PAA priority positions for ESEA (it’s finally time!) | Parents Across America

PAA priority positions for ESEA (it’s finally time!) | Parents Across America:

PAA priority positions for ESEA (it’s finally time!) 

On July 7, the Senate will begin to consider and move to a vote on a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to replace the No Child Left Behind Act.

Over the past few months, PAA has been reviewing both the House and Senate proposals as they evolve. Our analysis of the House version, HR 5, the “Student Success Act,” is here; HR 5 passed out of the House education committee last February and is waiting for House action. The House seems to be waiting to see what the Senate does before finalizing their bill.

The Senate version of ESEA is S 1177, the “Every Child Achieves Act.” Here are PAA’s priority positions for S. 1177 (downloadable pdf version here).

True parent empowerment

• PAA supports inclusion of parents in school policy decisions at the school, district, state, and national level.
• We oppose forms of school privatization such as charter schools (Title V beginning p. 460  and S 316), vouchers, or “portability”  that take resources from the schools attended by most students and put them into private hands, with less oversight.

Limits on testing

• PAA supports S. 1025 (the Tester amendment) which replaces federal annual testing mandates with grade span testing. This will help address the current misuse and overuse of tests which is due in large part to NCLB’s testing mandates.
• We support Isakson Title 1 #1  amendment specifying parents’ right to opt their children out of any state standardized test.
• We also support the SMART Act proposal (Baldwin Title 1 Amendment #1) to encourage states to control the number of state-mandated tests and provide better-quality assessment information to parents.

Teaching professionalism

• PAA opposes any proposals that would fund programs that put unprepared teachers in classrooms, which happens most often in schools with the most challenges.
• We also oppose increasing funds to expand adaptive technology and on-line learning, recognizing that the teacher/student relationship is paramount to supporting quality learning.

Funding

• PAA supports an increase in Title 1 funding targeted to low-income children and more equitable school funding from the appropriate government sources (as in Baldwin Title 1 Amendment #5).
• We support increased funding for systematic and effective class size reduction programs.

Student privacy

• PAA supports parents’ right to keep their children’s school data private (the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act), although we support the recommendations of the Parents’ Coalition for Student Privacy to strengthen that bill.

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/paa-priority-positions-esea-are-yet/#sthash.pHr9LJ3E.dpuf

Koch Brothers’ Friends Funding Mike Pence | Hoosier School Heist Blog

Koch Brothers’ Friends Funding Mike Pence | Hoosier School Heist Blog:

KOCH BROTHERS’ FRIENDS FUNDING MIKE PENCE

By Doug Martin at Hoosier School Heist

(This is the first in a series of articles that will address the money behind Mike Pence’s quest to be reelected Governor of Indiana)

On June 25, just one day after the governor wrote a letter to president Obama saying Indiana would not comply with proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules against greenhouse omissions, Mike Pence’s campaign received a $10,000 gift from Marvin Gilliam of Bristol, Virginia.

Gilliam is the former VP of what was once one of the largest coal producers in America, Cumberland Resources, which was purchasedby Massey Energy in 2010.

In 2013, Gilliam and Koch Industries, along with other wealthy donors, financed the gubernatorial campaign of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, a longtime Republican and anti-LGBT climate denier who “used his position to launch an inquisition against a former University of Virginia climate scientist.”

Owners of Koch Industries, a multinational oil and manufacturing corporation making money from toilet paper, fertilizer, and a long list of other things, the Koch Brothers are wealthy giants who have influenced everything from climate control to school board elections.

Marvin’s brother Richard, who founded Cumberland Resources and now directs the rare metals exploration company Endurance Gold Corp, gave Mike Pence’s campaign $25,000 in 2012.

Richard Gilliam is a major donor to Koch Brothers-supported groups and visited their secret retreat in June 2010 to discuss political strategy.

Richard and wife Leslie were listed as #33 in the top donors to Republican political campaigns, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, spending over $520,000 in 2010 alone.

Richard Gilliam also handed money to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super-PAC which spent over $104 million on the 2012 elections.

Another donor to Karl Rove’s PAC was Weaver Popcorn.  As I detail in Hoosier School Heist, Weaver Popcorn’s Mike Weaver was a chief Tony Bennet donor when the Republican ran for the Indiana supt. of public education slot in 2012.

BIO

Doug Martin is the author of Hoosier School Heist : How Corporations and Theocrats Stole Democracy From Public Education, a book being read in over 130 cities and towns and 78 Indiana counties, 23 states, and the District of Columbia.  A regular guest on national and Indiana radio talk shows such as Justin Oakley’s Just Let Me Teach and Amos Brown’s Afternoons with Amos, Dr. Martin’s research has been or will soon be featured in the Washington Post Answer Sheet , ABC’sNightline, and the Associated Press. Koch Brothers’ Friends Funding Mike Pence | Hoosier School Heist Blog:

Nevada's New Voucher Law Will Worsen Educational Inequality - US News

Nevada's New Voucher Law Will Worsen Educational Inequality - US News:

The Wrong School Choice

Nevada's new school voucher law will make inequality worse.

I'm struggling to understand an intellectual disconnect of the first order.

Nearly everyone involved in education reform wrings their hands about the achievement gaps between poor and nonpoor, between white and minority students. And most Americans are increasingly disturbed about widening inequality of income and wealth.

Yet when Nevada enacted the nation's first law last month creating almost universal access to vouchers (technically, education savings accounts, or ESAs), few reformers pointed out that it would undermine equal opportunity. Dozens of bloggers weighed in; the Fordham Institute even invited 14 of them to comment. And not one of the 14 mentioned that the new bill would make access to quality education less equal than it is today.

[READ: Nevada's Education Gambit]

Why do I say it will do that? Because it allows families to add to their education savings account to buy a more expensive education. Most parents want what's best for their children, so those who can afford it will do just that. Those who can't will not. And the education market will stratify by income, far more than it already does. In a decade, it will look like the markets for houses, cars and other private goods, with huge disparities based on wealth.

I just don't get it. We need bold reform of education, yes. But do we want to widen the achievement gap? Do we want to increase inequality in America? More than half of public students in America are poor (i.e., they qualify for a free or reduced price lunch). Do we want to leave them all behind in inferior schools?

A core value of public education – one of the reasons we treat it as a public rather than a private good – is equality of opportunity. That's hard to achieve in America, where incomes – hence neighborhoods – are vastly unequal. For 50 years the courts have forced states to take over more and more of the financing of public education from local governments, to create more equality of spending between communities. The results are disappointing in many states, but even in the worst, public school spending is not vastly unequal. And a few states have succeeded in creating fairly level playing fields, and in Washington, D.C., low-income kids actually get extra money.

What would happen if those states passed laws like Nevada's?

The new bill allows any parent whose child has been in public education for at least 100 days to take an education savings account worth $5,100 (or $5,700 for low-income kids and those with disabilities) and spend it as they please – on private schools, home-schooling, tutors, textbooks, online courses, computers, transportation, almost anything related to education. Participants will have to take a nationally norm-referenced test in math and English every year, but they get to choose which test, so there will be no universal measuring stick by which to compare performance.

[READ: Education's Wild West]

In addition, low-income students can apply for a tax credit scholarship worth up to $7,775, though the legislature appropriated only $5 million a year, so it will serve less than 1,000 kids. But the accounts are available to all students, as long as they spend 100 days in a public school.

Putting all state, local and federal funds together, public schools in Nevada received $8,339 per student in 2013, well below the national average. Tracey Weinstein, director of policy and innovation at StudentsFirst, says the average tuition at private schools in the state is $8,000-10,000.

So it's obvious that a $5,100 education – or even a $5,700 education – will be a cut-rate job. Every Nevada's New Voucher Law Will Worsen Educational Inequality - US News:

Conservative Groups Hope To Score This One Important Win In No Child Left Behind | ThinkProgress

Conservative Groups Hope To Score This One Important Win In No Child Left Behind | ThinkProgress:

Conservative Groups Hope To Score This One Important Win In No Child Left Behind

Bipartisan legislation that would make changes to No Child Left Behind will be up for debate in Congress this week.

The legislation was pulled in February after support for the bill waned following opposition from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group. The House Rules Committee is going to meet Tuesday at 5 p.m. to figure out which amendments will get votes.

Conservative groups want to include the A Plus Act amendment, a block grant that allows states to receive federal money without any strings attached. It’s likely to be considered next week, since it is seen as the premier amendment for those concerned with federal overreach. States would send proposals to the secretary of education to assure the U.S. Department of Education that they had certain safeguards in place. Those would include fiscal control procedures, include accountability to parents and other taxpayers and provide educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.

The debate on the ECAA has largely been one over how much more local control of schools the legislation should allow and whether or not testing requirements are still too punitive to schools that are already struggling. The reauthorization already allows states to carry the responsibility of setting their own improvement standards and the turnaround of low-performing schools would be controlled at the local level.

The Heritage Foundation supports the A Plus amendment. It did not support the Student Success Act, which gives states more control over education and promotes charter schools, because it didn’t provide an opt-out for federal programs and mandates. The Student Success Act, introduced in 2013 and sponsored by Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was supposed to be an improvement on the Obama administration’s waivers of NCLB requirements.

“High-stakes testing has led to ‘teaching to the test’ from DC, a practice which privileges exhaustive test preparation over learning,” Heritage Action for America’s fact sheet on NCLB reads.

However, by giving the Secretary of Education the ability to sign-off on the state plans, the federal government may have more control than they did under the waivers, some advocates of more state control argue. According to PoliticoPro, The Heritage Foundation expects Kline to whip Conservative Groups Hope To Score This One Important Win In No Child Left Behind | ThinkProgress:

Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure | Alternet

Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure | Alternet:

Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure

It's time all parents learned the truth about charter schools.

The inadequacies of charter schools have been confirmed by many recent studies. Even CREDO, which is part of a conservative think tank funded by the pro-privatization Walton Foundation, recently found that in comparison to traditional public schools "students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics." Another recent CREDO study of California schools reached mixed results, with charters showing higher scores in reading but lower scores in math. 

In a study of Chicago's public schools, the University of Minnesota Law School determined that "Sadly the charter schools, which on average score lower that the Chicago public schools, have not improved the Chicago school system, but perhaps made it even weaker."

In general, as concluded by the nonpartisan Spencer Foundation and Public Agenda, "There is very little evidence that charter and traditional public schools differ meaningfully in their average impact on students' standardized test performance." Another report from Data First, part of the Center for Public Education, stated that "the majority of charter schools do no better or worse than traditional public schools."

But there's a lot of data that leans toward "worse" rather than "better." A Brookings report showed underperformance in Arizona's charter schools. An In the Public Interest group found that an analyst for the District of Columbia "could not provide a single instance in which its strategy of transferring a low-performing school to a charter management organization had resulted in academic gains for the students." The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that "Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth." Over 85 percent of Ohio's charter students were in schools graded D or F in 2012–2013. In the much-heralded New Orleans charter experiment, the Investigative Fund found that "eight years after Hurricane Katrina...seventy-nine percent of RSD charters are still rated D or F by the Louisiana Department of Education."

Charters Won't Tell Us What They're Doing 

Performance aside, charters have other serious issues. The Nation called them "stunningly opaque...black boxes." Indeed, the federal government has spent billions on charter development without basic forms of accountability, even for the causes and details of school closings. The charter system is so unregulated that oversight often comes from whistleblowers who feel disturbed enough, and courageous enough, to report abuses.

The report Cashing in on Kids notes that the Walton Foundation, one of the biggest charter school supporters, has "supported the unregulated growth of a privatized education industry." The Walton-funded New York Charter School Association, which takes considerable public money and advertises itself as "independently-run public schools," refused state audits, arguing that they were run by boards outside the public domain. Charter operators want the best of both worlds. As Diane Ravitch explains, "When it is time for funds to be distributed, they want to be considered public schools. But when they are involved in litigation, charter operators insist they are private organizations."

Many Charter Systems Are Mired in Fraud 

According to Integrity in Education, $100 million (ballooning in the past year to $200 million) in taxpayer money was lost, misused, or wasted in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools. The abuses are well documented. The report states: "Charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure | Alternet:

Book Offers Look at How Charter Schools Divide Communities - NJ Spotlight

Opinion: Book Offers Look at How Charter Schools Divide Communities - NJ Spotlight:

OPINION: BOOK OFFERS LOOK AT HOW CHARTER SCHOOLS DIVIDE COMMUNITIES

Founders and operators of charters mean well, author believes, but charter system leads to further segregation of education

Mark Weber

It’s a sunny summer day in Hoboken, and everywhere I turn on Washington Street, I see the same thing:

Strollers.

Hoboken has become a mecca for young, affluent families looking to enjoy the trappings of urban living. And yet the city retains a significant population of economically disadvantaged families, many living in public housing separated from the rest of the city.

This interplay between segregation and gentrification is the subject of a fascinatingnew book by Molly Vollman Makris: “Public Housing and School Choice in a Gentrified City: Youth Experiences of Uneven Opportunity.”

Makris, a professor of Urban Studies at CUNY – as well as a Hoboken resident with a preschool daughter – looks carefully at her community to determine how segregation occurs when affluent families move in, and what can be done to ameliorate its effects in the schools and throughout the community.

I met Makris in her city to discuss her findings, which deal with the role of charter schools and intra-district school choice in Hoboken.

The city’s three charters serve a significantly different population than the district schools: fewer students who are Limited English Proficient, fewer students of color, and far fewer students eligible for free lunch, a measure of economic disadvantage. There is also a significant difference in the student demographics of the district’s elementary schools.

Despite this, New Jersey Education Commissioner David Hespe recently ruled that one of the charters could expand because, in his view, that school did not have a segregative effect.

Hespe’s ruling has created a political firestorm in Hoboken, leading to a privately funded appeal on behalf of the local school district, which fears the financial implications of the expansion.

What follows is an edited version of a much longer conversation between Makris and me. I have posted the entire interview on my blog; however, I also encourage everyone to read Makris’s book, a comprehensive, honest, and engaging exploration of how school policies shape our communities.

Weber: One thing that struck me right away is that your book isn’t at all a takedown of charter schools.

Makris: It’s not. It’s a larger analysis of the direction of education policy. The book does take a critical look at school choice and what’s happening in Hoboken, but it’s not about the individual actors. There aren’t heroes or villains per se; it’s about these larger systems of inequality that are happening in many places.

Weber: You take the charter school people at their word when they say they are genuinely interested in the inequality of their student populations and they want to do something about it.

Makris: I do. I think their intention was to create some level of socio-economic and racial diversity. But, given the demographic makeup of the founders, that was going to be a challenge. And part of that is charter school policies. It takes a lot of work to start a charter school. Many of these were stay-at-home parents and parents with flexible careers where they can spend hours and hours starting a charter school. So when you have them at the helm, it’s going to be harder to create a school that represents the entire community. There also are no policies in place that allow charter schools to easily “manipulate” their lotteries to create socio-economic and racial diversity.

Weber: Is it fair to say that starting and sustaining a charter school, by the nature of its structure, is going to attract a different sort of family than a traditional public school?

Makris: Yes; we see that everywhere. We see that in Newark and Harlem and other neighborhoods that don’t look anything like Hoboken. I think your research has shown this, in the difference between free and reduced-price lunch students, this level of creaming.

I call it charter confusion, which is something we found in Hoboken and when I was working with the Newark Schools Research Collaborative. People are just confused about what a charter school is and who can attend a charter school, whether they were in Newark or Hoboken, whether they’re low-income or advantaged.

Weber: So you’re saying there is some global misunderstanding about charter schools.

Makris: I think it’s a bit of a global misunderstanding, but when it comes time to figure it out for your own children, you tap into your own networks. And if your network all goes to the local neighborhood school, and you went to the local neighborhood school, and you don’t really have the resources to do a thorough investigation of all your school options, you’re going to go to the local neighborhood school.

Weber: But if you cleared up that confusion, do you believe public housing residents would see the so-called “advantages” of a charter school trumping what they see as the advantages of their neighborhood school?

Makris: That’s a great question. It’s hard to predict; I do think there are enough families in public housing who would be interested in the opportunity – if they see Opinion: Book Offers Look at How Charter Schools Divide Communities - NJ Spotlight:

Suicide prevention program launched for K-12:

Suicide prevention program launched for K-12

As suicides continue to increase in New Jersey, a new nationwide suicide prevention program provides training for all school employees to help them spot at-risk students earlier.

Stefano Lunardi, ThinkStock

“Signs Matter: Early Detection,” teaches school personnel not only how to recognize the signs, but also the actions to take. The two-hour online course can be applied to all schools, including elementary, middle and high schools.

The program was created by Legal One, Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care (UBHC) and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

“I think the message from ‘Signs Matter’ is that you can make a difference,” said Maureen Brogan, the statewide traumatic loss coalition coordinator at UBHC.

The program is not just for teaches and guidance counselors, but also for support staff and administrators. Brogan said coaches, lunch aides and school bus drivers can all pick up on suicide danger signals.

Brogan said the program is gleaned from feedback that they received through all 21 New Jersey counties, and there’s a New Jersey specific version of “Signs Matter,” something that can be done for other states as well to match their individual needs.

Through the development of the course, researchers realized that most existing suicide prevention programs focused on adolescents, and that nothing existed for younger kids.

“We decided to address the entire K-12 community because elementary school personnel can recognize trouble signs in younger students and mitigate later problems,” Brogan said.

The training examines common mental health problems and how they could present themselves through three vignettes set in elementary, middle and high schools. The course includes expert analysis, resources for understanding a school’s role in suicide prevention and a review of a school’s legal obligations.

The course also includes a bullying scenario.

“We are very careful that people understand that bullying is not a cause and effect. This video and training also tells people that this is what we need to recognize with bullying, however, if you are bullied it does not mean that you are going to become suicidal. It is a risk factor and things that we want to pay attention to, but it is not a cause and effect relationship,” Brogan said.

The online course is not telling school staff to treat the child directly, but connects them with services that children can benefit from.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth age 10 to 24 in New Jersey, according to the 2014 Youth Suicide Report by the New Jersey Department of Children and Families. There were 232 suicides in the Garden State by people age 10 to 24 between 2011 and 2013.

Despite those numbers, New Jersey has the lowest suicide rate in the nation.

“The good news for New Jersey is that New Jersey is the 50th state. I do not want anyone to think for a minute that in the state that this (suicide) is an epidemic. It is nowhere near epidemic proportions,” Brogan said. “Any loss of life is one too many.”

Read More: Suicide prevention program launched for K-12 | http://nj1015.com/suicide-prevention-program-launched-for-k-12/?trackback=tsmclip

Finally, Congress to start debate on No Child Left Behind rewrite - The Washington Post

Finally, Congress to start debate on No Child Left Behind rewrite - The Washington Post:

Finally, Congress to start debate on No Child Left Behind rewrite

Congress is finally supposed to be turning its attention to the No Child Left Behind law, the education law that passed in the administration of president George W. Bush, and was supposed to be rewritten in 2007. There are bills in both the House and Senate, both of which would make significant changes to education policy today, as explained in this post. It was written by Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as  FairTest, a nonprofit organization that works to end the misuses of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, educators and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally sound.

By Monty Neill

This week Congress takes up overhaul of “No Child Left Behind,” the widely despised federal law that brought a tsunami of testing down on public schools. Beginning Tuesday, July 7, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to debate reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, now named No Child Left Behind, NCLB). The House is expected to take up its own proposal (H.R. 5) later this month.

Overall, the Senate’s “Every Child Achieves Act” (ECAA, S. 1117) makes significant assessment reform progress. It largely returns control over accountability to the states. It allows states to choose whether to use student test scores to judge teachers. It provides some flexibility in assessment. However, the Senate proposal fails to scale back mandated testing – pending a vote on an amendment that would allow states to test once each in elementary, middle and high school.

Here are some specifics:

The Senate bill and the House bill remove the destructive NCLB mandate that every school make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) on student test scores or face escalating sanctions, such as replacing staff or being closed down. The Senate bill requires states to intervene in an unspecified number of schools that are “low performing.” Each state would design its own accountability system, which would include student test scores, graduation rates, and at least one other indicator selected by the state. States would decide how much weight to assign each component and the balance between assistance and sanctions.

[No Child Left Behind’s test-based policies failed. Will Congress keep them anyway?]

Unfortunately, ECAA and the House bill continue the harmful NCLB mandate requiring states to test every year in grades 3-8 and once in 10-12 in reading Finally, Congress to start debate on No Child Left Behind rewrite - The Washington Post:

This week: No Child Left Behind reform | TheHill

This week: No Child Left Behind reform | TheHill:

This week: No Child Left Behind reform

Both the House and Senate this week will be tackling reauthorizations of the No Child Left Behind education law.

House Republicans are reviving legislation that leadership yanked from the floor in February due to a lack of support. Conservatives balked at the initial version because they thought it preserved too much federal influence in education policy and didn’t offer enough flexibility for school districts.

Amendments regarding school choice and eliminating testing requirements were denied votes on the floor last time, which further frustrated conservative interest groups and lawmakers. The House Rules Committee will decide Tuesday evening which amendments will get votes this week.

Across the Capitol, senators are expected to start debate Tuesday on the legislation, which passed out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this year after three days of debate and markups. 

The legislation was able to get unanimous support, bringing together lawmakers from across the political spectrum including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). 

But senators withdrew dozens of amendments during the committee process and are expecting to try again once the bill reaches the Senate floor. 

Warren said in April that she voted "yes" in the committee "in deference to... ongoing efforts" by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the committee, and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the ranking member, to move away from the legacy of No Child Left Behind. 

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said earlier this year that he would also push to include his proposal to give parents greater choice in selecting schools in the reform bill once it reaches the Senate floor. 

The 2002 law expired eight years ago, but Congress has not sent legislation to the president's desk since then to renew it. 

Appropriations

The House will complete consideration of the $30.2 billion fiscal 2016 spending bill for the Department of Interior, likely on Wednesday.

Lawmakers debated three hours’ worth of amendments before leaving town for the July 4 recess last week, but more amendments remain. 

The measure cuts the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by nine percent from the current enacted spending level. It also includes provisions to limit EPA rulemaking on climate change and navigable waters.

It will be the seventh out of the 12 annual appropriations bills to pass the House this year. The House appears unlikely to finish them all before the August recess, given time constraints and Senate Democrats’ decision to block all spending bills that adhere to budget caps known as This week: No Child Left Behind reform | TheHill: