If health care reform weren't such an enormous deal, people would be paying more attention to the sweeping student loan reform that's being attached to it and could pass on the same vote. It's a pretty simple issue, though opponents do their best to muck it up.
From: Ben Wildavsky
To: Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, and Kevin Carey
Subject: Ravitch misunderstands the roles of charter schools, teacher professionalism, and bipartisanship in education reform.
From: Diane Ravitch
To: Kevin Carey
Subject: We don't yet have all the answers for fixing American education, but we know current reforms aren't working. So why keep supporting them?
As any education wonk, school board member, or exasperated parent could tell you, there is no shortage of obstacles to fixing our country’s grossly inadequate public schools. But, for years, one of the most stubborn barriers to progress has been the highly localized nature of American education--namely, the fact that, unlike in numerous countries with top-notch schools, each state sets its own standards for what students should learn. In recent decades, different factions have had their own reasons for working to preserve this illogical arrangement.
Has education reform failed America's children? According to outspoken education historian Diane Ravitch, the answer is yes. In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, the one-time supporter of No Child Left Behind explains why she thinks the biggest attempt to overhaul U.S. education in recent memory has floundered.
So the bloom is off the rose. President Obama’s Grant Park oration now seems as antique a moment as Ronald Reagan telling us it was “Morning in America.” As glorious as it felt at the time, it was longer on drama than substance.
Some place in the prints this morning, I saw President Obama characterized as bi-racial. It led me to thinking about the way we read men and women with different proportions of blackness in them. Pretty much up to now, it was the Nuremberg Law model: a little bit of Jewish blood, you're Jewish … a little bit of black blood, you're black.
In a FY 2011 budget that freezes non-defense discretionary expenditures, the Department of Education has attracted some attention for being one of the few places in the federal government that would attract an increase in funding if the plan is enacted. But the old stuff in the administration’s proposal is at least as interesting as what’s new.
The budget foresees about a $3 billion increase overall for the department, a 6 percent rise over the FY 2010 request. More money for K-12 programs authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), more recently known as No Child Left Behind, accounts for all of this increase, and the administration is signaling that it will put a good deal of energy behind its proposal to strengthen teaching standards as part of a broader ESEA overhaul.
Meanwhile, next year’s budget seeks to build on some of the significant, competitive education programs that were embedded in the stimulus package (ARRA) and are just coming online now. With the first round of state applications for the competitive $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTT) Fund recently arrived at the department, the budget requests another $1.35 billion to continue the race in FY 2011. States will probably welcome the opportunity to compete for additional federal education funds next year, with their budgets still in crisis, just as the administration would surely relish the opportunity to continue its signature domestic “reform” program. And cash-strapped local governments could jump at the chance, too, as the budget signals that the next round of RTT would make school districts eligible for awards as well.
Forget the spending freeze. Obama's Department of Education announced on Monday that it is asking Congress for more money in the 2011 budget. The department wants $49.7 billion in discretionary funds, roughly $3.5 billion more than it got in 2010. (That's on top of the $173 billion that would go to student loans, grants, tax credits, and work-study programs.) And, if Congress finally reauthorizes No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--it's already three years overdue--to include the president's reforms, the administration says it would allot another billion to the discretionary pot.
It's been a good week for Randi Weingarten. In a speech Tuesday morning at the National Press Club, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) voiced support for some major education reforms--most notably, tying students' test scores to teacher evaluations and making it easier to fire bad teachers.
Pop quiz: You read a draft notice for a federal grant program containing the terms, “internal validity,” “quasi-experimental,” “regression discontinuity,” and “interrupted time series.” The program in question is:
a) A CDC program to fund pre-development of the porcupine flu vaccine
b) An FDA program to spur commercialization of an at-home test for polonium in your food
c) A NASA program to support design of a low-cost module that will allow humans to populate Venus
d) A Department of Education program designed to support and scale innovation in K-12 education
Answer: d). These and other Econometrics 101 terms can be found in the just-released prepublication notice for the new Investing in Innovation (I3) Fund at the Department of Education. What’s going on here? Are Secretary Arne Duncan and his deputies just showing off?
Actually, the structure they are proposing for this new $650 million fund deserves a close look. Last year, Sara Mead and Andy Rotherham called on the department to help bring successful educational entrepreneurs to scale, and to purposefully foster transformative educational innovations. It envisioned achieving these aims through two separate funds that the department would operate, but I3’s design could permit Duncan (and in particular, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton) to pursue both goals.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke this morning at the first in a series of public meetings about the belated reauthorization of No Child Left Behind--although, because it's become a "toxic brand" in many circles, the Department of Education now prefers to call it by its official name, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In his remarks to representatives of roughly 160 education, business, and other stakeholder groups, Duncan praised aspects of the law, which President Bush signed in 2002. He emphasized that it has helped expose achievement gaps and "expand the standards and accountability movement." But Duncan also underscored the urgent need to reform the much-debated law, which he said has "unfairly labeled many schools as failures" and allowed states to set their bars for academic success too low.
Under the current ESEA, states can largely devise their own academic standards, as well as the methods for meeting them, which has left a patchwork of weak policies blanketing the country--or created what Duncan likes to call a “race to the bottom.” Laying out his vision of the federal government's role in reauthorization, Duncan said the ESEA shouldn't offer a "prescription for," but rather, "a common definition of success." He said, "We should be tight on goals … [but] loose on means." In other words, for the first time, there should be national standards of academic success, but states should also have flexibility in deciding how best to reach them.* California and Nevada should have the same targets for students' progress in, say, reading and math skills, but they might have different methods of getting kids to those goals.
After Duncan exited the meeting, audience members lined up to offer comments and suggestions for the reauthorization to a handful of Department of Education officials. The Q&A was generally uneventful and bureaucratic--nebulous questions followed by even more nebulous answers. Two themes, however, caught my attention:
According to Politico, the Right is up in arms about President Obama's plans to deliver a back-to-school address to students next Tuesday at noon (EST). It seems many are convinced that this is a not-so-secret plot by POTUS to, as the head of the Florida GOP put it, "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda." Radio gasbagger Tammy Bruce has gone so far as to encourage parents to keep their kids home that day. "Make September 8 Parentally Approved Skip Day. You are your child's moral tutor, not that shady lawyer from Chicago," she tweeted.
This is disgraceful. For starters, Obama's message, as described in a press release from Ed Sec Arne Duncan, will stick to anodyne topics like the need to work hard and take responsibility for one's own success (which once upon a time were values Republicans could cheer.) Admittedly, I don't have an advance text, but I'll bet a year's supply of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey that Obama will not be lecturing America's youth about the joys of bank bailouts, universal health care, or cash-for-clunkers--just as I am confident George W. Bush would never have used school children to hawk the Iraq war, the Medicare drug program, or "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Dick Cheney, maybe. But not Bush.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan proposed today that $3.5 billion in grants dedicated to improving Title I schools--or those with at least 40 percent of students from low-income families--should go to school districts committed to "turnaround" strategies.
In the latest attempt to prove that, while they might be at a nasty impasse on issues like health care, liberals and conservatives can find common ground on education policy, odd couple Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton will be hitting the road this fall, along with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to promote school reform.
