CURMUDGUCATION: Senate Proposal Cuts Duncan Off At Knees #ESEA

CURMUDGUCATION: Senate Proposal Cuts Duncan Off At Knees:

Senate Proposal Cuts Duncan Off At Knees

The bipartisan proposal from the Senate Education Committee is settled and ready to see the light of day. There's some good news for public education and some bad news for the Obama administration.

Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) expressed a big ole bi-partisan hug of support for this baby, un-euphoniously entitled The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 (just once I would like to send a poet to DC). Let's look under the hood (you can find a handy summary of the bill here).

The (Partial) Defanging of Testing

Tests are still mandated entirely too often (every grade 3-8 and once in high school), but the bill leaves it to the states to decide what to do with the "data" that tests generate. States must use them in their accountability system, somehow, but it's up to the state to decide how. States will also be given flexibility "to pilot innovative assessment systems." The dream of a single national test, which was already for all intents and purposes dead-- that dream now has a fork in it.

States must keep parents informed and disaggregate data so that subgroups are not lost, so critics who are afraid that nobody would know that poor urban schools are in trouble without test results can now relax. But states must design their own system for intervening in failing schools, and as long as those systems fall within federal parameters, the states can do as they please. In fact, the feds are forbidden to interfere in the whole process. "The federal government is prohibited from determining or approving state standards."

Suck It, Arne 

That "Hands off, feds" attitude runs throughout the bill. State plans are acceptable unless proven naught by the USED, and the feds only have 90 days to do so. The Secretary must approve a state plan within the 90 days unless the department "can present substantial evidence that clearly demonstrates that such State plan does not meet the bill's requirements." To whom will such evidence be presented? A peer review board composed of "experts and practitioners with school-level and classroom experience."

Yes, unlike the waiver system that requires state bureaucrats to bow and scrape for Duncan's official okey-dokey, now the secretary must go before actual educators and prove to their satisfaction that a state plan is not acceptable. And if they say it;s not, the state still gets to appeal and resubmit. This strikes me a huge shift of the balance of power).

Also, "the bill affirms that states decide what academic standards they will adopt, without interference from Washington." The feds can't mandate a set of standards, and they can't CURMUDGUCATION: Senate Proposal Cuts Duncan Off At Knees:

Get Out The Pitchforks - The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 #ESEA

Get Out The Pitchforks - The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

National Day of Action Tomorrow April 8

Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning

What: Call your U.S. Senators and join the Twitter storm/Thunderclap. If we raise our voices together, we can persuade the Senate Education Committee to reduce testing requirements as it debates renewal of Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind.  

When: April 8, 2015

Who: Testing Resistance and Reform Spring alliance, convened by FairTest, and including many national and state organizations.

Call your Senators: Please mark your calendar, and take a few minutes on April 8 to phone your U.S. senators in Washington, DC. Ask to speak to the staffer who works on education policy. If no one is available, leave your message with the person who answered the phone. Find the phone numbers at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

Tell your Senators: Here is a model message. Feel free to use it, modify it, or say something entirely different.

            Hello. I'm [your name], calling from [your town]. I'm calling to ask Senator [name] to support changes to No Child Left Behind that will promote a saner and less intrusive approach to public school testing. Specifically, I urge [him/her] to support a switch to testing once each in elementary, middle and high school, and to remove high-stakes consequences from federally required standardized tests. Both these measures will help address the current over-emphasis on testing at the expense of learning. 

            If you have specific stories about problems with over-testing, please relate them. Personal stories are the most effective.


Twitterstorm: On April 8, send a tweet, help build the storm. Here is an example. If you modify it, be sure to include #cutfederaltests and the link to getting your Senators’ numbers:

           

“Join BATs, FT, SOS, TRRA, & UOO 4/8 #CutFedTests. Call Senate http://thndr.it/1P6DfEf. Cut back tests, end high stakes.”

            The link is to Senate phone numbers. The last ‘sentence’ is the basic message.

            To tweet your Senators, find their Twitter handles at:

            https://twitter.com/gov/lists/us-senate/members

           

Help launch the Twitterstorm by supporting our Thunderclap; when you do, on Tues eve a twitter, facebook or tumblr message is sent to your contacts asking them to call their Senators on Weds April 8. See https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/24577-cutfedtests-4-8-call-in. Use the red bar to choose your medium (you can return to select an additional medium, e.g. both Facebook and Twitter).

Email: Join the email campaign as well. To send a letter to your Senator, go to:

http://fairtest.org/roll-back-standardized-testing-send-letter-congres.

Big Education Ape: The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 (Summary of the Bill) Fixing “No Child Left Behind” http://bit.ly/1GlmiDp

Big Education Ape: Bipartisan Agreement on Fixing “No Child Left Behind” Sch Committee Action for 10 a.m. Tuesday, ... http://bit.ly/1Glj4jn

For more details on the bill:

Click here for the legislation.

Big Education Ape: National Day of Action April 8 Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning FairTest http://bit.ly/1P8A9PZ

Big Education Ape: Join April 8 national call-in day to #CutFedTests | Parents Across America http://bit.ly/1GV0xtf

Big Education Ape: NEA - Educators to spring into Wave of Action on eve of 50th anniversary of ESEA http://bit.ly/1ah1ore

Oklahoma Student Steals the Show during the Teachers Rally at the State Capitol | John Thompson

Oklahoma Student Steals the Show during the Teachers Rally at the State Capitol | John Thompson:

Oklahoma Student Steals the Show during the Teachers Rally at the State Capitol

Kiante Miles, a senior in the Mustang School District, energizes the crowd Monday by reciting one of his poems. Jim Beckel - THE OKLAHOMAN

The current school reformers' meme is that the backlash against test-driven reform is just a white middle class movement, a pawn of the teachers unions. Had true believers in competition-driven reform attended the rally at the Oklahoma State Capitol, they could have listened to students like Kiante Miles. His rap stole the show.

Miles wrote:

i am a student
chained down by tests that say
i'm not allowed to fly if i don't click my mouse a certain way
This Mustang High School student seeks something that simply can't be measured.So, he asks:

why would i set at a computer screen
and just try and answer a b or c
in life i want
the questions that say how do you stop cancer
how can we stop from killing each other
Why do we clip the wings of the ones we love?
Kiante would:

like to think that we are all seeds
planted into the soil of public education
until we get covered with the cement mixture of
EOI's, unfunded classes, over stressed teachers

He warns policy makers to not be deceived by the:

few of us 
the ones who fight through the adversity
see the light from the cracks of the cement
and manage to have some type of growth
These few trees growing through concrete ... can be deceiving because its not worth the cost of the hundreds no thousands that get left behind
The student then gave a shout out to his teachers who can truthfully say
that they don't do this for punishable pay
The cheering peaked as the poet addressed the crowd:

for there is strength in numbers
it's easy to remove a tree
but it takes an army to take on a forest
The first rule of teaching should be: Listen to the students and they will teach how you to teach them. Kiante Miles is a reminder that the same principle applies to school improvement.

Follow John Thompson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drjohnthompson

Oklahoma teachers jam state Capitol to demand more support for public education | News OK http://bit.ly/1Glorz3

What Happens When Highly Effective Instructors Are Not Good Teachers? | WagTheDog

What Happens When Highly Effective Instructors Are Not Good Teachers? | WagTheDog:

What Happens When Highly Effective Instructors Are Not Good Teachers?

 It is fanciful to suggest that a single score on a standardized test is somehow going to assess the overall effectiveness and quality of a teacher or even begin to measure the impact a teacher has had on his or her students and how that will be manifested and revealed in their future endeavors and accomplishments.

Many reformers are also convinced that a standardized test score will provide evidencethat a student is “on track” to be ready for college and careers.

Unfortunately, the decision to couple standardized tests with the Common Core Standards and to attach high stakes for accountability purposes will often distort classroom instruction and actually diminish student readiness.

While the Common Core Standards may claim to “ensure” that all students will be ready for diverse colleges and careers, classroom instruction is focused primarily on preparing students for standardized tests.

It seems ed reformers are not aware that employers are not hiring text-dependent thinkerswho have been trained to correctly answer Common Core multiple choice questions by disregarding plausible answers…

“It’s not a multiple-choice world, employers say. Don’t send us graduates who only know how to solve multiple-choice problems…

Today, educators all over the U.S. are reinventing liberal education in ways that blend the best strength of the liberal arts and sciences…including their constant focus on real-world contexts and decision-making in situations where the answer isn’t clear cut.”

In Defense Of A Liberal Education, Carol Geary Schneider, Forbes 8/10/09

More recent interviews with CEOs and other executives have confirmed the disconnect between Common Core test preparation and employer expectations…

Respondents said students lack self-awareness, can’t work in teams, 

What Happens When Highly Effective Instructors Are Not Good Teachers? | WagTheDog:

The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 (Summary of the Bill) Fixing “No Child Left Behind” #ESEA

The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015  (Summary of the Bill)

For more details on the bill:

Click here for the legislation.

Big Education Ape: National Day of Action April 8 Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning FairTest http://bit.ly/1P8A9PZ

Big Education Ape: Join April 8 national call-in day to #CutFedTests | Parents Across America http://bit.ly/1GV0xtf

Big Education Ape: NEA - Educators to spring into Wave of Action on eve of 50th anniversary of ESEA http://bit.ly/1ah1ore

Bipartisan Agreement on Fixing “No Child Left Behind” Sch Com Action for 10 a.m. 4/14/15 #ESEA

US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions: Newsroom - Press Releases:

Alexander, Murray Announce Bipartisan Agreement on Fixing “No Child Left Behind”

Schedule Committee Action for 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 14

Tuesday, April 07, 2015Margaret Atkinson / Jim Jeffries (Alexander): 202-224-0387

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.

What the Every Child Achieves Act does:

• 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:

Click here for the legislation.

Click here for a summary of the bill.

Big Education Ape: National Day of Action April 8 Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning FairTesthttp://bit.ly/1P8A9PZ

Big Education Ape: Join April 8 national call-in day to #CutFedTests | Parents Across America http://bit.ly/1GV0xtf

Big Education Ape: NEA - Educators to spring into Wave of Action on eve of 50th anniversary of ESEAhttp://bit.ly/1ah1ore

Bipartisan deal on K-12 education law unveiled:

Bipartisan deal on K-12 education law unveiled

WASHINGTON — The federal government would no longer label schools successful or failing based on student test scores under bipartisan legislation introduced Tuesday by two key senators.

The long-awaited rewrite of the federal K-12 education law is a compromise crafted by Sens.Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash.

It would replace the 2001 No Child Left Behind federal education law, which expired in 2007. The law had grown increasingly unpopular because of its reliance on high-stakes standardized testing and the strong role played by the federal government.

Alexander and Murray scheduled a vote on their bill for April 14 in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

"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," said Alexander, the committee's chairman. "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."

USA TODAY

Key lawmakers close to deal on education law

USA TODAY

Common Core divides GOP's potential 2016 field

Murray, the committee's top Democrat, said the proposal would improve state and local control over how schools are assessed without totally eliminating Washington's role in education.

"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," Murray said.

The bipartisan agreement offers a contrast to a House education bill written by Republicans. Democrats and the White House oppose it partly because it would allow federal dollars to be redirected away from poorer school districts.

The Alexander-Murray bill does not include that provision, but Alexander originally supported letting Title I money follow students from one school to any other school, so it could be offered later as an amendment.

The Senate compromise bill does contain other elements geared toward school choice. Those include new competitive grants for charter schools and incentives for states to authorize more charter schools.

The compromise would maintain the current regimen of reading, math and science tests between grades 3 and 12, but it would let states decide how to use those test scores for accountability purposes.

Alexander, in particular, was adamant about preventing the federal government from setting national academic standards, or making federal funds dependent on acceptance of certain standards.Bipartisan deal on K-12 education law unveiled:

Big Education Ape: National Day of Action April 8 Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning FairTesthttp://bit.ly/1P8A9PZ

Big Education Ape: Join April 8 national call-in day to #CutFedTests | Parents Across America http://bit.ly/1GV0xtf

Big Education Ape: NEA - Educators to spring into Wave of Action on eve of 50th anniversary of ESEAhttp://bit.ly/1ah1ore

How Do I REFUSE the Tests? - Refusal Form United 2 Counter

United 2 Counter - Refusal Form:

How Do I REFUSE the Tests?

Written by Green Lantern | Published: Sunday, 10 August 2014 03:30 | Hits: 18284

(WARNING: If you do not receive an email within 15 minutes; 1) check your spam folder - the letter will come from testrefusals@united2counter.com and will have your name in the subject line; 2) double check that the email address you entered was correct; 3) try again  Thanks for your patience and let's double the refusal numbers this year!)

The steps to refusing excessive, high-stakes testing are simple in New York. First, you craft a letter stating which tests you are refusing. Next, you mail or hand-deliver that letter to your school’s superintendent’s office. That’s all there is to it.

Now we’ve made it even easier with a fill-in-the-blanks refusal letter that you can print and send to your school district. It’s as easy as one-two-three:

1. Tell us your child(ren)’s name and which tests you’d like to refuse. Each test is described in detail, so you know exactly what you’re refusing.
2. Fill in your return address and the school’s address to insert into the letter.
3. Enter your email address so that we can send your finished letter.

To craft your own Refusal Letter, fill out the form below. United 2 Counter - Refusal Form:
_{* For your convenience here are the NYS School Districts and Superintendents Names and basic contact information.}

United 2 Counter - Refusal Form:

A-Plus Act to Fix No Child Left Behind Gets an F - US News

A-Plus Act to Fix No Child Left Behind Gets an F - US News:

The 'A-Plus' Act Gets an F

A plan to block grant education funds to states runs into a big problem: teachers unions.

Churn for Charters is No Solution 

 The House of Representatives had intended to bring the Student Success Act, the long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to a floor vote in late February. The bill would roll back the federal role in K-12 education significantly from the last reauthorization, No Child Left Behind, and would also put an end to the Department of Education’s practice of influencing state education policy through “waiver” relief from No Child Left Behind sanctions. The bill, however, was put on hold amid concern from Congressional conservatives that it did not go far enough in limiting federal involvement.

Conservative critics of the Student Success Act commonly object that it does not include the proposed “A-Plus” amendment. A-Plus is billed as a no-strings-attached block grant, meaning that states could receive federal money but opt out of the federal regulations that come with it. My colleague Michael McShane and I have written elsewhere that the language is not tight enough for that to be the likely reading. In past Congresses, it was clearly a conditional waiver measure, where states are offered block-granted funds in exchange for agreeing to abide by a set of conditions. It’s been notably revised with an eye to cutting federal requirements, but it seems likely that the Department of Education would interpret the latest version expansively.

[SEE: Political Cartoons on Congress]

But, for argument’s sake, let’s assume that A-Plus really would be a no-strings-attached block grant. On its face, it has a strong conservative appeal. States and local leaders are closer to the schools and the communities, so they are in a better position to know how to serve their students. So far so good.

The problem is that the theory behind subsidiarity and the logic behind local control hit a well-nigh immovable brick wall in education policy: teachers unions.

From the time of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s passage in 1965 through the late 1990s, states resisted consistent annual testing that could be used to honestly evaluate schools and bring to light how different subgroups were faring. Why? It’s hard to assign a single cause to such a long running phenomena, but one strong hypothesis is that such testing would (and has) reflect very poorly on some teachers and some schools. The strongest power in state education politics had the prerogative to defend the interests of all of its members.

[READ: 'Opting Out' Into School Choice]

Some education reformers see this situation and decide that reform needs to be driven from the top-down. Once you concede the point that teachers unions will block useful reforms, there would seem to be no limiting principle to what the federal government should do to improve schools. But in education, whether a reform is attempted matters a lot less than how it is executed. In our system of government, it is exceedingly difficult for even the best-designed federal initiatives to do very much that will ultimately deliver the hoped-for results for students and families.

There isn’t all that much the federal government can do well in education, but fostering transparency is a relatively simple task – and one that pays dividends.

It’s because of federally-required transparency that charter schools and voucher schools can demonstrate that they work. Citizens can see the results from charter schools such as the Success Academy network. Serving some of the most disadvantaged students in New York City, Success Academy scores in the top 1 percent of all the state’s public schools in math and in the top 3 percent in English and puts its students three years ahead of others from the same background. When Success Academy came under fire from teachers’ union backed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, it was able to fight back on simple grounds: We teach kids extraordinarily well, and the numbers prove it.

The fight between Success Academy and de Blasio was heralded as a civil-war in the Democratic Party, auguring the declining influence of the teachers unions. Indeed, public support for teachers A-Plus Act to Fix No Child Left Behind Gets an F - US News:

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Group: 1 in 5 charter schools not doing well enough to stay open

A group that oversees more than half of the nation's 5,600 charter schools said
 as many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of
poor academic performance. 

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html