Arne Duncan Urges Parents to Weigh In on NCLB Rewrite; Will It Work?
Annapolis, Md.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan urged parents at a Maryland middle school Wednesday to air their concerns about a lack of resources and accountability in a bill introduced this week in the U.S. House of Representatives to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act.
But some of the biggest applause lines at the event were from parents who wanted to talk about another issue: testing and the Common Core State Standards.
"I'm really afraid that the PARCC assessments are going to take away from my child's time in the classroom," one mother said to the education secretary at the Parent Teacher Association town hall at Wiley H. Bates Middle School in Annapolis. (She was referring to common-core-aligned tests being developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, one of two consortia devising such assessments.)
And another parent asked, "Why are we doing too much too soon on aggressive PARCC testing in schools? ... Can't we take some time to examine this before we use our children as guinea pigs in the classroom?"
Another said she "completely supported" common core, but wondered what kinds of supports would be available to help her son, a student in special education, gain access to the curriculum and assessments.
Duncan told them there are going to be "bumps and hiccups" when it comes to rolling out new common-core-aligned tests. "I can't promise it will be perfect." But he noted that field tests across the country "went pretty darn well last year."
As for special education resources, he said the Obama administration's proposed fiscal 2016 budget seeks a $175 million increase for special education state grants (which is pretty small considering it's a more than $11.5 billion program, but it's something).
Bipartisanship and NCLB
On the NCLB rewrite, Duncan is angry that the process in the House isn't bipartisan. His dislike for the bill is no surprise since the White House threatened to veto a nearly identical piece of legislation back in 2013 that passed the House on a totally party-line vote.
He's also miffed about remarks that Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee made earlier Wednesday.
Duncan didn't say this specifically, but he may have been referring to some inside baseball here: Alexander's plan for moving the bill through the Senate. Alexander said earlier at the Brookings Institution that, for now, he's planning to run a "bipartisan open process" and is looking for the 60 votes necessary to get the bill off the Senate floor.
It would be great to have Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the committee, on Arne Duncan Urges Parents to Weigh In on NCLB Rewrite; Will It Work? - Politics K-12 - Education Week: