Special Education Vouchers Likened to “Puppy Mills”:

Special Education Vouchers Likened to “Puppy Mills”

MARCH 13, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENT

Mississippi Rep. Cecil Brown (D-Jackson) said, in reference to vouchers for students with disabilities, “You are getting ready to open the equivalent of puppy mills for children.” Brown expressed concern that parents would be scammed and would lose out on services for their children.

Mississippi politicians are trying to pass a voucher bill for students with disabilities to attend private schools of their parent’s choice. While parents might be frustrated with the services they get in public schools, there is fear, as expressed by Rep. Brown, that outside institutions will gladly take their vouchers and only be interested in the money and not helping their child

School choice for students with disabilities, in most cases, makes absolutely no sense. The majority of private, parochial and charter schools do not provide services that address disabilities of any kind.

So it seems ludicrous to hand over public dollars for services that do not exist, yet many states are doing just that. Politicians either mistakenly believe private is better for students with disabilities, or they see this as a sneaky way to privatize schools in general. Either way, they are doing a disservice to children and wasting tax dollars.

While politicians around the country debate vouchers, many students with disabilities are already provided vouchers. The best known voucher program is the McKay Scholarship in Florida. There they find that many parents use the vouchers, not for special education, but to place children in religious schools. Nor are schools regulated, as noted yesterday in the link to a serious article by Gus Garcia-Roberts in the Miami New Times.

Special ed. vouchers aren’t doing well in other states either. In Wisconsin, a student had to return to public school after a difficult experience in a private school. In the Special Education Vouchers Likened to “Puppy Mills”:

200 schools hold rallies to oppose Cuomo’s education reforms - NY Daily News

200 schools hold rallies to oppose Cuomo’s education reforms - NY Daily News:

200 city schools hold rallies to oppose Andrew Cuomo’s education reforms

BY BEN CHAPMAN , JENNIFER FERMINO , LISA L. COLANGELO 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 Thousands of parents, union leaders and teachers rallied at almost 200 city schools Thursday against Gov. Cuomo’s proposed education reforms.

The demonstrations were aimed at Cuomo’s plans to increase the importance of standardized tests for teacher ratings, boost the number of charter schools and turn over the management of troubled city schools to outside groups.

“Maybe he wants to talk about all these bad ideas so we’re not talking about that he owes us a lot of money,” city teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said.

Cuomo has threatened to withhold more than $1 billion in additional state funding for public schools if the Legislature does not agree to his reforms in theupcoming state budget.

But his ideas were not popular with the parents and educators who demonstrated against them by forming human chains outside dozens of city classrooms.

“There is too much focus and too much stress on testing,” said Concetta Aloi, the PTA president of Public School 200 in Brooklyn. “All the parents think too much time is spent on preparing kids for tests instead of learning the curriculum.”

Mulgrew and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten stopped by several rallies and City Hall for a show of support for City Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Queens), chairman of the Education Committee.

“Receivership is code word for privatization and New York City schools are not for sale,” said Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), in reference to Cuomo’s plan to take over troubled schools.

But Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said the governor is fighting to reform a system that has condemned 250,000 children to failing schools over the last 200 schools hold rallies to oppose Cuomo’s education reforms - NY Daily News:

Meeting Shows Communtiy Support for Reopening Washington Elementary | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education

Meeting Shows Communtiy Support for Reopening Washington Elementary | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education:

Meeting Shows Communtiy Support for Reopening Washington Elementary

Last night Coalition members, including myself, attended a meeting at Washington Elementary school hosted by Sacramento City Council Member Steve Hansen and SCUSD Board member Jay Hansen to gauge neighborhood support for reopening the school. Steve Hansen opened the meeting by saying that he had been working behind the scenes since the closure of Washington Elementary to reopen it. It's closure has left a hole in the community.

School board member Jay Hansen gave some more background information on the Washington. The school was one of the oldest in the district (though the building is newer). One of its assets is that it's adjacent to a city park. It still supports a child care program. At the time of its closure it had the second lowest enrollment in the district. It would need an enrollment of 300 to be "self-supporting". He thinks that the best way to achieve that is for the school to be a neighborhood school with an attendance boundary, but also a program focus like art or language immersion. That would draw students from outside the area to bolster enrollment. The school wouldn't have to have that enrollment on the first day, but it would have to achieve that within a few years to be successful.

Steve Hansen says there is new single family housing coming into the area that could also help bolster enrollment. David Fisher, spokesperson from SCTA which supports reopening the school, stated that the district will be working to bring back class size reduction in grades K-3. There will be a demand for more classroom space, and that will create capacity problems at the schools that received students after the closures. That could also help enrollment at Washington if it reopens. Neighbors attending the meeting said that there are children in the neighborhood that could attend the reopened school. One said he knew some residents had moved to midtown to be within walking distance of the school; because of its closure they are now considering moving away.

There is a timeline of a couple of months for staff to consider all the logistics for reopening the school and present a plan to the board. Jay Hansen said that he believes there is a willingness on the board to consider reopening the school. Until it's on the agenda the board can't legally discuss it because of the Brown Act. Steve Hansen would like to open the school the fall of 2015, but Jay Hansen thinks that an opening in the fall of 2016 Meeting Shows Communtiy Support for Reopening Washington Elementary | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education:

Hey, Arne! Our kids are not your political poker chips. | Reclaim Reform

Hey, Arne! Our kids are not your political poker chips. | Reclaim Reform:

Hey, Arne! Our kids are not your political poker chips.

Posted on March 13, 2015by Ken Previti

Hey, Arne!

Our kids are not your political poker chips. Your chauffeur accidentally went up a blind alley in Chicago, and you were forced to walk a half block among moms. So, what do you do after those two minutes of facing reality?

Once safely inside the school, Duncan was asked about the protest outside.

Why is his U.S. Department of Education forcing a controversial standardized test — one many parents don’t want and that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has argued is “not ready” for prime time — down the throats Chicago Public Schools?

“I’m not,” Duncan said. “The state works it out without Chicago. . . . That’s the state’s decision.”

But isn’t the mandate being dictated by the federal government? Isn’t that what’s behind the threat to withhold $1 billion in funding that forced Chicago’s hand?

“No. You’re wrong. . . . You’re making stuff up. You don’t have your facts straight,” Duncan said. – Chicago Sun Times

School districts across America are spending billions of dollars on high stakes testing Hey, Arne! Our kids are not your political poker chips. | Reclaim Reform:

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: All About the Tests (And Poverty)

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: All About the Tests (And Poverty):

PA: All About the Tests (And Poverty)

In Pennsylvania, we rate schools with the School Performance Profile (SPP). Now a new research report reveals that the SPP is pretty much just a means of converting test scores into a school rating. This has huge implications for all teachers in PA because our teacher evaluations include the SPP for the school at which we teach.

Research for Action, a Philly-based education research group, just released its new brief, "Pennsylvania'a School Performance Profile: Not the Sum of Its Parts." The short version of its findings are pretty stark and not very encouraging--

90% of the SPP is directly based on test results.

90%.

SPP is our answer to the USED waiver requirement for a test-based school-level student achievement report. It replaces the old Adequate Yearly Progress of NCLB days by supposedly considering student growth instead of simple raw scores. It rates schools on a scale of 0-100, with 70 or above considered "passing."  In addition to being used to rate schools and teachers, SPP's get trotted out any time someone wants to make a political argument about failing schools.

RFA was particularly interested in looking at the degree to which SPP actually reflects poverty level, and their introduction includes this sentence:

Studies both in the United States and internationally have established a consistent, negative link between poverty and student outcomes on standardized tests, and found that this relationship has become stronger in recent years.

Emphasis mine. But let's move on.

SPP is put together from a variety of calculations performed on test scores. Five of the six-- which account for 90% of the score-- "rely entirely on test scores."

Our analysis finds that this reliance on test scores, despite the partial use of growth measures, results in a school rating system that favors more advantaged schools.

Emphasis theirs.


The brief opens with a consideration of the correlation of SPP to poverty. I suggest you go look at the graph for yourself, but I will tell you that you don't need any statistics background at all to see the clear correlation between poverty and a lower SPP.  And as we break down the elements of the CURMUDGUCATION: PA: All About the Tests (And Poverty):

Anti-Union Group StudentsFirst Launched Astroturf Campaign to Undermine Teachers | Alternet

Anti-Union Group StudentsFirst Launched Astroturf Campaign to Undermine Teachers | Alternet:



Anti-Union Group StudentsFirst Launched Astroturf Campaign to Undermine Teachers

Michelle Rhee's group is sneakily trying to rebrand itself to advance its anti-union agenda.

 StudentsFirst, the organization founded by Michelle Rhee to battle teachers unions over education policy, has seen better days – having pulled back its chapters in several states and laid off staff. Many are associating its advocacy with being reflexively against the rights of teachers and reflexively for school privatization, a trend in education policy that is starting to wane.

One way for an organization that is starting to lose its base is to rebrand, or to disguise its activities. An email Alternet has obtained shows StudentsFirst emailing individuals in New Mexico (and reportedly other states) offering to pay them to blog and social media comment in favor of its preferred anti-teachers union policies. Here's a copy of the email we received from a source who says it appeared over the summer:

The Truth Campaign for Teachers (TCT) is looking for:

·3-5 New Mexicans who are willing to blog at least twice/week on a variety of pro-reform issues

·3-5 New Mexicans who are willing to comment on/promote content on social media

Bloggers

Ideal candidate is passionate about education reform and is willing to be vocal about issues like the ones StudentsFirst supports.

·TCT would supply them with:

-Daily emails with suggested content and they would choose which topics to write on

-Before posts are final, a TCT write will provide feedback on post to form a compelling blog post

-(Help set up blog if person does not have one yet)

·Prefer that individual is willing to be named but we can work with anonymous bloggers as well

·Trying to get as many volunteers as possible

Social Media Commenters

·Ideal candidates are passionate about education reform

·Have the ability to respond quickly

·Preferred that they a twitter following but not mandatory

            This is not a StudentsFirst initiative but if they are interested, we will connect them with partners at the Truth Campaign for Teachers.

Although this email tries to distance itself from StudentsFirst, it echoes tactics Anti-Union Group StudentsFirst Launched Astroturf Campaign to Undermine Teachers | Alternet:

 Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers 

Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER

Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Just Like Michelle Rhee's

 Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better) 

Other Astroturf lobbying groups

Just Like Michelle Rhee's

 Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better) 

Straw man or Room for Debate: “Comparative loophole.”

The Totally Legal Way America Is Cheating Low-Income Schools Out of Cash | TakePart:

The Totally Legal Way America Is Cheating Low-Income Schools Out of Cash

Money won’t fix education? C’mon and throw the $8.5 billion being kept from the poorest campuses at the problem.

“Comparative loophole.”

It’s bureaucratic jargon with a name seemingly calculated to cure insomnia. But a new analysis reveals that the real-life effect of those two words is shortchanging public-school students in poor neighborhoods nationwide by nearly $9 billion per year—the difference between the substandard education they’re getting now and the quality one enjoyed by their affluent peers. 

A report released Wednesday by the independent nonpartisan educational institute Center for American Progress shows that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act includes a loophole that keeps financial resources from the kids who can least afford it: the more than 4.5 million low-income students at 12,000 schools nationwide. The so-called “comparative loophole” linked to Title I federal funding, according to the report, is responsible for a $1,200-per-student funding gap between wealthy districts and struggling ones. 

If that loophole were closed, the report states, poor districts would have access to $8.5 billion more per year in government funds. 

At issue is a Title I requirement that rich and poor districts provide “comparable” educational services in order to receive federal money. But the law as written allows districts to qualify as comparable using either average teacher salaries or student-to-teacher ratios.

This allows schools with bigger budgets—largely because they’re paying more to experienced educators—to qualify for Title I dollars even though they have more resources than their poorer neighboring districts.

“Since teacher salaries constitute the largest proportion of school budgets and teachers with greater experience earn higher salaries and tend to teach in lower-poverty schools,” the report states, “the law can mask significant funding inequities.”

To illustrate the problem, the study creates a hypothetical: two elementary schools in Anytown, USA, both with identical profiles: 200 students and 10 teachers. But East Dillon Elementary is in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood, while West Dillon Elementary is in a leafy, upscale area of Anytown. Because teachers in struggling schools tend to earn less money, teachers at East earn an average of $45,000, compared with an average $65,000 at West. 

Based on salaries, according to the study, “total expenditures between the two schools differ by $400,000, and per-pupil expenditures are $2,000 less per student. Under federal law, however, these schools are still comparable because they have the same student-to-teacher-ratio. Such a scenario is playing out at thousands of schools nationwide, CAP’s analysis reveals.”

According to Catherine E. Brown, CAP’s vice president for education policy and one of the authors of the study, the Title I funding disparity loophole “is not an oversight—it’s written into federal law” and seems designed to ensure funding disparities between rich and poor.

“Many people have advocated for this loophole to be closed over time, but others argue that closing it would be disruptive because it would force districts to shift more experienced teachers from schools serving more affluent students to schools serving students from low-income households,” Brown wrote in an email. “We are advocating for a gradual approach to closing the loophole that would invest additional resources in the most underfunded schools first. We do not think district should have to move teachers. But why not provide higher 

As Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole' - Politics K-12 - Education Week

As Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole' - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

As Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole'

By Alyson Klein on March 13, 2015 9:44 AM

Can a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act close the so-called "Title I comparability loophole"? 

Short answer: It's politically a really tough sell. But it looks like U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is going to try anyway. He is doing a press call later today with Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, to highlight how the comparability loophole impacts poor and minority kids. 

Long answer: First off, what exactly is the Title I comparability loophole?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the NCLB law is the most current edition, requires that states and districts ensure they are providing "comparable" (essentially the same) level of services to both Title I schools (which serve disadvantaged students) and wealthier schools using their own state and local money, before they can tap federal Title I funding (which is supposed to be extra money aimed at the poorest students.) 

The "loophole" part? When it comes to the biggest expenditure (teachers' salaries), states and districts have some wiggle room. As long as all the schools in a district are on the same salary schedule—which usually means that teachers with the same level of experience and education get the same wages—and as long as the high-poverty schools have the same proprotion of teachers as the low-poverty schools, then the staffs are considered "comparable." That's true even if a high poverty Title I school has a high number of lower-paid, novice teachers, and a wealthier school that doesn't qualify for Title I has a high percentage of experienced educators who make significantly more money. And there are other problems with ESEA's comparability provision, civil rights advocates say. 

About 4.5 million students attend inequitably funded Title I schools, according to a report on the loophole produced by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, earlier this week. And those schools get about $1,200 less per student, on average, than wealthier schools in their districts, CAP found. 

So what's the most recent pitch? Duncan and Morial will highlight U.S. Department of Education data from the 2011-12 school year that shows which states are shortchanging poor and minority kids the most. (More on what this state level data has to do with the comparability loophole below.)

So which states have the biggest disparities? They include Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The biggest offender on that list is Pennsylvania, where high-poverty districts spend 33 percenAs Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole' - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

California faces test as it changes school performance measures - Yahoo News

California faces test as it changes school performance measures - Yahoo News:

California faces test as it changes school performance measures

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California will no longer rely solely on student test scores as a measure of how well a public school is performing, the latest effort to balance criticism of standardized testing with increased calls for accountability in public education.

The change, approved unanimously on Wednesday by the Board of Education in the most populous U.S. state, coincides with implementation of a system for testing students as part of a switch to new national education standards known as Common Core.

“This will give us a complete picture rather than a narrow view,” California Superintendent of Public Education Tom Torlakson said.

Along with the changes to the school performance measure, known as an Academic Performance Index or API, the Board also voted to suspend its use altogether for a year while the changes are being implemented.

California's massive education system has been roiled by criticism from competing quarters, with school reformers calling for greater use of student performance measures to evaluate teachers. But educators and many parents complain that school districts rely too heavily on standardized testing to judge academic progress.

Efforts to respond to these sometimes competing concerns are further complicated by the switch to the Common Core standards, which also involves a new type of standardized student test.

California's powerful teachers union, which backed Torlakson's bid for re-election last fall, has long opposed efforts to tie teacher pay or performance reviews to student test scores, saying that understanding the effectiveness of teachers and schools is far more complicated.

Last week, Republican lawmakers announced a series of bills aimed at reforming the state's education system that would dramatically change the way public school teachers are hired, fired and evaluated.

One measure would penalize school districts that do not include pupil progress in teacher job evaluations.

Last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge declared unconstitutional several laws meant to protect teachers' jobs, saying they allowed thousands of grossly ineffective teachers to remain on the job.

It was not immediately clear whether the suspension of API to rate schools would last only one year as currently planned. At the Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, a subcommittee said it did not expect to develop a new accountability plan until at least the fall of 2016.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)California faces test as it changes school performance measures - Yahoo News:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Change is in the air in Chicago ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Change is in the air in Chicago:

Change is in the air in Chicago

You won't see a word about this in today's Trib or Sun-Times. But the Logan Square auditorium was packed last night. The mood, electric. It was in this same room a few months ago that we celebrated the election of Rep. Will Guzzardi and dealt a major blow to the  Emanuel/Daley/Madigan/Burke/Barrios/Mell... machine (or what's left of it). It was in this same ward, at the Norwegian Church across the street in 1983 that I remember that same energy and sense of power and unity as the crowd overflowed out onto the boulevard to hear candidate Harold Washington drive another nail into the old machine's coffin.

In the room last night, you could feel the power of a new movement for change. But last night's crowd also told a different story, one about the changes taking place in the make-up of our community and our city. The cheering crowd looked and sounded a bit different than the one at Guzzardi's rally and certainly than the one at the Harold rally 4 decades ago. So did the group of progressive candidates on stage. The both were largely Latino, including a 26-year-old newly-elected alderman in the 35th Ward, Carlos Rosa. Some African-American representation would have even made it better.

Carlos had not only handily defeated his machine rival a few weeks ago, but helped carry the ward for Chuy Garcia over Rahm Emanuel. Chuy got with 57% of the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Change is in the air in Chicago:

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Chicago Children Can Try To Opt Out Of The PARCC Standardized Test … If They Dare « CBS Chicago

Chicago Children Can Try To Opt Out Of The PARCC Standardized Test … If They Dare « CBS Chicago:

Chicago Children Can Try To Opt Out Of The PARCC Standardized Test … If They Dare

Blog by Mason Johnson

In case you were wondering, the headline was meant to be accompanied by a melodramatic “dun dun dun.” Feel free to add your own.

Even though Chicago’s schoolchildren have been forced to take the highly criticized PARCC standardized test, the world hasn’t imploded. Of course, complete destruction was never in the cards. With critics arguing the PARCC test is poorly designed and not field-tested, the biggest worry on educators’ minds was that it would waste weeks of otherwise valuable class time.

For children who want to opt out, PARCC means hours of sitting in silence and possibly, at worst, an intimidating guilt trip.

READ MORE: No One Wins In Chicago’s Latest Standardized Testing Debacle

While some states have created legislation clearly defining the opt out process for parents, Illinois has yet to do so (though State Rep. Guzzardi has just introduced a bill). As the foggy opt out rules currently work, parents aren’t supposed to opt out their children or take them out of class. Children themselves have to refuse the test, in person, in class.

This has led to a small handful of children at schools across Chicago opting out, leaving them to sit silently for hours on end as their classmates take the test. Have you ever sat silently in a desk with nothing to do but stare at a wall for an entire day? If this experience sounds terrible to you, imagine what it’s like for a 10-year-old.

At one Chicago school, a group of students’ attempt to opt out turned into a major guilt-trip, said one anonymous teacher.

According to her, over a dozen kids in a classroom declared they wanted to opt out. How’d that go for them? To change their mind, administration “intimidated” them into taking the test, “shaming” them and putting them on a “guilt trip,” until most of the kids changed their minds. The threat they had to endure? They were told to pick their favorite teacher. Once they had someone in mind, they were then told that their favorite teacher would likely be fired if they didn’t take the test.

Classy.

READ MORE: As Schools Begin Issuing New PARCC Test, Some Parents Want Kids To Opt Out

After that little exercise, only a couple of the kids stuck to their guns.

This doesn’t only show how terrible conditions can be for students, but also displays the pressure administrators and principals are under to ensure as many kids take PARCC as possible. When you start manipulating kids so blatantly, you’ve got to be pretty desperate.

But that is just one school. From what I hear, things are less dramatic at most other schools. One teacher I talked to mentioned that her school had some minor tech issues, but that no one, to her knowledge, had opted out yet. A principal at a different school said they had fewer than 10 kids opt out.

When I asked another teacher if anyone was opting out at her school, she laughed and jokingly Chicago Children Can Try To Opt Out Of The PARCC Standardized Test … If They Dare « CBS Chicago:

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

Diane Ravitch: How to fix No Child Left Behind | EdSource

How to fix No Child Left Behind | EdSource:

How to fix No Child Left Behind

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s commentary for EdSource last month, called “How Not to Fix No Child Left Behind,” consisted for the most part of mushy platitudes that must be measured against the realities of his actions over the past six years.

During that time, Duncan has aggregated an unprecedented power to tell states and districts how to operate. The administration’s Race to the Top program was not passed into law by Congress, yet it was funded with $5 billion awarded by Congress as part of the economic stimulus plan following the 2008 recession.

Duncan used that huge financial largesse to make himself the nation’s education czar. When states were most economically distressed, he dangled billions of dollars before them in a competition. They were not eligible to enter the competition unless they agreed to lift caps on opening more privately managed charter schools, to rely on test scores to a significant degree when evaluating teachers, to adopt “college-and-career-ready standards” (aka the Common Core standards, which had not even been completed in 2009 when the competition was announced) and to take dramatic action to “turn around” schools with low test scores (such as closing the school or firing all or most of the staff).

Almost every state applied for a share of the billions that Duncan controlled, and almost every state changed its laws to conform to his wishes, yet only 18 states and the District of Columbia won awards. Duncan added the same conditions to state waivers from NCLB’s unrealistic target of 100% proficiency in reading and math for all children in grades 3-8.

As an exercise in federal power, it was brilliant, as Duncan got almost every state to do what he wanted and make it appear to be voluntary. It is important to bear in mind that none of the so-called sanctions and remedies in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top was supported by evidence from research or experience.

State takeovers of low-performing schools have seldom (if ever) led to improvement; charter schools have a mixed and mostly unimpressive record; evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores has been unsuccessful because most of the factors that influence test scores (like family life) are beyond the control of teachers, and students are not randomly assigned to classes; and the effects of the Common Core standards are untested and unknown.

When Duncan writes “how not to fix NCLB,” he is responding to the Republicans’ revulsion to his heavy-handed exercise of power over the last six years. They want to curb his ability and that of future secretaries of education to overstep the long-understood federal system that limits the role of the U.S. Department of Education.

There is much to dislike in the Republicans’ rewrite of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which is the most recent version of America’s most important education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). They intend to make Title I funding for poor children portable, so that the money can be transferred to charter schools and perhaps vouchers as well. Instead of federal aid being targeted to help schools in poor communities, it will become available to spur school choice, which has long been the Republicans’ favorite remedy, despite the absence of evidence for the efficacy of either charters or vouchers.

Any genuine fix to NCLB would recognize that the administration of President George W. Bush took a wrong turn by changing ESEA from a law devoted to equity to a law devoted to testing and accountability. The switch from ESEA to NCLB was a substitution of punishment and sanctions for direct federal aid to the neediest districts. ESEA and the federal aid it supplied were supposed to help poor children, not convert their schools into test-prep factories or close them or privatize them.

Both Republicans and Democrats are determined to maintain the annual testing regime at the heart of NCLB. It is perplexing to see so many Democrats aligning themselves with George W. Bush’s educational legacy of annual testing. Teachers and parents know that high-stakes testing has distorted the purpose of education, has diverted billions of dollars to the testing industry, has discouraged teachers, has labeled children as “failures” in elementary school, and that NCLB is widely viewed as a failed law.

Advocates of the testing regime will point to improved test scores as “proof” that the demands of NCLB were correct. But they won’t admit that test scores improved even faster before NCLB was implemented, or that scores on international tests remain flat. Nor do they care that How to fix No Child Left Behind | EdSource: