Texas leaders threaten to sue over strings on education funds

By Dave Montgomery | Star-Telegram
August 5, 2010

AUSTIN -- In the latest round of the Texas vs. Washington political battle, the state's Republican leaders Thursday blasted a U.S. Senate-passed mandate on education funding in Texas, with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst threatening legal action against the federal government if the House upholds the measure in a critical vote next week.

The provision applies only to Texas and was crafted by Texas Democrats in Congress, who say they want to ensure that more than $800 million in federal education dollars earmarked for the state isn't diverted to other purposes. But Gov. Rick Perry and Dewhurst said compliance with the measure would violate the Texas Constitution and consequently prevent Texas from receiving the education funds.

"Washington is deft at placing targets on the backs of Texans, and this proposal paints a target on our schoolteachers and schoolchildren," Perry said.

Dewhurst, presiding officer of the state Senate, said he plans to ask Attorney General Greg Abbott to sue the federal government if the House complies with the Senate version of the bill and retains a House-passed amendment authored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat.

Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Republicans, opposed the measure, which was part of legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. A House vote is scheduled for Tuesday.

The bill includes $10 billion in education funds that would be available to the states. Texas's share has been estimated at $800 million to $830 million.

Doggett's amendment stems from Democrats' assertions that the Republican-led state government mishandled federal stimulus money last year, using it to bail itself out of a budget jam instead of drawing from a rainy-day fund. Democrats have also blasted Perry for refusing to apply for a share of $4.3 billion from President Barack Obama's Race to the Top school improvement program.

Under the amendment, Texas would not have access to the education funds unless the governor certifies that the state will maintain the proportion of state education funding for the 2010-2011 fiscal year and for two more fiscal years through 2013. Perry and Dewhurst said the requirement violates a state constitutional ban prohibiting the governor from committing to future legislative spending, and they contend that means the state is unable to claim the education money.

"Congress has crafted legislation that will exclusively harm Texas public schools and our teachers," said Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott. "Every member of the Texas congressional delegation who supported this measure owes Texas voters an explanation as to why they are in favor of imposing punitive measures on our schools."

The dispute is playing out just days before Obama is scheduled to visit the state Monday for two political fundraisers, including one in Dallas, and an education-related public event at the University of Texas at Austin. It is also the latest in a growing litany of federal-state confrontations over issues that include environmental policy, healthcare and the economy.

But unlike the earlier disputes, the new uproar pits state Republican leaders against the 12 Democrats in the Texas congressional delegation. Both sides contend that they are acting in the best interests of Texas schools, and Doggett disputed Republicans assertions that Texas would be unable to get the money.

"There is no constitutional limitation on doing right by our Texas schoolchildren," Doggett said. "The obligation that this amendment places on Texas is to spend new education dollars on education purposes."

The Democratic lawmakers also had the backing of 33 school district superintendents and seven statewide education groups who wrote congressional leaders in support of the amendment. The group included Fort Worth school Superintendent Melody Johnson.

"With Texas facing a serious budget shortfall in the coming biennial budget, the last thing we need to allow is these funds to be diverted to fill non-education gaps in the budget," the educators said.

Hutchison and Cornyn both denounced the amendment as discriminatory against Texas and challenged Democrats to reverse their position in next week's House vote. "Texas children shouldn't have their education shortchanged because of petty partisan politics," Cornyn said.

Dave Montgomery is the Star-Telegram's Austin bureau chief. 512-476-4294

Groups Say ELLs Got Short Shrift in Race to the Top

This is so shameful.

Also check out the letter NALEO sent to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stating that “future competitive selection grants processes should place more weight on the ELL criteria in the scoring and review process.” The letter also mentions that they “are concerned that state applicants are not required to offer a comprehensive ELL strategy as part of their application for [Race to the Top] funds.”

-Patricia

Federal officials promise to do better when they provide technical assistance to states
By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
September 27, 2010

Three civil rights groups contend the U.S. Department of Education failed to give adequate attention to the needs of English-language learners in the $3.4 billion Race to the Top state grant competition and say they plan to hold federal education officials accountable for promises they will give them more attention in the future.

“The applications [for winners] rarely mentioned English-language learners, except in passing and rarely fleshed out any thought to how they were going to close the achievement gap for ELLs,” said Roger L. Rice, the executive director of Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy of Somerville, Mass., in an interview last week.

Read on

Closing schools' achievement gaps

Five school systems across the country, with differences in location, funding and demographics, all have raised achievement notably using five common-sense steps.

By Heather Zavadsky | LA Times Editorial
July 7, 2010

While the Obama administration, with its federal Race to the Top program, is setting up a host of new rules for schools, five large urban school districts have raised achievement and closed achievement gaps using approaches that make such obvious sense, it would amaze parents to know that these aren't the norm everywhere.

The Broad Prize for Urban Education is awarded to large school districts that show the most progress. I had the opportunity to closely observe the innovations at five winning districts during the four years I spent working for the Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, overseeing the process for selecting winners. That included visiting schools, analyzing test data and other statistics, and conducting follow-up interviews with teachers and parents.

Two of the districts are in Southern California — the Long Beach and Garden Grove unified school districts. The others are the Boston Public Schools, Norfolk Public Schools in Virginia and the Aldine Independent School District outside Houston. As different as the five school systems are in location, funding and, to some extent, demographics, all have raised achievement notably using five common-sense steps.

First, all developed a challenging, clear and specific curriculum. In these districts, every teacher and student knows exactly what academic content students should know and what skills they should be able to demonstrate in each subject and grade. While this might seem almost ridiculously obvious, the reality is that many districts never clearly articulate the skills that must be taught in a given grade, or consider the overall arc of the curriculum from kindergarten through senior year of high school, ensuring that there are no gaps or unnecessary repeats in instruction. It's also surprising how many teachers are unaware of the curriculum requirements for the grades just below and above the ones they teach.

These districts also set no more than six long-term strategic districtwide goals, and used them to drive practices in every school. For example, Garden Grove has had the same two goals since 2003 for students who attend the district for at least five years: Students would meet or exceed state standards in core academic subjects, and English language learners would gain a certain amount of proficiency in the language. Rather than continually changing goals, these districts stick to them, drilling down and refining them each year to ensure that all students, teachers and schools are able to move in that direction. From 2006 to 2009, the increase in the percentage of English language learners in Garden Grove who scored well enough on tests to be reclassified as proficient was more than twice as large as in Los Angeles Unified.

Third, the five districts developed smart strategies to attract and retain effective teachers, support them and cultivate a collaborative working environment. Boston Public Schools trained teachers to coach one another; teachers reported that it helped them to learn from experienced peers how to carry out particular classroom strategies.

Fourth, these districts asked staff to evaluate regularly whether each approach or program was improving achievement. The key to this strategy: data. The districts used data to select, pilot and monitor programs, and eliminate those that weren't working. Boston used a committee-created rubric to score the merits of various instructional programs and select the one that best met student needs. Aldine and Garden Grove required educators to demonstrate how programs or materials were tied to educational goals before they could buy them.

Just as important, data also helped these districts tailor their efforts to meet individual student needs, by revealing areas of improvement for each child and identifying which instructional approaches yielded the best results.

The Aldine schools match student needs with teacher strengths. Even in elementary school, students move to different classrooms when another teacher is better suited to work with them on a particular skill. For example, tests might have shown that one student is having trouble grasping fractions; he or she will be paired with a teacher who has demonstrated a particular talent for teaching fractions.

Finally, leaders in these districts have successfully built relationships with parents, community organizations, area businesses and others who have a stake in student success. In Norfolk, community engagement is so important that it appears as a performance indicator in the district's accountability system. The community in turn has helped the district carry out its plans; one corporation underwrote a leadership development program, and a foundation funded a large preschool initiative.

California is applying once again for Race to the Top funds. Whether or not its bid succeeds, its plan for the future should include prodding troubled urban school districts to adopt the sensible, student-centered efforts that have worked in the nation's most improved districts.

Heather Zavadsky is director of policy and communication for the Institute for Public School Initiatives at the University of Texas. She is the author of "Bringing School Reform to Scale: Five Award-Winning Urban Districts."

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

States Create Flood of Education Bills

By SAM DILLON | NY Times
Published: May 31, 2010

DENVER — Democrats backed by the state’s largest teachers’ union nicknamed legislation overhauling Colorado’s tenure and evaluation rules the “teacher scapegoat” bill, and several lawmakers wept in public sessions during their monthlong battle to stop it.

But other Democrats joined with Republicans to pass Colorado’s law, the most comprehensive of a dozen similar bills passed around the nation this year, in part to increase states’ chances in a $4 billion federal grant competition.

Louisiana, Oklahoma and New York also approved bills modifying their tenure and evaluation rules in the last week, just in time to meet Tuesday’s application deadline for Round 2 of the competition, known as Race to the Top.

This flood of legislation, along with new rules in many states allowing for more charter schools, pioneering union contracts in several cities and a state-led effort to rewrite the nation’s academic standards, have made this spring a watershed period, said Jon Schnur, an education adviser to the Obama campaign who helped design Race to the Top.

“It’s been one of the most important seasons for education reform in American history,” Mr. Schnur said.

Colorado’s law, passed last month, requires that school principals evaluate teachers’ classroom effectiveness each year, and that at least half of their rating be tied to student achievement. The law withholds tenure until rookie teachers have taught effectively for three years, and says tenured teachers performing poorly for two years in a row can lose job security and be fired.

It reflects an emerging national consensus on the importance of studying teachers’ work before giving job security or raises, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group that published a report last year calling attention to weaknesses in teacher evaluation systems. In most school districts, virtually all teachers, good or bad, routinely get a satisfactory evaluation, it found.

In Race to the Top’s 500-point scoring system, states can earn at least 58 points for developing more robust evaluation systems and using them to make staffing decisions, like who should get tenure.

The two winners of the competition’s first round in March — Delaware, which won $100 million, and Tennessee, which won $500 million — scored highly for well-developed evaluation systems. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said he will award the remaining $3.4 billion to “10 to 15” states in the second round, with finalists announced in August.

Not all states are competing. Ten decided not to participate in Round 1, including Texas, which called the competition a federal intrusion on its right to set education policies. In recent weeks, Alaska and Kansas cited similar reasons as they pulled out of Round 2. Indiana and Minnesota also quit the race, saying they could not overcome teachers’ union opposition to school initiatives they said would have been crucial to their chances.

But with states across the nation facing huge budget shortfalls, governors, legislators, mayors and educators in about three dozen states have been working to win Race to the Top money by bringing their school policies in line with President Obama’s education agenda.

In several states, the process has produced conflict. In Rhode Island, a school board seeking to follow administration policies on failing schools fired all 87 teachers at its high school, provoking protests. Eventually the teachers agreed to teach a longer school day, and a settlement allowed them to keep their jobs.

In Florida, teacher protests over a bill that would have linked teacher pay to student test scores and eliminated the tenure system for all newly hired teachers persuaded Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, to veto it in April.

Colorado’s debate over the same themes was just as passionate, partly because thousands of teacher layoffs are on the horizon here, and teacher effectiveness will be considered before seniority in deciding who gets pink slips once the new law takes effect in 2014.

The politics of the debate here, which divided both Democrats and unionized teachers over how to handle school overhaul issues, could resonate in Congress when Mr. Obama seeks to rewrite the main federal law on public schools.

The Colorado law’s author, State Senator Mike Johnston, an alumnus of Teach for America who worked on the Obama campaign, rallied support from business executives, civil rights leaders and many school groups. But the Colorado Education Association — the state’s biggest teachers’ union, representing 40,000 teachers — persuaded most Democratic lawmakers to oppose it.

The union fought the bill because it would diminish teachers’ tenure protections, and because teachers resented the argument that Colorado had to pass the bill so as not to jeopardize the state’s chances in Race to the Top, said Deborah Fallin, an association spokeswoman.

“First we tried to kill it, and then we tried to fix it” by adding amendments, Ms. Fallin said.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the largest national teachers’ union, which is the Colorado association’s parent, testified against the bill here in April.

“President Obama has said that he wants to reform education by working with educators, not doing it to them,” Mr. Van Roekel said. “What is being proposed here today is the opposite.”

But Brenda Smith, president of the Colorado affiliate of the other national union, the American Federation of Teachers, was negotiating amendments, including establishment of an appeals process when teachers lose tenure because of two years of “ineffective” ratings.

Ms. Smith eventually endorsed the bill, and so did Randi Weingarten, the federation’s national president.

“Why not be in the forefront of change instead of letting other people do it to you?” Ms. Smith said.

Although Ms. Smith’s affiliate represents only one sizable Colorado district, with 2,500 members in Denver’s southern suburbs, Mr. Johnston said its endorsement helped persuade Democrats. “A.F.T. support was a game changer,” he said.

In the final voting, most of the Democrats in the General Assembly voted against the bill, but every single Republican in both chambers voted for it, along with Democrats who call themselves education reformers.

Representative Judy Solano, a Democrat who was a classroom teacher for 29 years, voted against.

“The bill made teachers the scapegoats for all the inadequacies of public education,” Ms. Solano said.

But Representative Christine Scanlan, a Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, said it was not unfair to teachers because, among other reasons, it provided new avenues for them and their schools to improve instruction.

“Changing course in education is slow, like turning a tanker,” Ms. Scanlan said. But out of concern over the crisis in public education, she said, “Colorado decided to do something significant, fast.”

Major cuts: High schools face hard economic lessons

By Christine Armario and Terence Chea, The Associated Press
June 6, 2010

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Students graduating from high school this spring may be collecting their diplomas just in time, leaving institutions that are being badly weakened by the nation's economic downturn.

Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members — caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars — are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities.

VIDEO: More deep cuts looming for public schools
VIDEO: Hard times for even richest districts

Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind.

"It's going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college," said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose. "People wouldn't be as motivated to do anything in school because there's no activities and there's no involvement."

The library at Silver Creek High is open for only an hour a day. The career center is closed. There is no more summer school. And student athletes must pay $200 each.

State budget cuts will make things even worse next year. The school will probably have five fewer classroom days and lose three of its four guidance counselors and three of its four custodians, as well as its health aide, mental health coordinator and student activities director. The future of student government, clubs, pep rallies, homecoming and prom is in doubt.

The federal government's $787 billion economic stimulus package saved an estimated 300,000 education jobs for this year, but many of those positions are once again in jeopardy as that money dries up.

"Literally tens of millions of students will experience these budget cuts in one way or another," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who is urging Congress to provide another round of emergency funding for schools. "If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis, we could impede reform and fail another generation of children."

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has introduced legislation that would create a $23 billion fund to help schools retain teachers, principals and other staff members. The fate of the bill is uncertain.

The American Association of School Administrators estimates that 275,000 education jobs will be cut in the coming school year, based on an April survey. Other AASA surveys found that 52% of administrators plan to cut extracurricular activities, and 51% are reducing elective courses not required for graduation.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, which cut $90 million last school year, plans to slice off an additional $78 million and eliminate more than 1,000 positions, including almost 650 teachers. The district will cut its middle school sports teams next year, and schools are cutting electives such as German and creative writing, Superintendent Peter Gorman said.

"I'm very concerned when we can't offer those courses which hook an individual student to pursue their passion, or what could be their life's vocation," Gorman said.

In the Tupper Lake Central Schools in New York, the rural district in the Adirondacks will lose 25% of its instructional staff in the upcoming school year, which will probably result in bigger classes and the elimination of electives such as photography, modern art and ceramics, said Superintendent Seth McGowan.

"It seriously compromises the depth of the education our students will be receiving," he said.

In Illinois, more than 20,000 jobs in schools — including an estimated 12,600 teachers and administrators — will be lost next school year, said Brent Clark, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators.

South Florida's Broward County, the nation's sixth-largest school district, could lay off 800 to 1,000 teachers because of a $130 million budget shortfall. Officials are trying to figure out how to save sports and electives, considering options like sharing an art teacher between schools.

California's relentless budget crisis is taking its toll on schools like Silver Creek High, part of San Jose's East Side Union High School District, which is seeking to slash an additional 10% from its $200 million budget.

Over the past two years, the district, which has 12 campuses and 25,000 students, has eliminated more than 450 full-time positions, including nearly 200 teachers and certified staff, said Assistant Superintendent Cathy Giammona.

Class sizes have swelled to an average of 35 students, with more than 40 crammed into AP Calculus sections. And schools in the district won't offer any courses unless they are fully enrolled, leading to cuts in electives such as photography, business, woodworking and Japanese.

Silver Creek High senior Anthony Chavez, who credits his counselors with helping him win a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, said he worries that students won't get the same opportunities with just one counselor for more than 2,400 students.

"Through my four years here my counselors helped me with everything. I'm the first generation in my family to go to college," he said. "I didn't even know what SATs were."
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Educators Are Opposed to Obama’s School Plan

By GERRY SHIH | NY Times
June 5, 2010

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week that California was submitting a new bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in financing under President Obama’s education initiative, Race to the Top, he could not resist a Hollywood joke.

The school superintendents who prepared the bid deserved an Oscar “for the great performance in putting this together,” he said, thanking several by name, including Carlos A. Garcia, the San Francisco superintendent.

“It’s supported just about by everybody,” Mr. Schwarzenegger added.

That, too, was meant to be a joke.

Over the past few months, educators, the teachers unions and lawmakers have clashed so bitterly regarding the changes tied to Race to the Top that state officials privately say the weakened bid stands at best a 50-50 chance of gaining approval — and a sorely needed $700 million — from Washington.

The Bay Area has been at the center of this fight. Mr. Garcia had to be prodded into joining the bid by Ramon C. Cortines, the Los Angeles schools superintendent, and even now he continues to openly criticize a federal program that he hopes will send $20 million to the San Francisco Unified School District, which is facing a $113 million deficit.

Mr. Garcia has said he objects to both the stringent standards and to Mr. Obama’s execution of Race to the Top, which aims to overhaul the nation’s public schools by awarding money based on several conditions, including tying teacher salaries to student performance, abolishing teacher tenure and expanding charter schools. Many of the programs’ critics, including Mr. Garcia, say it is a strong-armed approach similar to the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind policy.

“We’re tired of all that stuff,” Mr. Garcia said. “Even if we get the money, I’m not sure if we can implement all of that.”

Mr. Garcia’s dilemma — he disagrees with the policy, but badly needs the money — is shared by many other strapped superintendents. But his perspective is unique to the Bay Area, where growing discontent among progressives over Mr. Obama’s brand of liberalism is reflected in resistance to his administration’s education policy, which has been forcefully articulated by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Many of the policy’s critics see Race to the Top as a direct attack on teachers. In San Francisco, the teachers union remains well connected to the school board and to influential San Francisco state legislators like Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Senator Leland Yee, both Democrats.

The California Teachers Association has been among the largest donors to both Mr. Ammiano’s and Mr. Yee’s re-election campaigns, giving each the $7,800 maximum, campaign finance records show.

This week, by a vote of 48 to 28, the California Assembly passed a bill written by Mr. Ammiano and sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers that caps the number of state-sanctioned charter schools at the current level of 1,450.

The history of Mr. Garcia’s work in San Francisco, educators who have worked with him say, suggests he is perhaps not as opposed to the Obama administration’s policy as his public criticism might indicate.

After the district approved a ballot initiative in 2008, for example, it began rewarding schools monetarily for improved test scores — a compromise, but not quite the merit pay for teachers that the Obama administration has pushed for. Board and staff members also say Richard Carranza, Mr. Garcia’s deputy, has been quietly instituting more quantitative analyses of student and teacher performance.

Mr. Garcia said his actions matched what he had been saying all along.

“What I’ve said to Arne, what I’ve said to the state, is: ‘Bring us under the tent. We want to be part of the partnership,’ ” he said. “But a partnership isn’t, ‘My way or the highway.’

“We’re waiting for that hand to meet us halfway.”

California applies again for federal school-reform grant

"Race to the Top" funds would help the state link teacher evaluations to student performance and better use data to improve teaching. Lack of union support could hurt the state's chances.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
June 2, 2010

California joined 34 other states Tuesday in competing a second time for federal Race to the Top school-reform grants, but union opposition could doom the effort.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger signed the state's application at Lafayette Elementary School in Long Beach, joined by officials who included state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

"The goal is really quite simple," O'Connell said, "to have an effective teacher in front of every classroom, to have a true school leader at every school site and to have the necessary infrastructure and support at the school."

The state could receive up to $700 million in one-time funding to link teacher evaluations to student performance, place the most effective educators in struggling schools and better use data to improve teaching. The plan also embraces the federal emphasis on replacing staff at "failing" schools and converting some to independently run charter schools, most of which are non-union.

At the news conference, the governor touted the participation of 40 unions. To reach that number, however, officials counted unionized charter schools; they counted one charter organization, Green Dot Public Schools, 17 times — once for each of its campuses.

Only 17 unions from 123 participating school districts signed on. The unions in opposition include those from Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified, the largest participating school systems.

Limited union participation likely would diminish the state's chances at winning, given the scoring system, analysts have said.

The grant would provide a needed financial infusion as cash-strapped districts statewide are resorting to laying off teachers and shortening the school year to balance budgets.

Critics, including many from outside of unions, have opposed linking teacher evaluations to student test scores as well as other controversial initiatives they said would prove costly after the grant runs out.

Nationwide, union opposition has not been automatic. Several states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida, deserve praise for collaborating "in a meaningful way with educators, parents and community leaders," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Earlier this year, California failed in the first round of the contest, from which only Delaware and Tennessee emerged as winners.

California almost abandoned a second try, but U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan personally urged Schwarzenegger not to give up, officials said.

In the current bid, California has opted to put together a more aggressive package spearheaded by a "working group" of seven school districts rather than settling for a watered-down application that might attract more widespread buy-in.

"We have decided to focus our efforts only on districts firmly committed to reform," Schwarzenegger said. "This is what makes this different."

Advocates Question Whether Administration’s Proposals Will Leave Minority Institutions Behind

More efficient, less bureaucratic government spending is always high on everyone’s list of priorities. But an Obama administration plan to consolidate dozens of education, science and community-development programs of interest to communities of color, including minority-serving institutions, continues to draw concerns from the president’s allies and adversaries alike.

At issue, will consolidation—and increased competition for federal dollars—negate minority participation in such programs or otherwise leave communities, institutions and students of color behind?

“Our children’s future should not depend on whether their state or district receives a competitive grant,” says National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel, referring to Race to the Top, one of several Obama initiatives that use competition to drive reform.

The consolidation/competition proposal that has generated considerable attention is a plan to take separate National Science Foundation programs for historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and fold them into a new, larger program featuring partnerships between MSIs and majority institutions. Hispanic-serving institutions, which had sought their own separate program, also would become part of this mix.

At another agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the administration’s 2011 budget also calls for realignment of MSI programs.

HUD would create a $25 million University Community Fund to replace smaller separate funding streams targeted individually at MSIs. Under the current funding structure, HBCUs receive $9 million, while HSIs and tribal colleges have $6 million and $5 million, respectively.

“Funding would be allocated by competition to universities that show innovative community-development strategies that respond to local needs and build on past experience,” says HUD spokesman Lemar Wooley. “Perhaps the best way to think of the program changes are combining the programs under one name and encouraging partnership.”

As an example, Wooley says, an institution such as Howard University could work with American or Georgetown university on a project to change an area in the District of Columbia.

But MSI leaders have concerns, noting that the realignment would force HBCUs to compete with HSIs and tribal colleges for limited funding—all while trying to attract interest from majority-White institutions for partnerships.

“Fundamentally I think it’s the wrong approach to build capacity at MSIs,” says Dr. Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. He notes there already is competition within the existing programs at NSF and HUD; as a result, not all applicants receive funding.

One concern with the administration’s proposals, says UNCF Government Affairs Director Edith Bartley, is implementation of newly consolidated initiatives—including whether MSIs have broad representation on grant review panels.

Changes to NSF and HUD programs are taking place as the Obama administration is placing an increased emphasis on consolidation and competition within federal education programs.

In its fiscal year 2011 education budget, for example, the administration proposed a consolidation of 38 existing programs into 11 new, streamlined activities—many of them with competitive grants.

“These things just keep cropping up in this budget, page after page after page of consolidations,” said Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., in a recent exchange with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Cochran said he was particularly concerned that the consolidation plans included termination of Even Start, a federal family literacy program that provides formula funding to all states. In its place would be a $450 million new competitive grant for effective literacy practices, to be awarded by competitive grants. In his state, Cochran said, Mississippi would lose $830,000 previously allotted to Even Start by formula.

“Formula grants provide a reliable stream of funding to states and local districts,” he said.

The new emphasis on competition also is prompting criticism from some Democrats’ staunchest allies. NEA’s Van Roekel took particular aim at Race to the Top, a $4.3 billion competitive grant in the 2009 economic stimulus bill designed to promote K-12 innovation. More than 40 states applied for funding during the first round of competition, but the department says only two applications—from Delaware and Tennessee—qualified for funding right now. The department says it hopes to fund 10 to 15 additional states during the next Race competition.

In the meantime, Van Roekel says, many districts are considering major cuts to teacher slots. “Now is not the time for competition,” he says. “Competition is a luxury our states should have during a budget surplus, not when they are facing record deficits and slashing jobs.”

Instead of more competition, NEA is looking for more formula funding to shore up state and local education budgets, one other element of last year’s stimulus bill. The union is urging Congress to support a $23 billion education jobs bill it says would save 150,000 education jobs.

Duncan has countered that competitive funding is needed to drive reform. “Kids at risk are not well-served by the status quo, which is why we want to continue driving reform with competitive programs,” he said.

Consolidations could support innovation as well as efficiency, he said. “We are trying to do fewer things but do them in a world-class manner.”

Assembly Approves Sweeping Education Reforms to Support New York State's Application for Race to the Top Funding

Looks like NY is following states like CA in making pretty major state policy changes to accommodate much needed federal support. Check out the A11310 full legislation here.

Sections of the Assembly Bill A11310 specifically relevant to English Language Learners:
Section 12 on page 6
Section 20 a) on page 11
Section 21 on page 12

-Patricia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 28, 2010

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan today announced the passage of legislation to reform the state's charter school system.
The leg islation (A.11310) would raise the cap on charter schools from 200 to 460, helping to ensure that New York State will have one of the nation's most competitive applications for federal funding under the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant program in time for the June 1 deadline. This measure, in conjunction with a strong teacher evaluation system authorized earlier in the week and funding for long-term assessment of student achievement, will help ensure that New York State receives maximum RTTT funding.
"These sweeping reforms will help put an end to divisive fighting over school space and give a meaningful voice in the process to traditional public school parents," said Silver (D-Manhattan). "The legislation also increases transparency by giving the State Comptroller auditing power over charter schools, while ensuring that they enroll and retain children with special needs. This measure will undoubtedly encoura ge the creation of more successful charter schools in New York State."

"This bill will allow New York State to submit a competitive application for federal Race to the Top funding and increase our chances at receiving up to $700 million for our schools," said Nolan (D-Queens). "I would like to thank New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Senior Deputy Commissioner John King for their leadership, cooperation and hard work."

The legislation creates a new request for proposals process for the creation of 260 new charter schools. The new system favors applications which best respond to certain Race to the Top objectives such as increasing high school graduation rates and addressing student achievement gaps in reading/language arts and mathematics. Requests for proposals for new charter schools would be issued by the Board of Regents and SUNY trustees after undergoing a public review process .
In addition, the legislation would:

* Institute a four-year period over which the 260 new charter schools would be created;
* Prohibit for-profit organizations from operating or managing any new charter schools;
* Ensure that charter schools serve more children with disabilities, English language learners and free- and reduced-price lunch program participants;
* Require the chancellor to develop building usage plans for fair allocation and usage of space;
* Require matching capital improvements to the traditional public school portion of a building when such an improvement is made in excess of $5,000 to the co-located charter school;
* Authorize the State Comptroller to audit charter schools at his or her discretion; and
* Increase accountability by new disclosure and ethics provisions.

The Assembly also passed legislation today that would provide financial support for a state longitudinal data system to measure long-term student achievement (A.11309). Earlier this week, the Assembly passed legislation enhancing the statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals (A.11171).

Tensions Flare in Race to Top's Second Round

States, Teachers’ Unions Clash Over Contest-Driven Reforms

By Michele McNeil | Ed Week
April 23, 2010

With the second-round deadline for federal Race to the Top Fund grants less than six weeks away, states are rushing to raise the stakes on their education reform plans as they fight over the remaining $3.4 billion in prize money.

But in doing so, states from Massachusetts to Colorado are tangling with their teachers’ unions as they test how far they can go to meet federal officials’ demands that they be aggressive, yet inclusive, in devising a road map to dramatically improve student achievement.

“On one hand, the federal government is saying, ‘Be bold,’ which implies significant challenge to the status quo, which then tends to be disruptive and generate resistance,” said S. Paul Reville, the education secretary in Massachusetts, where the American Federation of Teachers affiliate has revoked its support of the state’s second-round application over teacher issues. “Yet at the same time, the federal government is asking us to get full [district and union] support,” he said. “That’s the dynamic tension.”

Read on

Districts refusing reforms could hurt California's chances for grant money

The state hopes to win up to $700 million in Race to the Top funds. But a large portion of districts and teachers unions eschew California's proposed changes and refuse to sign its grant application.
February 17, 2010|By Jason Song

A large number of California school districts and teachers unions have refused to accept education reforms being pushed by the Obama administration, and that could hamper the state's chances of winning hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, some officials fear.

The money would come from a $4.3-billion set of competitive school-improvement grants that Washington plans to begin awarding to states this spring under the administration's Race to the Top program. California officials are hoping to win up to $700 million of that money.

Federal officials have outlined four main areas of reform to be considered in awarding Race to the Top grants: more sophisticated data systems to track student progress, common education standards, intervention in low-achieving schools, and improved efforts to train teachers and principals.

But a majority of California school districts and about three-quarters of its teachers unions, as well as some charter schools and other education agencies, have declined to sign agreements that require them to abide by those changes.

"It's not what I would have hoped for," said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who sponsored legislation aimed at qualifying California for the federal money.

Many states amended or rewrote education laws to meet the administration's reform agenda. In California, this included a change that was vigorously opposed by unions and others: linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores.

States will be judged on a 500-point scale, and federal officials have said that only a few will get funding, although there will be a second round this year. Nearly 10% of the total score depends on securing commitments from school districts.

It will be up to the states to distribute the money, but only districts that have agreed to participate will receive a share. Winning states will be notified in April.

California does have some advantages going into the competition. Ten states, including Texas and Washington, didn't apply for the first round. And some states with a high level of participation from districts and unions don't embrace key reforms encouraged by the Obama administration, according to some experts. Every school district in Kentucky, for example, agreed to participate in reforms, but legislators there did not approve a plan to allow charter schools, a key component of Race to the Top.

Some California officials say they are comfortable with the level of participation in the state, pointing out that the districts that have signed agreements serve nearly 60% of the state's students.

"Based on what I've seen, it makes us highly competitive," said Rick Miller, deputy state superintendent for education.

Some parts of California's application could set it apart, especially since legislators voted to take down a firewall between test score data and teacher identities, and gave parents the ability to demand that low-performing schools be taken over.

"A few months ago, no one was talking about California having a chance," said Andy Smarick, an education expert with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C.

That changed when the state Senate and Assembly approved legislation that met the administration's requirements. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had made the state's Race to the Top application a priority, signed those bills into law last month.

Federal officials have declined to handicap California's chances of receiving a grant. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said that states with weak applications will not boost their chances even if they have a high percentage of districts signed on.

Teachers unions have been leery of California's Race to the Top application from the beginning, primarily because of the link between teacher evaluations and student achievement data. Union leaders have argued that the state's standardized tests are too flawed to be used for high-stakes decisions.

After the application was approved, the powerful California Teachers Assn. sent an e-mail to local unions, urging them not to sign.

"It was extremely vague and had very serious problems," said David Sanchez, president of the 340,000-member group.

San Diego Unified, the state's second-largest district, came to a similar conclusion. District officials refused to sign on, even though that made the district ineligible for grant money.

"The state was asking the district to sign onto something that's completely undefined," said Richard Barrera, the San Diego school board president.

Barrera said he was also concerned that San Diego Unified officials would lose flexibility and instead be obligated to follow directives from state lawmakers if California won a grant.

"It's a bad idea for folks in Sacramento to make education decisions in San Diego," he said.

Education officials, however, say there could be a two-tiered system with some school districts complying and others continuing to operate as usual.

Los Angeles Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and school board President Monica Garcia signed the application, but the city teachers union declined, saying the grant money would provide only a short-term fix for long-term problems.

A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, estimated that the district could receive $35 million if the state succeeds in receiving $700 million from the federal government.

"We don't believe that would do anything" in the long run, Duffy said.

Cortines said that it remains unclear how the district would use the money, and that he would convene a panel, including union leaders, to discuss the best uses for it.

The L.A. superintendent said California has a good shot at the initial round of funding, but added that he plans to apply for later rounds when school districts may be allowed to compete on their own.

President Obama recently said he would ask Congress for an additional $1.35 billion in funding for Race to the Top in 2011.

The prospect of winning the money was especially enticing to districts in California and elsewhere that have been hard-hit by budget cuts and declining enrollment. Districts here are planning for more cuts in the next school year that could include more teacher layoffs, class-size increases and program reductions.

"The economic situation is we have to go after any way to get money," Cortines said.

The misguided race to federalize education

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" because, he continued, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.

Pretty concerning quote. Acting based on a threat or a sense of fear doesn't seem very authentic.

-Patricia

David Davenport,Gordon Lloyd | SF Gate
Sunday, February 7, 2010

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. With the possible exception of Texas - where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings - no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.

It's easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" because, he continued, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before. And that's precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.

There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.

It started when two former "education governors," Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, took some of their education ideas to the White House and now, in the name of spending stimulus money and curing the ailing economy, we spend billions in federal grants on schools, all with policy strings attached.

You could call it bribery, offering cash-starved states extra billions if only they would follow federal curricular standards and testing regimes. You could definitely call it unconstitutional, because nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government a role in education, and the 10th Amendment says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states. Even the highly elastic commerce clause doesn't stretch far enough to cover education. To make matters worse, these federal grants are permitted to go directly to school districts, further eroding the role of states.

But beyond the constitutional question, why would we object to shifting educational control from local and state governments to Washington? For one thing, most of the promising experiments in K-12 educational reform - charter schools, parent councils or the creation of regional sub districts - shift power down toward local principals and parents, not up toward a more distant bureaucracy. For another, needing to win over local and state leaders one at a time slows the embrace of policy fads. For example, after the celebration when Sen. Edward Kennedy and Bush joined hands to "leave no child behind," we were left instead with a problematic testing regime now desperately in need of repair. Further, education experts who have examined federal education standards say they are more lax than the ones most states now employ.

One of the problems with education, health care, federal regulation of banks and executive compensation: It's an enormous expansion of the federal enterprise. And, like the New Deal enacted in the crisis of the Great Depression, it will never be turned back. The era of big government isn't over; it's just beginning.

David Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Gordon Lloyd is professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.

Chiefs Press Education Secretary on ESEA Issues

Really interesting discussion here on how urban-centered reforms undermine the realities of the rural (and non-urban) contexts. What's also interesting is how the option for states to partner K-12 and higher education in devising college-readiness standards is an eligible alternative route that can be taken if they choose not to adopt the CCSSO's standards. Doesn't the former just make more sense if a state wants their students to be prepared for their respective, public institutions of higher ed?

-Patricia

By Lesli A. Maxwell | Ed Week
Washington

Even as they posed tough questions about government flexibility on overhauling low-performing schools and the disadvantages of having to compete for federal dollars, the states’ top education officials today expressed general support for how the Obama administration aims to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

“I think we’re off to a very compatible start,” said Joseph Morton, Alabama’s state superintendent at the annual legislative conference of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “When we get down to details is when we’ll know for sure how compatible we are.”

But the chiefs weren’t focused only on the details of reauthorizing the ESEA, which is now known as the No Child Left Behind Act, even as they were set to release recommendations to Congress on what an overhauled federal law ought to include. They also offered U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan specific recommendations—and made specific requests—in a wide-ranging, hourlong session.

Among the topics: the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, states’ momentum toward adoption of common academic standards, and the challenges for rural states in turning around their lowest-performing schools through methods mandated as a condition of receiving billions of dollars in Title I school improvement grants.

The needs of rural states prompted especially lively discussion.

Read on

Obama wants to raise the bar of No Child Left Behind law

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
February 2, 2010

The Obama administration will seek Congress' help in overhauling a key part of the 8-year-old No Child Left Behind education law.

The proposal would rework the way the federal government judges public schools, scrapping a requirement that states increase the percentage of students meeting standards each year, though it allows states to set their own standards.

In its place, President Obama wants lawmakers to consider rewarding states that show progress toward internationally benchmarked, nationally developed standards.

The administration detailed the

proposal on Monday as Obama released his 2011 budget. It comes as Obama seeks to make his mark on the next version of No Child Left Behind, the nickname for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Obama and Arne Duncan, his Education secretary, have long said No Child Left Behind doesn't hold states to high enough standards. On a conference call Monday, Duncan told reporters the law "often does little to reward progress" of schools that help students achieve — and lets states set standards that are too low to allow U.S. children to get into college or compete internationally.

"In too many states, those standards are too low, and the existing law doesn't provide states with incentives to raise their standards," Duncan said. "In fact, quite the opposite is true."

Though discussions with lawmakers continue, Duncan made it clear Monday he's looking for a new vision of academic standards. He said the law, which requires that 100% of students become proficient in math and reading by 2014, allows states to water down standards in what he called a "race to the bottom."

The law "did a great job of exposing the achievement gap and demanding accountability, but it had many other shortcomings," he said.

Duncan stressed that he's seeking Congress' help. "We've made no decisions about 2014. ... Everything's on the table."

U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education Committee, said he's hoping to reauthorize the law over the next few months. "It's a real opportunity to rethink some of the federal role" in education, he said.

Duncan also said several popular programs face cuts or consolidations, including Teach For America, which got an $18 million grant this year. He said the elite teacher training program will have to compete for funding. But the move may actually benefit it, because the program will be eligible for a larger competitive grant, he said.

"We think there's a great chance for programs that are doing a great job to actually increase their funding," Duncan said. "It's an expanded pool of resources, and we want the best to rise to the top."

'Race to Top' Viewed as Template for a New ESEA

Given that this ends up being the case, what’s concerning is that the principles don’t exactly question the current system’s overall framework and it’s effects on youth. Rather, it proposes that it merely lacks a few details, alignment, “better tests,” and consequences that states and districts didn’t initially have the capacity to include. The final section of this article also highlights the $350 million to develop better tests.

A few factors that I hope surface in the upcoming forums.

-Patricia

Design Principles for State Competition Signal Administration's Priorities

By Alyson Klein | Ed Week
January 4, 2010

Educators hoping for a glimpse at the next rendition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act may want to take a close look at the rules for the Race to the Top program, which pushes states to adopt education redesign principles that federal officials say are likely to be the cornerstone of the Obama administration’s plans for a new ESEA.

The $4 billion Race to the Top competition, created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to reward states for making progress on a series of redesign “assurances,” including turning around low-performing schools, improving teacher quality and distribution, bolstering state data systems, and improving the use of data and assessments.

Read on

To get federal funds, schools must apply stronger measures to struggling schools

By Nick Anderson | Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 28, 2009

If a public school struggles year after year, is the solution to shut it down? Fire everyone and start over? Hand the reins to a contractor? Or help teachers and principals raise their game?

As the federal government offers school systems an unprecedented $3.5 billion to revive schools, a huge increase for a reform program launched with $125 million in 2007, policymakers increasingly are prescribing stronger medicine for the lowest performers.

In years past, educators generally opted for the least invasive remedies. Most shied from state takeovers, shutdowns, conversion to a charter school and the like.

Instead, they favored measures such as teaming a principal with a "turnaround specialist," who would offer coaching and encouragement. The 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law, enacted under President George W. Bush, allowed the less-aggressive approaches.

Now the Obama administration is pushing a harder line for the weakest schools. School systems that want a share of the federal aid have four options:

-- Turnaround: replacing a school principal and at least half the staff;

-- Restart: converting a school to an autonomous charter school or hiring an education management organization to run it;

-- Shutdown: closing a school and dispersing its students; or,

-- Transformation: replacing a principal, improving teacher effectiveness and taking other steps for comprehensive reform.

Systems with nine or more of the weakest schools may use the transformation option in no more than half of them. That proviso significantly tightens the Bush-era accountability policy.

"After years of school improvement efforts," Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote this month in a document intended to justify the new approach, "there are far too few examples of persistently low-achieving schools that have significantly and rapidly improved performance. We believe that, in part, this is because turning around such schools generally requires fundamental changes in leadership and often in governance and staff, changes that many [local education agencies] are reluctant to make."

Will it work?

"In general, we don't have much evidence on what it takes to create an alternative to a failed school," said Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, a Brookings Institution analyst who oversaw education research in the Bush administration. "There's not a lot of case studies that you can point to. It's not that [Obama officials] are ignoring evidence. It's just that there isn't much evidence to go on."

Whitehurst contends that improving school curricula , the material taught and its sequence, is a proven way to lift performance. Generations of education leaders, he notes, have tried myriad school governance changes, with mixed results.

Reviving failed schools, especially in cities with deep poverty and a host of other academic obstacles, is probably the hardest job in public education. Duncan, schools chief in Chicago before joining the Obama administration, tried numerous shakeups in that city's schools and achieved some gains. But many schools in the nation's third-largest system still struggle, despite decades of reforms.

In the Washington area, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is known for closing schools, firing principals and sometimes seeking contractors to run schools that fall short. Charter schools also are proliferating in the District. Virginia, with relatively few schools in jeopardy, tends to avoid the most severe interventions.

Maryland, with more experience in turnaround efforts, is gravitating toward the get-tough approach. State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick said she has become convinced that replacing leadership in a failing school is essential.

"It begins with effective principals," she said. "I've never been in a great school that didn't have a great principal."
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The challenge is formidable. Maryland lists 39 schools that have needed improvement for a decade or more. Most are in Baltimore, and five are in Prince George's County.

As schools struggle, California politics slow education reform

By Juliet Williams, The Associated Press
December 15, 2009

SACRAMENTO — To education reformers, a $4.3 billion school funding competition from the Obama administration seemed like just the push California needed to start making long overdue changes to restore academic luster to the state's public schools.

But the drive to dramatically turn around a faltering system that serves more than 6 million children has run into political reality in a Legislature dominated by special interests. The result could leave the state with the nation's largest public school system ill-positioned to compete for the so-called Race to the Top funds.

Officials estimate California stands to gain up to $700 million.

Lawmakers meeting in a special session on education called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are considering competing Democratic bills. Both are intended to clear the way for California's federal application and to deal with some of the same issues, such as increasing the number of charter schools, revamping state tests and restructuring the worst-of-the-worst schools.

But how they propose to reach those goals is vastly different, and it's unclear whether the versions can be reconciled in time for the state to meet a Jan. 19 federal application deadline.

A Schwarzenegger-backed bill by state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, and the state superintendent of public instruction gives parents more say in what happens to failing schools and makes it easier to evaluate teachers and principals based on student achievement. It also would let parents move their children out of failing districts.

After narrowly passing the state Senate in November, with several Democrats opposing it or opting to sit out the vote, that measure is now stalled in an Assembly committee. One of the most powerful and well-funded political interests in the state, the California Teachers Association, is lobbying against it.

The teachers union instead backs different legislation offered by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica.

Reform advocates say that legislative package, which passed the Assembly on Thursday, does not go nearly far enough to fix California schools. Because of that, they say it wouldn't stand a chance in a competition against other large states such as Florida and Texas, which already have made bold school reforms.

Schwarzenegger has supported many of the changes included in the federal guidelines since taking office but has not had the political muscle to get the changes through a Legislature controlled by Democrats, who receive campaign funding from the teachers union.

He said he will veto the Assembly legislation if it reaches his desk, although that is unlikely because the Senate already has passed much tougher reform measures.

"This is a Race to the Top, not a race to mediocrity or the status quo," Schwarzenegger said.

The Republican governor has been blunt about the Assembly's effort, saying its Democratic majority simply wants to water down the tougher Senate legislation. The Assembly bill, he said, won't provide a real shot at the federal money in a state that has sustained billions of dollars in education cuts during the last three fiscal years.

"The kids and education need every single dollar," Schwarzenegger said.

California's education system was once considered a national model that bred a generation of scientists and entrepreneurs, but the state has fallen to near the bottom among states in school funding and academics, earning a D in academic achievement this year from Education Week magazine's annual national schools survey. Students perform below the national average on nearly all measures, with black, Hispanic and poor children faring worst.

Nearly 2,800 of its schools are considered to be failing by federal standards.

The dispute over whether to enter the federal competition and, if so, how strong the reforms should be is dividing Democratic allies and discouraging reformers who had hoped for historic change.

Margaret Fortune, a California State University trustee who once served as an education adviser to Schwarzenegger, said she has become disillusioned. Many lawmakers put partisan interests ahead of reasonable changes in school policy, she said.

"If they were responsible leaders, they would stand up and say, 'You know what? We're leading a broken system, so we need to turn around and fix it, because this is shameful,'" said Fortune, who now runs an independent teacher-training program and has launched several charter schools.

Representatives of the California Teachers Association and other influential education groups, including the California School Boards Association, argue that the state should approach Race to the Top cautiously. They say lawmakers should not rush headlong into major reforms for what amounts to a relatively small pot of one-time federal money.

California, which will spend $50 billion on K-12 education this fiscal year, stands to receive between $300 million and $700 million if its application is successful.

The teachers association opposes provisions in the Senate bill that would allow parents to transfer students in persistently failing schools to other districts, expand the number of charter schools without imposing new restrictions on them and allow parents to lobby for closure or conversion to a charter when schools don't improve.

The union says the Senate legislation lacks legislative oversight in making the changes.

Patricia Rucker, a legislative advocate for the CTA, urged lawmakers during a hearing on both bills to "resist the temptation to simply race for dollars for the prestige of winning an award and a competition and instead (ask) what is the overall goal of education reform in California?"

Many reform advocates say slow progress isn't acceptable in a state where one in five high school students drops out.

"I just don't have the patience for incremental change any more," said Assemblyman Juan Arambula, an independent from Fresno who left the Democratic caucus earlier this year. He sided with Republicans in opposing the Assembly bill and backing the more stringent Senate version.

Some Democratic lawmakers, particularly Hispanics and blacks, are feeling pressure from both sides: the teachers union, which opposes dramatic changes, and community groups that are frustrated by a persistent racial achievement gap.

Alice Huffman, president of the state NAACP and a former political director of the CTA, testified before the Assembly Education Committee that reforming the state's faltering schools is an urgent civil rights issue. She said she has nieces and nephews who have graduated from California schools yet cannot read and write.

"I'm just going to say that if we don't get this done, we have really blown it one more time," she said.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office is urging lawmakers to take the Obama administration's education reforms seriously, warning that they are likely to provide the framework for new federal education guidelines, putting at stake billions of dollars in federal money.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Calling Out America's Worst Schools: A $3.5 Billion Plan

By Gilbert Cruz | Time
Friday, Dec. 04, 2009

Like a family that has finally hit the lottery after years of hard living, the Department of Education is dropping money all over the place. Following two decades of relative poverty, its latest stimulus-supplemented gambit is to devote billions to try to fix the nation's very worst schools. After having directed almost $50 billion toward saving teacher jobs and $4 billion toward its Race to the Top program, in which states vie for reform-oriented funding, the department just made available applications for districts to compete for $3.5 billion earmarked for turning around failing schools. As part of the application, each state identifies its most "persistently lowest-achieving schools." The submission deadline for this race to the bottom is Feb. 8. (See pictures of the college dorm's evolution.)

This summer, Education Secretary Arne Duncan set a national goal to turn around the bottom 1% of America's schools — approximately 5,000 of them — over the next five years. While he has since dialed back the scope of the project (the Education Department now expects the funds to tackle 1,200 or so schools), the objective remains the same. "My goal isn't quantity but quality," Duncan told TIME in July. "That bottom 1% are made up of dropout factories, where 50, 60, 75% of kids are dropping out. Change around the edges isn't going to get us where we need to go."

The Obama Administration's turnaround funds are being routed through the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. In the past, SIG has provided federal dollars (up to about $500 million) to failing schools in order to implement changes. Of the five SIG restructuring options available to such underperforming schools, the most commonly chosen simply requires schools to make some change, any change — such as a new curriculum or extra training for teachers. Weak sauce, in other words. With this new $3.5 billion, districts (which will compete for cash obtained by states through the application of a formula) will have to show that they are ready for and capable of implementing one of four rather dramatic strategies: (1) replacing the school's principal and at least 50% of its staff; (2) closing the school and reopening it as a charter school; (3) closing the school and moving students to better ones; or (4) using a four-pronged transformation strategy of replacing the principal and taking steps to increase teacher effectiveness, instituting comprehensive instructional reforms, increasing learning time and creating community-oriented schools, and providing operational flexibility and sustained support.

While it's difficult to argue with the larger philosophical goal —let's fix the U.S.'s dropout factories — some critics say the evidence of success in turnaround strategies just isn't there. Worse, it isn't even that clear what makes a turnaround a turnaround. "There's no agreement on how bad a school has to be in order to qualify," says Andy Smarick, a former deputy assistant education secretary who is a visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-reform think tank. "There's no agreement on how long it has to sustain that level of excellence. There's no agreement on whether it means the entire population of students or just certain subgroups. Does it mean having a school go from an F to a C or from an F to an A?"

The Department of Education, sensitive to such criticisms as well as to the years-long frustration with No Child Left Behind's focus on testing, is hoping to use turnarounds to place the focus more on "growth models," in which the most important measurement is not a single year's test score but rather whether students are improving from year to year. (Currently, NCLB requires states to simply take a snapshot of students based on their year-end standardized test scores, as opposed to tracking advancement over time.)

The Denver public-school system, which for more than a year has been utilizing such a growth model, is one of the first districts to adopt school turnaround plans that mimic those favored by the Education Department. On Nov. 30, the city's school board approved measures that would have the district employ each of the four turnaround strategies at various schools across the district. "We can't pretend that modest changes to the status quo are going to deliver significantly different results," says Denver superintendent Tom Boasberg, who has been on the job for a year since replacing former superintendent (now U.S. Senator) Michael Bennet.

While enthusiastic about the district's reform plans, Boasberg is the first to admit that some of its turnarounds — and, by extension, some of the turnarounds across the country — will not succeed. "If we had a magic formula for school success, we wouldn't be lagging behind other countries like we are right now," he says. "We have to be prepared that some of these efforts will fail, but I'm confident that on the whole, they'll do far better than what they are replacing."

Technology tops Hutchison's education plan

By JAMIE STENGLE | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nov. 24, 2009

PLANO — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said on Tuesday that if elected governor, her education plan would focus on bringing more technology to the classroom, recruiting and retaining teachers, lowering the high school dropout rate and helping school districts find ways to save money.

Hutchison, who is challenging Gov. Rick Perry in the Republican primary for governor in March, unveiled her plans in a biotechnology lab at the Collin County Community College District in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

“Now is the time for us to be really creative using technology,” said Hutchison, who said she has approached companies about developing an e-learning device, less than a laptop but more than an e-reader, that could replace conventional textbooks.

Former Education Secretary Rod Paige said at the news conference that Hutchison's plan “is simply the right next step for Texas.”

Hutchison said Paige and former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings were among those who helped her put together the plan.

She said she would like to see an expansion of loan reimbursement programs like Teach for Texas and Teach for America. She also would like every college and university in the state to offer a version of the University of Texas' UTeach program, which recruits and trains math, science and computer science majors to become high school teachers.

She also would like to offer teachers the option of a “cafeteria plan,” so if they choose not to enroll in the health coverage plan for teachers, they could instead enroll in something else, like a child care program or tuition savings plan.

To help lower the high school dropout rate, Hutchison proposed initiatives that include helping middle school students who are behind a grade level to catch up at an accelerated pace and offering online learning.

Hutchison also wants to focus on financial accountability in schools, including identifying the best-performing school districts by ranking them in categories such as student performance and cost-per-pupil and having those districts serve as models for other schools.

She said the money saved can be put into “innovations for the future.”

Perry: There's nothing new

Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said the education topics Hutchison talked about already have been addressed by Perry, including expanding technology in schools and financial accountability in districts.

“By announcing education proposals that already exist, Sen. Hutchison acknowledged today that the education policies adopted by Governor Perry are effective in preparing students,” Miner said.

“She's finished another day on the campaign trail with out anything new,” he said.

Perry, meanwhile, wrote a letter on Tuesday to Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott, telling him not to commit Texas to the adoption of national standards and assessments in its application for stimulus funding from the federal government's $5 billion competitive grant fund dubbed “Race to the Top.”

“Texas is already ahead of most other states in setting college and career-ready standards in our schools,” he said. “The citizens of Texas, not the federal government, know what is best for our schools.”

Perry says Texas, not U.S., should set state public education standards

TERRENCE STUTZ | The Dallas Morning News
November 24, 2009

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry still wants no part of a move to establish national standards for English and math instruction in public schools.

Perry issued a letter Tuesday – just as rival Kay Bailey Hutchison was announcing education policy proposals – to state Education Commissioner Robert Scott reiterating his opposition to federal standards.

Texas education officials, with Perry's backing, told the U.S. Department of Education in June that the state would not participate with most other states in developing the standards, spelling out what students at all grade levels should be taught in those subjects.

By doing so, Texas has severely hurt its chances of getting a piece of a $4.35 billion federal grant program for schools, known as "Race to the Top" funds. But Perry said in his letter that that's a price worth paying.

"The citizens of Texas, not the federal government, know what is best for our children," said Perry, who has hammered away at various federal programs as he runs for re-election next year.

Although Scott insists that Texas still has a chance of being awarded the estimated $350 million to $700 million that it's eligible for under Race to the Top, the decision to forgo national standards deprives the state of at least 40 of the 500 possible points that will be used in the application process.

Texas officials have also been at odds with the U.S. Department of Education over differing interpretations of what determines whether a teacher is "highly qualified" – a requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The department is pushing for more stringent standards.