
Ed Week's NCLB-Act II here, the New York Times here. Stay tuned.
This draft encourages a serious discussion of reauthorization and indicates a willingness to address many of the concerns raised about NCLB. With so much at stake for our nation’s students, it is unfortunate that some are seeking to short-circuit the discussion by characterizing this draft’s new flexibility as a step toward weakening the current law’s provisions to hold schools accountable. On the contrary, the draft is an opportunity to spark candid discussions about how to improve the law’s accountability provisions and offer more help for the students who need it most.
The No Child Left Behind Act is a complex law. Our initial review of draft language suggests that its reauthorization will be just as complex. This process demands careful and deliberative consideration of not just what is written but what its effect will be in our classrooms. Our students and teachers deserve nothing less.
Rumor has it that there's a Capitol Hill press conference going on right now at which Senators Lieberman, Landrieu are planning to introduce (gentle correction from a gentle reader) launchedtheir NCLB bill. Anyone keeping count? How many NCLB bills are floating around Capitol Hill now?
We'll put up a link if one becomes available.
UPDATE: Aspen Commission cochair Roy Barnes is on board.
Yesterday on CQ's Web site: "The top House Republican [Rep. Buck McKeon] negotiating a renewal of the landmark 2002 education law said legislation won’t be ready until fall and he won’t support it unless it’s backed by a majority of GOP members."
Also:
Education lobbyists had been optimistic that a House markup would come before the August recess, to speed along the reauthorization and finish before the 2008 election season begins to greatly limit action on Capitol Hill.
That now seems unlikely.
Let's see, all we need is an NCLB bill supported by Democratic leaders, a majority of Republicans and enough rank-and-file Democrats to put it over the top....
On Friday, AFT member Joan Bibeau testified before the House Education and Labor Committee on teacher quality and NCLB.She brought her 34 years as a Minnesota classroom educator to the hearing.Here is an excerpt from her testimony:
Here is my view of NCLB, and the view of many other teachers: It often seems as though the rules were made without regard to the actual needs of our students and the realities of our work as teachers. If I had one suggestion for the Committee, it would be this: Improve the law so that it recognizes the actual world we teach in and then provide educators with the tools and resources we know are essential to helping our students succeed.
Ms. Bibeau’s testimony points out many of the challenges facing teachers and offers solutions in the following areas for the federal government to support the work of teachers:
Michelle Davis' Education Next profile of Secretary Margaret Spellings seems to suggest Sec. Spellings doesn't have much respect for the brainpower of people on either side of the political spectrum.
Davis, going with the conventional wisdom, characterizes two of Spellings' actions as political strategems.
No. 1: Push vouchers hard at the negotiating table so you can dump them later to get other things.
"But talking the talk on vouchers could come in handy: the administration gets credit from choice groups for pushing them, and giving them up allows Democrats to feel as though they’ve scored a win."
It's hard to believe a Congressional Democrat would really say, "Hey, we fought back vouchers, which didn't even pass when Republicans were in the majority. Let's give away the store and let Margaret go ahead and do whatever she wants with education policy."
It's equally hard to believe a pro-voucher conservative would really say, "Good ol' Margaret, she did her darnedest for vouchers. Let's give her some points." That's hardly the line taken by Clint Bolick, who's quoted in the article.
No. 2: Attack lesbian-friendly cartoon bunnies to appease conservatives.
"Her outrage over the Buster affair may have led conservatives to give her the benefit of the doubt as she went about enforcing a law that reached far into states’ education territory."
I have trouble imagining a conservative saying, "Thanks for going after that fictional character the way Dan Quayle went after Murphy Brown. Now go ahead and do whatever you want with education policy."
The truth is that Sec. Spellings is too smart to think that her bunny attack means anything to conservatives now or that she can use vouchers, a nonstarter, to get concessions in other areas. And Congressional Democrats, now in the majority, are WAY TOO SMART to cave on anything because of the false threat of more vouchers.
Rep. Tim Walz (D.-Minn.) doesn't have a monopoly on setting good education policy, but he has one unique qualification:
"Of the 535 members of Congress, Mr. Walz, 43, is the only active schoolteacher, still a tenured faculty member here [in Mankato, Minn.]. As the federal government has grown deeply enmeshed in public education, exemplified by the No Child Left Behind law now up for reauthorization, only Mr. Walz among his colleagues has experienced its effects in his own classroom."
And in case Rep. Walz goes native here in Washinton, he'll likely get a reminder from his wife about how education policy works on the front lines -- she's in charge of NCLB compliance in Mankato.
Samuel Freedman profiles Rep. Walz -- a teacher, soldier and lawmaker -- in today's New York Times.
I’ve often wondered what exactly people mean when they say they’d like to add high school to NCLB.I figured it could either be ensuring that Title I funds go to high schools or increasing the number of high school grade levels that are tested or both.
Now, a bipartisan group of senators have introduced the Graduation Promise Act (GPA—get it?), which seems to be focusing on improving instruction in high school, including strengthening state systems to identify and target resources to low performing high schools and supporting state efforts to align their systems with expectations of college and the workforce.
A real criticism of NCLB is that it focuses on inputs rather than outputs, sacrificing a focus on instruction for a focus on accountability.I haven’t read the GPA bill yet, but if the focus is really on improving instruction, it seems like it could be a model for NCLB reauthorization.
The president's comments (transcript here and video here) offer little new. Will update if there's anything interesting from others in the meeting.
UPDATE: The White House said it was meeting with civil rights leaders to discuss NCLB.* Indeed, there were civil rights leaders there. La Raza was represented, and I'm trying to get my hands on a list of attendees. But some in attendance aren't usually thought of as civil rights types -- business leaders and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform. I guess I've forgotten the passage in the Letter from Birmingham Jail that referred to lowering the minimum wage and loosening restrictions on charter schools.
*In my zeal to blog about this breaking news, I misread the White House transcript, stopping at the end of the line instead of the end of the sentence. The president actually said the meeting was with "leaders of the civil rights movement, education leaders from around our country, business leaders who are concerned about America's competitiveness," which explains why Jeanne Allen and the business leaders were there.
Danger Mouse combined the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album to produce the bootleg Grey Album, a re-imagining of both originals and something altogether new. It became the most downloaded album on the Web. I'm guessing few people will be listening to Diane Ravitch's NCLB recommendations, a mash-up of two recent NCLB proposals, one Republican, one from Democrats.
Ravitch starts with the Democrats' (Kennedy's, Dodd's) recent national standards bills and combines it with a bill, backed by 57 Republicans, that would allow states to opt out of many NCLB provisions. The result: NCLB would be a vehicle for creating national standards and national tests, publicizing the results, and not much ese.
DJ DM got sued for his mash-up. (Some problem with, you know, copyrights.) DJ DR won't be dragged into court for hers, but let's just say the proposal doesn't sound good and isn't likely to be downloaded by many congressional Democrats or Republicans.
It will take more than money to get the No Child Left Behind Act right, AFT president Edward J. McElroy told a joint session of the Senate and House education committees earlier this week.
Here are a few key points from McElroy's testimony:
On AYP:
"Any discussion of NCLB should begin by addressing the flaws of the adequate yearly progress system."
"Schools that are improving should not be penalized."
On NCLB's interventions, or sanctions, for schools that fail to make AYP:
"The law must distinguish between schools that need intense, multiple interventions and those that need only limited help."
"Struggling schools must get help when they need it."
"punitive, ideological and not evidence-based."
On testing and over-testing:
"State tests must be aligned with the state standards and the curriculum used in classrooms."
"Instructional time should not be replaced by testing and drill-and-kill preparation, and a narrowing of the curriculum to only those subjects being tested."
I noticed Jenny D. had been 
Even the 
AFT President Edward J. McElroy discussed NCLB and performance pay for teachers in a 
