States Apply For Relief From No Child Left Behind

By Lisa Kellman

Education officials from across the country met in DC Monday to preview state efforts to seek waivers from the national No Child Left Behind law.

President Obama announced in September that states that put high educational standards in place would qualify to opt-out of soon-to-take-effect NCLB requirements that put federal funding at risk for several states.

School officials from Florida, Georgia, Colorado and Massachusetts spoke during a briefing with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), a nonprofit organization comprised of various heads of state and local educational systems.

“Because No Child Left Behind has not been reauthorized, states are left with no choice but to move forward and to seek relief through an alternative route,” said CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit.

While each state representative acknowledged NCLB’s contribution in holding states accountable, they also felt that states should be more active in implementing education goals.

One common complaint of NCLB was the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) metric which has been used to evaluate schools and teachers. Opponents have argued that it has encouraged teachers to “teach to the test” rather focus on the needs of their students.  

“We have a generation of students that we taught how to pass a test but were they ready for college and careers?” asked John Barge with the Georgia Department of Education.

Congress hasn’t reauthorized NCLB since 2007, nor has it passed a reform plan. Obama challenged lawmakers back in September to get to work, and decided at that point to move forward with waivers.

“Our kids only get one shot at a decent education,” he said during a speech at the White House. “They cannot afford to wait any longer. So, given that Congress cannot act, I am acting,”

According to the White House, the waivers represent an effort to enhance accountability and transparency and create programs that strengthen career and college preparedness for students. States will be allowed to implement such standards with their own individual building blocks.

For example, among other initiatives, Massachusetts would cut in half the number of students who are not college ready, Colorado would require all school districts to engage in improvement plants, Georgia would give equal weight to all school subjects, not just those tested in NCLB, and Florida would provide full access to college level courses.

Eleven states are expected to apply for waivers today, with more to follow.

Obama Unveils No Child Left Behind Changes

President Obama today officially announced new changes to the national No Child Left Behind education law that will allow states to bypass a critical requirement that threatened to deny them federal funding down the road.

In a roughly 15-minute speech at the White House, Obama explained that due to congressional inaction, he decided to act unilaterally.

“I’ve urged Congress for awhile now — let’s get a bipartisan effort and let’s fix this. Congress hasn’t been able to do it. So, I will.”

The most significant of the NCLB reforms unveiled by the president involves granting waivers to lieberate states from a requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That mandate was tied heavily to federal funding, and allowing it to take effect would have put nearly every state in financial jeopardy.

However, in exchange for providing states with “flexibility” to dodge that requirement, states must show that they are implementing high educational standards of their own.

“This does not mean that states will be able to lower their standards or escape accountability,” Obama said. “If states want more flexibility, they’re gonna have to set higher standards, more honest standards.”

Already, 44 states and the District of Columbia “have adopted a common set of State- developed college- and career-ready standards,” according to the White House.

(Click here to read the White House’s summary of the reforms to NCLB).

In addition to transforming classroom standards for students, states must also remodel their methods of evaluating teachers and principals in order to qualify for relief from the law.

“We can’t afford to wait for an education system that is not doing everything it needs to do for our kids,” Obama said. “We can’t let another generation of young people fall behind.”

Education Secretary Wants Less Standardized Testing

In the US Department of Education’s first ever Twitter Town Hall meeting Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated that standardized testing requirements under the “No Child Left Behind” act are too rigid.

While Duncan was adamant that testing is critical to measure reading levels and annual improvements, he did admit that “the law is too punitive” and schools need to be granted “more flexibility and autonomy.”

“Students shouldn’t even be tested 10 days out of the year. It is too much,” Duncan said. 

“Growth and gain need to be evaluated,” Duncan continued,” but that doesn’t mean excessive testing.”

Duncan noted that good teachers need to be rewarded for their hard work and bad teachers need to improve. He even suggested implementing a reward system with higher pay for schools with higher performance. He maintained, however, that the only way to measure this is through testing.

The “No Child Left Behind” act was signed into law in January 2002 and requires that publicly funded schools administer standardized tests annually to measure students’ performance.

However, a remarkable number of states have expressed opposition to the law, claiming that it has unrealistic requirements and is causing more harm than good to the school system.

Current Educational System An Economic Hindrance, Say Senate Dems

By Anna Cameron

Moderate Senate Democrats gathered Wednesday on the Walker Jones Education Campus in D.C., a pre-K-8 school, to introduce key principles in American education by stressing the need for the urgency of reform to the No Child Left Behind program.

“Education is the civil rights issue of our generation,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who joined the group in its call for action. “I am absolutely convinced that the dividing line in our country today is less around race and class than it is around educational opportunity.”

Furthermore, Senators warned that in addition having divisive effects, the crisis in education could be detrimental on an economic and competitive level. For example, over the past ten years the United States has gone from first to fifteenth globally in terms of the production of college graduates.

“Today a college degree is a prerequisite for success, and an educated workforce is a necessity for our country to compete in the global economy,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in response to the statistic. “Our failure to ensure such opportunity..risks granting our generation with the unfortunate legacy of being the first America to leave less opportunity, and not more, to our kids…”

Addressing several problems in No Child Left Behind, the proposed principles aim to close the Title I Comparability loophole, support bold efforts at school turnaround, target accountability structures, foster innovation, and ameliorate teacher recruitment, training, and evaluation systems.

“As we work to fix No Child Left Behind, we believe that these principles will prepare our students with the skills to compete in the twenty-first century global economy,” noted Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.)

Education Secretary Arne Duncan stressed the urgent necessity of immediate bipartisan reform, as he called for action before the Congressional recess in August.

“We need to do it now, we would love to have this done before the August recess,…and we have to do it together,” concluded Duncan. 

The GOP’s Lenient Definition Of ‘Egregious’

By Justin Duckham-Talk Radio News Service

For what has been described in the Wall Street Journal as the “worst bill ever,” Congressional Republicans certainly seem to be padding their list of grievances over the House health care bill with things that are less scary and more, well … sensible.

The House Republican Conference has kindly given reporters a directory of provisions in the bill found to be “egregious, questionable, or potentially absurd.”

Included in this list is a reference to page 872-Section 1433, which, in the conference’s words, “requires the director of food services at nursing facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to hold ‘military, academic, or other qualifications’ as determined by federal bureaucrats.”

Sans the editorial liberty taken to invoke the specter of spooky federal bureaucrats, one is left to wonder what about this requirement is particularly egregious, questionable or potentially absurd. After all, this is a warning from the party that has portrayed seniors as sacred cows throughout the entire health care debate, from threats that Obamacare would pull the plug on grandma to suddenly realizing that Medicare isn’t as bad as it was forty years ago. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the staff that tends dear old granny’s meals be qualified? Especially through an academic or military institution?

When asked for clarification, a staffer for a high-ranking Republican representative simply responded that it is a sign of more government intrusion into the lives of Americans.

Of course, the American people whose lives are being intruded upon by this provision are seniors living in nursing homes funded by Medicare. So to summarize: Medicare is an untouchable institution, but requiring
a director that either directly or indirectly benefits from Medicare funds to be properly trained is an intrusion.

Fair enough, if you perform adequate mental gymnastics. That is, until you consider how closely this resembles a provision included in No Child Left Behind, an act proposed by a Republican President and passed through a GOP-controlled Congress.

According to Part A, Section 119, “Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this part shall ensure that all teachers hired after such day and teaching in a program supported with funds under this part are highly qualified.”

All one needs to do is add “by federal bureaucrats” to the end of this sentence and voila: government intrusion.

In the film Citizen Kane, the character Leland tells Charles Foster Kane “You don't care about anything except you… you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.”

This seems to embody the Republican mentality post-2006. So-called dithering on Afghanistan, appointing high-profile czars or, in this case, requiring recipients of government funds to fit the right
profile is fine if you’re in the right party, but try it as a Democrat and suddenly it’s egregious, questionable, or potentially absurd. It’s a double standard.

Either that, or the Republican Conference is grasping at straws.