Alexander, Murray Announce Bipartisan Agreement on Fixing NCLB
From the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (bold mine):
The senators’ legislative agreement would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the chief law governing the federal role in K-12 education. The most recent reauthorization of ESEA was the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which was enacted in 2001 and expired in 2007. Since then, nearly all states have been forced to ask the U.S. Department of Education for waivers from some of the law’s most unworkable requirements.
What the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 does:
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 7 –
Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and
Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today announced a bipartisan
agreement on fixing “No Child Left Behind.” They scheduled committee
action on their agreement and any amendments to begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 14.
Alexander
said: “Senator Murray and I have worked together to produce bipartisan
legislation to fix ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Basically, our agreement
continues important measurements of the academic progress of students
but restores to states, local school districts, teachers, and parents
the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student
achievement. This should produce fewer and more appropriate tests. It is
the most effective way to advance higher standards and better teaching
in our 100,000 public schools. We have found remarkable consensus about
the urgent need to fix this broken law, and also on how to fix it. We
look forward to a thorough discussion and debate in the Senate education
committee next week.”
Murray said: “This
bipartisan compromise is an important step toward fixing the broken No
Child Left Behind law. While there is still work to be done, this
agreement is a strong step in the right direction that helps students,
educators, and schools, gives states and districts more flexibility
while maintaining strong federal guardrails, and helps make sure all
students get the opportunity to learn, no matter where they live, how
they learn, or how much money their parents make. I was proud to be a
voice for Washington state students and priorities as we negotiated this
agreement, and I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues
to build on this bipartisan compromise and move legislation through the
Senate, the House, and get it signed into law.”
The senators’ legislative agreement would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the chief law governing the federal role in K-12 education. The most recent reauthorization of ESEA was the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which was enacted in 2001 and expired in 2007. Since then, nearly all states have been forced to ask the U.S. Department of Education for waivers from some of the law’s most unworkable requirements.
The
senators’ bill would fix the problems with “No Child Left Behind,”
while keeping successful provisions, such as the reporting requirement
of disaggregated data on student achievement. The bill would end states’
need for waivers from the law.
· Strengthens state and local control:
The bill recognizes that states, working with school districts,
teachers, and others, have the responsibility for creating
accountability systems to ensure all students are learning and prepared
for success. These accountability systems will be state-designed but
must meet minimum federal parameters, including ensuring all students
and subgroups of students are included in the accountability system,
disaggregating student achievement data, and establishing challenging
academic standards for all students. The federal government is
prohibited from determining or approving state standards.
· Maintains important information for parents, teachers, and communities:
The bill maintains the federally required two tests in reading and math
per child per year in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, as
well as science tests given three times between grades 3 and 12. These
important measures of student achievement ensure that parents know how
their children are performing and help teachers support students who are
struggling to meet state standards. A pilot program will allow states
additional flexibility to experiment with innovative assessment systems
within states. The bill also maintains annual reporting of disaggregated
data of groups of children, which provides valuable information about
whether all students are achieving, including low-income students,
students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners.
· Ends federal test-based accountability:
The bill ends the federal test-based accountability system of No Child
Left Behind, restoring to states the responsibility for determining how
to use federally required tests for accountability purposes. States must
include these tests in their accountability systems, but will be able
to determine the weight of those tests in their systems. States will
also be required to include graduation rates, a measure of postsecondary
and workforce readiness, English proficiency for English learners.
States will also be permitted to include other measures of student and
school performance in their accountability systems in order to provide
teachers, parents, and other stakeholders with a more accurate
determination of school performance.
· Maintains important protections for federal taxpayer dollars:
The bill maintains important fiscal protections of federal dollars,
including maintenance of effort requirements, which help ensure that
federal dollars supplement state and local education dollars, with
additional flexibility for school districts in meeting those
requirements.
· Helps states fix the lowest-performing schools:
The bill includes federal grants to states and school districts to help
improve low performing schools that are identified by the state
accountability systems. School districts will be responsible for
designing evidence-based interventions for low performing schools, with
technical assistance from the states, and the federal government is
prohibited from mandating, prescribing, or defining the specific steps
school districts and states must take to improve those schools.
· Helps states support teachers:
The bill provides resources to states and school districts to implement
activities to support teachers, principals, and other educators,
including allowable uses of funds for high quality induction programs
for new teachers, ongoing rigorous professional development
opportunities for teachers, and programs to recruit new educators to the
profession. The bill allows, but does not require, states to develop
and implement teacher evaluation systems.
· Reaffirms the states’ role in determining education standards:
The bill affirms that states decide what academic standards they will
adopt, without interference from Washington, D.C. The federal government
may not mandate or incentivize states to adopt or maintain any
particular set of standards, including Common Core. States will be free
to decide what academic standards they will maintain in their states.
For more details on the bill:
Comments
-"If it survives the committee more or less intact with a respectable bipartisan vote, Alexander expects the measure to be on the Senate floor in the weeks after the committee reports it."
- "But No Child Left Behind also did some damage. It set up achievement targets that schools had to meet or face penalties. Those targets, it turned out, were poorly calibrated and put many school districts in dire situations. Lack of congressional progress on an education bill then forced the Education Department to dole out waivers to states if they met certain criteria."
"A particularly important win for Murray is the bill's allowance of federal funds for early education programs. A former pre-school teacher, she has championed the cause of educating the youngest children since she came to the Senate two decades ago."
Right...at SPS parents are never included in any decisions.
Dream on
I liked having MAP data for my kid twice a year, but even I think things have gotten out of hand.
CT
Parent
There is a lot of quality research into what works in education. The tragedy is that most of it is ignored because it's not sexy enough to rally a cause around.
Example: the proper use of "Formative Assessment", particularly effective use of both questioning of and feedback to students to help move their learning forward, has amongst the highest effect sizes of any instructional technique. Unfortunately, that's not something you can measure on a test, so it gets no play in the press or in Congress.
An Administrator
There was a Curriculum and Instruction meeting to discuss a resolution put forth by Directors Betty Patu and Sue Peters. The resolution would ask Randy Dorn to suspend the use of SBAC towards the use of AYP.
Director Peaslee felt it necessary to send a statement in OPPOSITION to this request and Director Martha McLaren DID NOT support the fore-mentioned resolutions.
These two directors are up for re-election and all attempts should be made to disallow them back into office. It was there responsibility to speak-up.
SPS used tens of thousands of children to develop baseline information for SBAC and neither McLaren or Peaslee spoke in opposition--when it mattered.
The feds used funding to promote charter expansion. Do you know: Would the NCLB rewrite disallow this practice?
With the GOP in the majority in Congress, this is to be expected.
--- swk
CT