Ten Questions About ESEA Reauthorization
So, the places to see and be seen tomorrow are the two Capitol Hill hearing rooms where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be taking questions from lawmakers on the House and Senate education committees about the ESEA blueprint.
He'll start off in the Senate (at 10 a.m.) and move over to the House (at 2:30 p.m.)
As I've said before, reaction from many groups has been generally positive (except, of course, the unions). But we haven't heard much from lawmakers, beyond canned statements (I guess they're busy with this), so the hearings should be interesting.
There's a lot in the blueprint that needs to be fleshed out, and maybe Congress can help us get some answers. Here are some suggested questions:
1) What exactly does it mean to be "college- and career-ready," especially for states that don't sign on to the Common Core State Initiative? And, in particular, what "careers" are schools responsible for preparing students for? For example, is Walmart greeter on the list? Because if it is, I think we're mostly there already. I know, that's probably not what you had in mind, right? How do we make sure we get the career part right, without being accused of being too prescriptive?
2) ) What's up with this 2020 goal for getting all students college- and career-ready? You're saying that's not a hard-and-fast deadline. What will that look like in practice? How should we structure growth models around that?
3) How do you want us to structure the transition from the new accountability system to a new one? It could be a really messy process, and we'd like to avoid that.
4) The blueprint says that schools that aren't in the lowest 10 percent of schools