CEA has decided to concentrate our blogging efforts on a new blog, BlogCEA.org. BlogCEA offers regular updates on the latest news and information from CEA for our members, and also covers state and national education stories. Bob Murphy will continue to write posts on education policy issues and they will now be added to BlogCEA.
This week President Obama proposed closing and reopening 1000 failing schools per year for the next five years. Where did this come from! Officially the notion was floated by Secretary Duncan while making opening remarks to an audience at the Brookings Institute in Washington this past Monday. But why now?
Is it puzzling that just as the secretary embarks on a “national listening tour” to seek the opinions of educators and parents regarding the impact of NCLB , we hear of yet another five year plan to deal with failing schools? Perhaps the timimg of this may have something to do with an article published in the New Yorker last week – The Instigator: A crusader’s plan to remake failing schools – a profile of Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot Public Schools. California’s largest non-profit charter school operator Barr is described as a curmudgeon and revolutionary with a take no prisoners attitude when it comes to urban school reform. Green Dot has had some dramatic success in turning around high schools in LA. More to the point, however, according to the article back in March Barr was invited to Washington to meet with Arne Duncan. To his surprise the meeting apparently got quickly to specifics and Duncan revealed his thinking about “committing several billion dollars of the education stimulus package to a “Locke-style” takeover and transformation of the lowest performing one per cent of schools across the country, at least four thousand of them, in the next several years,” (Alain Leroy Locke High School is the school in the Watts neighborhood of LA which Barr has taken over). Duncan was so enthusiastic that Barr returned to LA with a vision for “Green Dot America” and secured a tentative green light for a partnership with AFT president Randi Weingarten. Continue reading →
On several occasions I ‘ve expressed optimism that we would have the opportunity to rethink the federal role in public education through the process of reauthorization of NCLB. The election of Barak Obama added further fuel to my hopefulness. Then came the recession and I’m beginning to think all bets are off.
It is a strange time indeed. A time of dramatic contrasts. Huge and unprecedented amounts of money are promised for public education from Washington and we are grateful for it. At the same time bad things continue to happen and confusion reigns supreme. In spite of the money it appears that there will still be massive numbers of teacher layoffs. state and local officials continue to get seemingly contradictory guidance and advice as to how they can and cannot spend the stimulus money.
As we watch and listen as Secretary Duncan assembles his new team at the Department of Ed there is a sometimes alarming sense of “ad hocism” that leads some to believe that we may not have the new beginning that we had hoped for. Continue reading →
Last week the first round of stimulus money was released and as educators we should be grateful since a large percentage of the money is ostensibly dedicated to education. As the old saying goes,however, there is no free lunch and Secretary Duncan has begun to lay out the conditions states will have to meet in order to get the second round of payouts. The good news is that this administration is willing to spend money in return for increased quality and performance of the system. The not so good news is the echoing of the same tired rhetoric we got from the Bush folks – when Margaret Spellings says she likes most of what she hears I get very nervous. (see Erik Robelen EdWeek)
So what have we learned in the past 10 days or so about where President Obama and his Secretary of Education would like to take American public education? For one thing we learned that the president is just as prone to overstating the problems as past administrations. You recall in his speech to Congress he lamented the current “crisis” in education and set a few broad goals for the future. NYU historian, Diane Ravitch, referred to these comments as Obama’s “manufactured crisis” , based on an analysis of his comments by FactCheck.org in which they revealed a number of inaccuracies:
* The high school dropout rate hasn’t “tripled in the past 30 years,” as Obama claimed. According to the Department of Education, it has actually declined by a third.
* Eighth-grade math scores haven’t “fallen” to ninth place compared with other countries. U.S. scores have climbed to that ranking from as low as 28th place in 1995.
* Obama also set a goal “of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” by 2020. But in terms of bachelor’s degrees, we’re nearly there. The U.S. is already second only to Norway in the percentage of adults age 25 to 64 with a four-year degree, and trails by just 1 percentage point. Continue reading →
I came across this poster today which reminded me once again why I began posting to this blog. It is difficult in the midst of this all-consuming financial crisis to remind ourselves that there continue to be larger issues yet to be resolved in the way we educate our children and the ways in which we assess the effectiveness of our teaching. The testing season is upon us once again and it comes at a time when the vast majority of school districts and classrooms are covered by a cloud of uncertainty Continue reading →
Amidst criticism that he is taking on too much too soon, President Obama delivered a speech on education today to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He lamented that, “For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralysed progress and perpetuated our educational decline.” He chastised Democrats “who have resisted rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay” and Republicans for opposing “new investments in early childhood education, despite compelling evidence of its importance.” He called for longer school days and a longer school year through enhanced after school programs and summer programs.
The first pillar of his plan focuses on early care and education as seen in the dramatic increase in the commitment to Head Start in the Stimulus Bill. He is proposing an “Early Learning Challenge Grant” to raise not only access, but the quality of early childhood programs. Continue reading →
I’m back after a winter respite in Vermont and Rome is still burning.
Last week the Obama administration released its first budget which it clearly regards as transformative. For education there remains a host of unanswered questions mostly related to what happens two years out when the huge increases incorporated in the stimulus package disappear. The education budget contains increases in key areas that would only be transformative when coupled with the stimulus monies. As David Hoff points out on his EdWeek blog, NCLB II, “Title I would rise to $14.5 billion—a 4.3 percent jump. That would leave a steep climb for the program to receive $25 billion in fiscal 2011.” Continue reading →
Well the stimulus bill is now law and education fared very well. Clearly our new Secretary of Education was a big winner in all this. I would not want to be in his shoes. Depending on how you look at the numbers there is at minimum $130 billion for education in the final bill. Another $53.6 billion in stabilization funds with nearly 2/3 of that directed to education. The new secretary has a budget nearly 2 1/2 times greater than his predecessor and the expectation that he will get half the money out the door within 30 days. And yet he has not had time to replace any of the next tier of important positions in the department. At a meeting of the education department staff recently the secretary entertained questions and when addressed as Mr. Secretary is reported to have responded to the glee of his audience, “Call me Arne.” This is a good sign. The next important sign to watch for is indeed who he brings on board as Deputy Secretary and Under-Secretaries. (see Sam Dillon’s article in NYT) Continue reading →
Late yesterday Rep. David Obey, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee posted more detail on the Conference agreement. These are the latest numbers for education:
Investments in Education and Training include:
‐ $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, including $39.5 billion to local school districts using existing funding formulas, which can be used for preventing cutbacks, preventing layoffs, school modernization, or other purposes; $5 billion to states as bonus grants for meeting key performance measures in education; and $8.8 billion to states for high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education and for modernization, renovation and repairs of public school facilities and institutions of higher education facilities.
‐ $13 billion for Title 1 to help close the achievement gap and enable disadvantaged students to reach their potential.
‐ $12.2 billion for Special Education/IDEA to improve educational outcomes for disabled children. This level of funding will increase the Federal share of special education services to its highest level ever.
‐ $15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500. This aid will help 7 million students pursue postsecondary education.
‐ $3.95 billion for job training including State formula grants for adult, dislocated worker, and youth programs (including $1.2 billion to create up to one million summer jobs for youth).
Two days a go Secretary Duncan visited Wakefield High School in Arlington, VA. He spoke optimistically about the Stimulus package when he said:
…with the President’s leadership, with a bipartisan Congress that’s really committed to education, with support of great, great students and teachers and parents and principals around the country, we have a once in a lifetime historic opportunity to make things better for our children, to stimulate the economy short-term, and long-term to better educate our way to a stronger economy, which is the only way we can do it.
Last night Senator Reid announced that a deal had been struck. The bottom line, $789 billion total package, was less than either the House or the Senate version. The final version has not yet been released, but we do know that the amount dedicated to education was up from the Senate version but far less than the House version. The Wall Street Journal reported the following regarding the stabilization fund going to states:
Of those funds, [ the $789 billion] $40.6 billion would go to local school districts to avoid teacher layoffs or to build or renovate schools. A further $5 billion would be for bonus grants to schools and districts that meet educational performance measures. And $8 billion would be set aside to avoid cuts in “high-priority needs,” such as police, fire and prisons. The overall stabilization fund is considerably higher than the Senate’s $39 billion total but far less than the House’s $95 billion.
It looks like $11.5 billion for IDEA and $10 billion for Title I are still in the package, although nothing is official until the final language is available. What really matters to classrooms around the nation is what happens in the state house. Whether states see the strategic importance of education in the recovery will be tested by how they approach their budget process. Cynics, who incidentally have history on their side, will say that states will do everything possible to use federal dollars to supplant state dollars. The stimulus money is a one time infusion over two budget years. Local school districts are traditionally more sensitive to these short term infusions and the net result may well be that education will be hurt badly as it was in the early eighties. By this time tomorrow we should have a more detailed picture of the education components in the stimulus bill. Many serious questions will remain unanswered.
It seems certain that both President Obama and his new Secretary of Education have a strategic vision for public education’s role in the recovery. The House delivered on that vision, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: three Republican Senators took an opportunity to leverage the process that only Wall Street mavens could appreciate and the President’s vision was severely diminished at least for the moment.
