Senate | Senate | House | |
Category | Democrat | Republican | Republican |
Accountability | Maintains the NCLB law's testing schedule, and states that have federal waivers could stick with those plans. States that don't already have federal waivers would have to come up with a set of goals that take into account both overall student achievement and growth. States without waivers would have to submit an ambitious accountability plan to the U.S. secretary of education for approval. | States would essentially get to design their own accountability systems, with few parameters from the federal government. Schools would still have to test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and data would have to be disaggregated by subgroups. | States would essentially get to design their own accountability systems, with few parameters from the federal government. Schools would still have to test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and data would have to be disaggregated by subgroups. |
Funding | The bill includes a "comparability" requirement, which means that districts would have to ensure that actual teachers' salaries are the same across Title I and non-Title I schools. Now, teachers in a district have to be on the same salary schedule, but the teachers at one school can get paid much more, collectively, than the teachers at another. | The bill would get rid of maintenance of effort, which requires districts to keep up their own spending at a certain level in order to tap federal funds. But it would keep in place "supplement not supplant," which prohibits federal dollars from taking the place of local funding. | The bill would get rid of maintenance of effort. It would merge programs aimed at migrant students, neglected and delinquent children, English-learners, rural students, and American Indian children into the biggest K-12 program, the Title I program for disadvantaged students. Districts could use the funds for any activity authorized under those programs. No money could be transferred out of Title I schools, but extra funds could go to other low-income schools. |
Low-Performing Schools | The bill would keep in place the four improvement models created under the Obama administration's School Improvement Grant program. But it would add another option, "whole-school reform," which allows for using turnaround programs with a strong evidence base. And the bill would give slight flexibility to rural districts to change one aspect of whatever model they end up choosing. States could also come up with their own improvement models and submit them to the education secretary for approval. Schools that fail to make progress after an extended period would have to consider more dramatic interventions. | The bill would get rid of the School Improvement Grant program and would instead allow states and districts to intervene in the schools they choose. | The bill would get rid of the School Improvement Grant program and would instead allow states and districts to intervene in the schools they choose. |
Standards | States would have to adopt standards that prepare students for post-secondary education and the workforce, but those standards would not necessarily have to be the same as the Common Core State Standards. | The bill calls for "challenging" standards that will prepare students for postsecondary education without remediation or the workforce. It would explicitly bar the secretary of education from doing anything to encourage states to adopt a particular set of standards. | The bill would explicitly bar the secretary of education from doing anything to encourage states to adopt a particular set of standards. |
Teachers | In order to tap Title II dollars, districts and states would have to do teacher evaluations based in part on student outcomes, including achievement and growth. Other measures, such as educator observations, would also have to factor in. Districts and states would use this information to help teachers improve their practice and to ensure that good teachers are distributed throughout the district--but not necessarily for big personnel decisions, like salaries and firing. | The bill would encourage states and districts to use Title II dollars to create teacher-evaluation systems based in part on student outcomes, but it wouldn't be a requirement. | The bill would require school districts and/or states to craft teacher-evaluation systems based in part on student outcomes and use them in personnel decisions as defined by the district, including promotions and firing. |
Source: U.S. Congress | |||
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Stand ON Children First: New AstroTurf from Teacher in the Box |
Behavioral economics is an interesting and potentially useful field of academic inquiry. At its best, real behavioral economics attempts to address some of the concerns I raise here. But many if not most assumptions about human behavior and response to incentives are not representative of behavioral economics at its best.
Specifically, I’m increasingly concerned with what I see as the simple-minded projection of economic thinking onto everyone and anyone
By July 1, 2009, NGA and CCSSO had formed more committees. There were two work groups, whose dozen members in math and English wrote the standards. These included no teachers, but did include a few professors. Second were two feedback groups, who were supposed to provide research and advice to the writers. Those had 18 members each, who were mostly professors but included one math teacher. Third was the validation committee, announced in September 2009, which acted as the final gate for Common Core. Their job was to “ensure [the standards] are research and evidence-based.”While many people sat on these various committees, only one in sixty was a classroom teacher,according to teaching coach and blogger Anthony Cody. All of the standards writing and discussions were sealed by confidentiality agreements, and held in private. While Linn says six states sent intensive teacher and staff feedback, committee members weren’t sure what effect
Like, I think, a lot of women readers, I have lately been discomfited by Nora Eldridge, the protagonist of Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs. Nora is pushing 40, single, and childless. She has several close friends, throws fun birthday parties, and makes “serious” art in her spare bedroom. She is also a devoted caretaker of her elderly relatives, and quite good, even excellent, at her elementary school teaching job. Nevertheless, Nora’s placid life is disturbed, from the inside out, when she becomes obsessed with the Shahid family, an artistic, intellectual couple and their precocious young son, who is in Nora’s third-grade class. The Shahids represent for Nora all she has missed out on: marriage, motherhood, and a career in the arts. She stews in a jealous rage toward these people, even as she attempts to attach herself to them; to vicariously experience a life so much richer and more satisfying,
Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent?
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| The government will have the ability to look at any data they want to regarding your child. |
Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer
How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009
