Thursday, December 10, 2015

The long-term impact of NCLB waivers on ESEA renewal | Brookings Institution

The long-term impact of NCLB waivers on ESEA renewal | Brookings Institution:

The long-term impact of NCLB waivers on ESEA renewal

Eight years after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was due for reauthorization, Congress has revamped the law widely described as “broken,” “loathed,” and “much-maligned.” The new bill, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), would eliminate the Department of Education’s (ED) authority to use conditional waivers.[1]

But the impact of waivers on NCLB implementation and renewal reaches beyond these specific changes in the law. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is not the first to use the General Waiver Authority in Section 9401 of NCLB, although as the graph below shows, the Obama administration has approved an unprecedented number of waivers since 2009.[2]

Focusing solely on this recent increase in volume can mask a crucial pattern – over the last ten years, the Bush and Obama administrations both used waivers to address demands for change while avoiding a confrontation over renewal with Congress. While waivers allowed states to deviate from NCLB, strategic use of this tool has enabled delay in the renewal process.

Source: U.S. Department of Education

Beginning in 2005, the Bush administration faced increasing pressure to grant states relief from NCLB’s onerous accountability requirements.[3] The administration might have been forced to revisit the law then if not for the safety valve provided by the General Waiver Authority in Section 9401. In a policy letter issued on November 21, 2005, then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings articulated a “commonsense approach” to implementation, offering waivers from key provisions. This approach reversed her predecessor’s position that waivers were not an option—indeed, Spellings invited states to submit proposals for growth model pilots, providing states with an opportunity to depart from the accountability system mandated by NCLB.[4]

The Bush administration’s strategic use of wavier authority allowed them to address the discontent that simmered among the states while simultaneously protecting their signature education law. A few months after the initial offer of flexibility, Secretary Spellings issued areminder to Chief State School Officers that only states demonstrating adherence to the “bright line principles” of NCLB were eligible for flexibility. The administration had an obvious motivation to avoid legislative overhaul of NCLB: the law was a cornerstone of the President’s domestic agenda. Even as ED granted states flexibility from the law, in his 2007 State of the Union address President Bush stood by NCLB, calling it a “good law” and warning against “backsliding and calling it reform.”

In stark contrast, President Obama had no stake in preserving NCLB. In the June 2009 Attitudes Toward the Public Schools Survey, 48 percent of respondents viewed the law unfavorably, while just 28 percent viewed it favorably. But his legislative proposal to reform NCLB, the Blueprint for Reform, was essentially dead on arrival – the Blueprint was announced on March 10, 2010, just weeks before the Affordable Care Act infamously passed without a single Republican vote.

In this political climate, the Obama administration opted for a waiver strategy in lieu of a public and potentially costly renewal via Congress. Over a year after introducing the Blueprint and making little headway in Congress, on September 23, 2011 the administration announced its Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Flexibility waiver program. This strategy echoes the decision made by the Bush administration, although the specific political motivations and mechanisms of their waiver policies differ. The ESEA Flexibility waivers allowed the Obama administration to respond to increasing pressure to change the unpopular law but also helped them avoid another legislative battle in the immediate wake of the acrimonious ACA debates.

While ESSA eliminates the Secretary’s authority to attach conditions to waivers, rebuking the current administration’s tactic, our understanding of the impact of waivers should not be limited to this backlash. One long-term consequence of the Bush and Obama administrations’ strategic use of waivers has been a series of piecemeal changes to a law that many have long viewed as fundamentally broken in lieu of legislative renewal and the large-scale shifts that accompany reauthorization.

However, placing blame for the delay in reauthorizing NCLB with either or both administrations’ use of Section 9401 waiver authority is perhaps unwarranted. The extreme partisan polarization that characterizes this era shares the blame for the eight years of delay that preceded the current ESEA renewal. Indeed, in this climate when the feasibility of bipartisan compromise is often in doubt, it is hard to criticize administrations that opt for incremental revision at the state level where otherwise no measure of change appears possible.

[1] Many point to this change as a repudiation of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s ESEA Flexibility waiver program – to receive flexibility from NCLB, states were required to tie teacher evaluation to student achievement and adopt college and career-ready standards, widely recognized as the increasingly unpopular Common Core State Standards.

[2] Part of the explanation for this dramatic increase in the number of waivers approved in recent years comes from the structure of the ESEA Flexibility program, in which each state’s waiver package was actually comprised of at least 10 individual waivers. This figure also includes the 10 Ed-Flex partnerships granted under the 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Goals 2000 introduced the Ed-Flex Partnership Demonstration program under which states could apply for the authority to waive requirements from federal law.

[3] In a 2006 Brown Center paper, “The Peculiar Politics of No Child Left Behind,” Tom Loveless found that 34 states were against NCLB to some degree while only 16 were neutral or supportive. Similarly, in his 2009 article “Rebels and their Causes: State Resistance to No Child Left Behind,” Bryan Shelly found that 38 states had considered legislation “critical” of NCLB by 2006.

[4] In a policy letter issued on February 15, 2002, Secretary of Education Rod Paige made it clear that waivers from the administration’s signature education law were not available.The long-term impact of NCLB waivers on ESEA renewal | Brookings Institution:

Hey Zuckerberg: We don't want your charity | SocialistWorker.org

Hey Zuckerberg: We don't want your charity | SocialistWorker.org:

Hey Zuckerberg: We don't want your charity

Every dollar in Mark Zuckerberg's private charity is a dollar wrested from public coffers and from democratic control, writes Jason Farbman, in an article published at Jacobin.

THE MEDIA-as-public-relations-machine was in full swing last week, abuzz over Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's public letter to their daughter that contained a $45 billion pledge to establish the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The mainstream media produced an avalanche of praise. "Mark Zuckerberg Philanthropy Pledge Sets New Giving Standard," announced Bloomberg Business, which declared that Zuckerberg and Chan were "setting a new philanthropic benchmark by committing their massive fortune to charitable causes while still in their early 30s." From the Wall Street Journal came more praise: "Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to Give 99% of Facebook Shares to Charity."

But when BuzzFeed revealed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was not a nonprofit, but a for-profit limited liability corporation (LLC), which has no obligation to actually engage in charitable activity, the tenor of some of the commentary became more negative. Was the donation to a Delaware-based LLC nothing more than a way to duck California taxes?

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THE TRUTH is that both nonprofit and for-profit charities can and do serve as tax shelters for the obscenely wealthy. Nonprofits themselves have few restrictions around them, and only require that 5 percent of a foundation's assets each year be spent towards its stated charitable goals, including expenses and lobbying.

Still, in the last few years, we've seen the growth of ventures like Google.org, the charitable but largely for-profit division of Google created in 2006 with $900 million worth of Google stock. Freed from even the limited guidelines to which nonprofits are held, some of the projects Google.org has poured money into have happened to also generate mountainous profits for Google.

For example, the One Laptop Per Child initiative's stated mission to get $100 computers into the hands of "each and every one" of the world's poorest children also captures lucrative data from millions of new computer users in almost entirely untapped markets.

Similar to Google.org, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chose a form that would allow them to invest in profit-making initiatives, including ones that could bring new profits to Facebook. Chan and Zuckerberg's pledge to give everyone on earth access to the Internet, like the One Laptop Per Child initiative, will both provide real services for a great many people, while simultaneously creating millions of new potential Facebook users (although they do perhaps overstate with the claim, "If our generation connects them, we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty").

At the same time, Chan Zuckerberg can take advantage of its status as a tax-qualified charity to save huge sums of money. As Forbes observed:

This generosity is also incredibly tax efficient...Donating appreciated stock is a much better tax move than selling it and donating the sales proceeds. After all, by donating the stock, the gain he would have experienced on selling it is never taxed...since [Chan Zuckerberg] is a tax-qualified charity, if it sells the stock it pays no tax regardless of how big the gain. And since Mr. Zuckerberg will get credit on his tax return for the market value of what he donates, he can use that to shelter billions of other income.

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OF COURSE, sizable donations to charity frequently receive glowing press coverage, which is also quite valuable. The transformation of Bill Gates's reputation--Zuckerberg's childhood hero--after creating the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is instructive.

Throughout the 1990s Microsoft's hyperaggressive business practices resulted in a 2000 Justice Department verdict that Microsoft was a monopoly. Several billion dollars in fines from myriad U.S. and European regulatory bodies followed and Bill Gates was widely painted as a bully in the popular press.

The PR turnaround afforded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might be the most effective--and expensive--in history. Today, Bill Gates is treated by the media as an important thinker in the fight against disease and the debates around education "reform." He is regarded as a humanitarian with something to say about making the world a better Hey Zuckerberg: We don't want your charity | SocialistWorker.org:

Eli Broad: It's 'News To Me' I'm Buying The LA Times

Eli Broad: It's 'News To Me' I'm Buying The LA Times:

Eli Broad: It's 'News To Me' I'm Buying The LA Times
The billionaire philanthropist addressed a rumor started by News Corp co-chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Tribune Publishing is not selling off the Los Angeles Times, and Eli Broad is not in talks to buy it, the billionaire philanthropist told PBS Tuesday.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, co-chairman of News Corp, set off a wave of speculation in late November about the fate of Tribune Publishing and the LA Times after tweeting he had “strong word” that Tribune would be sold to a group of Wall Street investors while Broad would acquire the Times.

“It was all news to me,” Broad told PBS host Tavis Smiley Tuesday, adding that there was “no deal in the works.”

Broad had, however, expressed interest in buying the publication after Tribune fired LA Times Publisher Austin Beutner in September.

Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin also addressed the rumor at a media conference in Manhattan on Wednesday, as first reported by Politico. Griffin stressed the importance of the Times in the company’s portfolio, in response to a question.

“If you cleaved off California from Tribune publishing, you would essentially have the Chicago Tribune and a bunch of medium-sized East Coast newspapers,” Griffin said. “That is a very different proposition. On a standalone basis, that would be much harder to do. The Los Angeles Times on its own is a tough platform.”

When Murdoch first made his remarks on Nov. 27, Tribune denied that the company was being sold but did not at the time address the speculation about the fate of the Times.

“As our Board of Directors noted earlier this fall and as we articulated in our November earnings call, Tribune Publishing remains committed to its strategy and transformation plan and is not engaged in discussions or a process to sell the Company,” Tribune said in a note to employees.

The LA Times is currently undergoing yet another wave of buyouts, which have claimed more than 80 of its reporters and editors, according to CNN’s Dylan Byers.

Watch Broad's full interview with PBS:

Gabriel Arana is senior media editor at The Huffington Post.Eli Broad: It's 'News To Me' I'm Buying The LA Times:

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Cortines calls on warring factions to work together on behalf of L.A. students - LA Times

Cortines calls on warring factions to work together on behalf of L.A. students - LA Times:

Cortines criticizes Broad, calls on warring factions to work together for L.A. students

LAUSD Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, right, in conversation Wednesday with L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez in the Chandler Auditorium at the Los Angeles Times. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

his first public criticism of a massive charter-school expansion plan, outgoing Los Angeles schools chief Ramon C. Cortines on Wednesday referred to philanthropistEli Broad, who spearheaded the proposal, as "ill advised."

In an hourlong conversation at The Times with columnist Steve Lopez, the L.A. Unifiedsuperintendent also said that he supports offering choices to parents, including charter schools, and said that warring factions need to learn to work together in the interest of students.

"Parents do need choices," Cortines said. "It’s not just one way.... We need to be collaborating together. Schools are struggling. Charter schools are struggling, parochial schools are struggling…. We need to get on a plan to work together.”

Lopez asked Cortines if the Broad plan, outlined in a confidential draft obtained by The Times, would result in harm to the district and its students. That proposal talked about raising $490 million to move half of Los Angeles students into charter schools. Some critics say that such a migration could threaten the solvency of the nation's second-largest school system.

Cortines did not directly address the fate of L.A. Unified. But he did briefly take on Broad and the proposal.

"I think he was ill advised," Cortines said of Broad. "I think somebody brought him an elixir without having it be tested to see if it will really do what it is promised to do.”

The superintendent noted, however, that after the plan became public, Broad’s foundation toned down its pro-charter rhetoric.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has characterized the leaked proposal as a draft meant for discussion purposes. The Broad plan has led to the creation of a nonprofit that officials said will work to create high-quality schools of any kind, charter or otherwise.

Cortines defended traditional schools and the dedication of their employees.

"We are doing some things right," he said. "This district, this school system, does not get a fair shake."Cortines calls on warring factions to work together on behalf of L.A. students - LA Times:

CURMUDGUCATION: NEPC: How Charter$ Ca$h In

CURMUDGUCATION: NEPC: How Charter$ Ca$h In:

NEPC: How Charter$ Ca$h In

Today the National Education Policy Center released a new report, "The Business of Charter Schooling: Understanding the Policies That Charter Operators Use for Financial Benefit."

In other words, what policies are helping charter operators cash in, and how?

The report, by Bruce Baker (Rutgers University) and Gary Miron (Western Michigan University) is a valuable and useful read, filled with actual scholarly research (unlike, say, a typical blog post). The findings are not surprising, but they are stark and clear. This is a resource that will be invaluable in a thousand little charter skirmishes across the country. I'm going to just hit some highlights here, but I strongly recommend you read the whole thing.

The paper opens with a good pocket history of charters and the charter movement.This leads to an examination of the structural and governance differences of charters, and that leads to a discussion of how charters finance themselves. Baker and Miron that charters can only "find" money one of two ways-- either by revenue enhancement strategies, or by cutting costs.

The paper is rich with detail, data, and illustrative examples. The four basic concerns they express are:

1) Much of the money intended for educating children never makes it to the classroom. Instead, somebody is making money.

Charters can only make more money by increasing revenue or cutting costs. Revenue enhancement CURMUDGUCATION: NEPC: How Charter$ Ca$h In:

Wasting No Time: Obama to Sign ESSA into Law on December 10, 2015. | deutsch29

Wasting No Time: Obama to Sign ESSA into Law on December 10, 2015. | deutsch29:

Wasting No Time: Obama to Sign ESSA into Law on December 10, 2015.

On November 30, 2015, the public first saw the 1,061-page final draft of the next Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, now named the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

On December 02, 2015, the House passed ESSA by a vote of 359-64.

On December 09,2015, the Senate passed ESSA by a vote of 85-12.

ESSA is not officially law until President Obama signs the bill.

That is scheduled to happen in short order, on the morning of December 10, 2015.

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who joined Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to head up the Senate version of the ESEA reauthorization, offered this glowing statement that was published in The Redmond Reporter (Washington State) within hours after the Senate vote. In her statement, Murray confirms Obama’s plan to sign ESSA into law one day after the Senate vote:

Today (12/09/15) at 10:32AM (Pacific Time)
Submitted by Sen. Patty Murray
Today, by a vote of 85-12 the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) bipartisan legislation to rewrite No Child Left Behind.
After hearing from parents, teachers, school administrators and local and state officials in Washington state about how No Child Left Behind is badly broken, Sen. Murray worked with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Republicans for almost a year to craft this bipartisan legislation. ESSA takes Wasting No Time: Obama to Sign ESSA into Law on December 10, 2015. | deutsch29:

S.1177: Student Success Act - U.S. Congress - OpenCongress

S.1177: Student Success Act - U.S. Congress - OpenCongress:

S.1177 - Student Success Act

An original bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to ensure that every child achieves.view all titles (8)

Bill’s Views

Today:45
Past Seven Days:261
All-Time:1,278

Introduced

Senate
Passed

House
Passes

President
Signs

04/30/15

07/16/15

Sponsor

Senator

Lamar Alexander

R-TN

No Co-Sponsors

Committees

Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

Related Issue Areas

Data via Congressional Research ServiceView all Issues (28 more)

Result: Passed - December 02, 2015

Roll call number 665 in the House

Question: On Agreeing to the Conference Report: S 1177 To reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to ensure that every child achieves

Official Summary

(This measure has not been amended since it was introduced. The summary of that version is repeated here.) Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 This bill reauthorizes and amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The bill addresses issues such as accountability and te...Read the Rest

Latest Letters to Congress

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