Sen. Alexander's Draft NCLB Bill: Cheat Sheet
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee, put out his opening bid for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act earlier this week.
And so far, all the interesting discussion has been about testing, testing, and more testing. But there's a lot more to the draft.
What would it actually do?
Testing is up in the air, right? Right. Two options floated to spark conversation. Option A: Let states choose their own testing adventure, including annual tests, portfolios, grade-span tests (a policy the National Education Association hearts), formative assessments, competency-based education, the whole shebang. Districts could also cook up their own assessment systems to use instead, with permission from their states.
The language here seems to have been crafted just to show the edu-world that absolutely everything is on the table. But lots of anti-testing groups, including Parents Across America, arejumping for joy just to see it enshrined in real live legislative language.
Option B: The current NCLB testing regime, which calls for reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. But there's a big twist. Under this option, districts could also go their own way on assessments, with the permission of their states.
The district route in both options is similar to what the Council of Chief State School Officers asked for in its NCLB recommendations. The key difference between the two: Under the draft, the feds would get absolutely no role in approving these local systems. They would in CCSSO's proposal.
What would happen to accountability? States would have way more control over what their systems look like than they do under NCLB Classic, or under the Obama administration's NCLB waivers. Unsurprisingly, the sections on Adequate Yearly Progress, the yardstick at the heart of the NCLB law, are totally cut, and the NCLB sanctions like tutoring and public school choice are out the window. That's not such a big deal because the waivers pretty much made AYP moot anyway, at least in most states.
Instead, the bill would let states come up with their own accountability methods, within certain parameters. State systems would have to consider student achievement, but measuring year-to-year student-growth would be optional. And states would have to consider the performance of student subgroups (like students in special education and English-language learners), and use a four-year graduation rate. There don't seem to be major requirements beyond that.
Do states and districts still have to identify low-performing schools? Yep. States would have to single out low-performing schools—but the draft doesn't say that it would have to be a particular percentage of schools, or that certain kinds of struggling schools—such as those with big achievement gaps or low grad rates—would have to be in the mix.
That's a key difference from the waivers, which require states to single out the lowest-performing 5 percent "priority" schools for dramatic interventions (involving things like extending the day or getting rid of half the staff), and another 10 percent of "focus" schools with big achievement gaps or other problems, for more targeted help.
So what happens to these low-performing schools? Pretty much whatever districts think would work, although states would be allowed to come up with interventions too, and have districts carry them out, as long as that's in line with state law.
Meanwhile, the administration's School Improvement Grant models would be toast, a move thateveryone saw coming a gazillion miles away. In fact, the language authorizing the original SIG program in the law would be kaput, too. And, unlike an earlier Alexander bill, states wouldn't have to identify a particular percentage of schools for serious turnaround efforts.
Instead, states would be permitted to reserve 8 percent of their Title I money for school Sen. Alexander's Draft NCLB Bill: Cheat Sheet - Politics K-12 - Education Week: