Morning Announcements: March 28, 2012

Wednesday is here and as usual we provide you with a mid-week boost with some riveting educational news. Enjoy!

American University Radio sheds light on the impact dropping out of high school causes for many youth as they struggle economically. The Alliance has already offered data on the disparities between high school graduates and dropout in terms of lifetime income and salaries. American University introduces to you to students who are attempting to get the lives back on track through dropout recovery schools.

American University Radio also delves into the connection, and sometimes disconnect, between school and home. Reporters travel with a truancy counselor in the Washington D.C metropolitan area as he reaches out to parents and their children at the homes to instill the importance for attending school.

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State of the Union Bingo 2012: Download Your Bingo Card and Watch the State of the Union Address on January 24

On Tuesday, January 24, at 9:00 p.m. EST, President Barack Obama will give the 2012 State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

The State of the Union address allows the president to report on the condition of the nation, but also gives him a national stage on which to outline his legislative agenda for the coming year.

Will President Obama's legislative agenda in 2012 include education reform? The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is ten years old and is long overdue for a revamp. Both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are considering legislation to rewrite NCLB, but few people expect a final bill to reach the president's desk in 2012.

Will the president use the State of the Union address to urge Congress to speed up its work on revamping NCLB? Or will he stick to more general themes linking education to better outcomes for individuals and the nation? Will he even mention education at all? (We're betting that he will.)

To help you keep track of these and other issues, the Alliance for Excellent Education has brought back its popular State of the Union Bingo cards.

Click "Read entire post" below to access the Bingo cards.

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Will Congress Finish Its Work on NCLB Rewrite?

In the video to the right, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia examines whether Congress will be able to finish its work on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Wise notes that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee has passed the bill, but it still must go to the Senate floor and be conferenced with legislation from the House of Representatives before it can go to the president for his signature. He notes that some observers believe that the president's plan to grant states some flexibility from certain NCLB requirements may speed up congressional action.

"That's the real issue for this Congress. Does it want to delay further acting on ESEA but in so doing permit states to head off on their own and the executive branch to be the largely determining what education reform and education policy look like," Wise says.

The odds that Congress finishes its work might be long, but, as Wise points out, so were the odds that the East Coast would have its first major snowstorm before Halloween.

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Afternoon Announcements: November 7, 2011

The Washington Times reports that key lawmakers and educators are growing increasingly pessimistic that Congress can pass a massive overhaul of federal education policy before the 2012 election-year battles doom any hopes for major bipartisan legislation. To that point, Alliance President Bob Wise is quoted, saying, “Education is really about the only issue left that has not managed to make itself totally toxic. If Congress really resents the waiver proposal, then they have an obligation to act now. It’s not fair to states to begin implementing significant changes and then suddenly change all of the rules on them. The longer Congress waits, the more the waivers take effect.”

Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, writes about education and the 2012 election in a Huffington Post op-ed.

Middle and high school science classes are holding kids’ interests; surveys show the number of college freshmen interested in majoring in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, and math) is on the rise. But as these new coeds fight their way upstream through a flood of calculus, physics, and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students, the excitement quickly wanes leaving many swimming for shore. Read more in the New York Times about on why science majors change their minds.

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Alliance Responds to Draft Legislation to Revise No Child Left Behind

On October 11, U.S. Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY), the chairman and top Republican, respectively, of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) Committee, released draft legislation to revise the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind.

"Patience is no virtue in education reform, and the nation's students have waited long enough for more effective education policy coming from Washington," said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, in response to the draft legislation. "With this bill, they are one step closer to getting it."

Wise said the draft legislation is "especially important" for the nation's high schools, which he said had been "overlooked" by federal education policy for far too long. Specifically, Wise noted the legislation would concentrate improvement efforts on high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent, establish a common, accurate calculation of graduation rates, and support comprehensive efforts by states to strengthen the literacy skills of all students, including young people in high school. Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: October 12, 2011

The New York Times and every other national news outlet reported on senior Senate Democrat Tom Harkin’s released draft of a sprawling revision of the No Child Left Behind education law on Tuesday that would dismantle the provisions of the law that used standardized test scores in reading and math to label tens of thousands of public schools as failing. The 865-page bill, filed by the Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate education committee, became the first comprehensive piece of legislation overhauling the law to reach either Congressional chamber since President George W. Bush signed it in 2002.

The Washington Post reported that Harkin’s plan to revamp the main federal education law immediately drew fire from civil rights groups that argued it would ease pressure on schools to provide quality education to all children, regardless of race or income. Further, Education Week   reported the accountability system at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act would be completely reinvented under the draft reauthorization proposal.

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Afternoon Announcements: October 11, 2011

An early draft of a Senate committee's sweeping rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act rolls back major accountability provisions of the law's current form, known as No Child Left Behind. The bill would require states to develop their own standards for student performance with little federal oversight, according to language obtained by The Huffington Post.

Education Week reports Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., a former Denver schools chief, arrived in Congress hoping to bring his on-the-ground expertise working in a large school district to ESEA reauthorization. This week, he'll have the chance when Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduces his ESEA reauthorization plan.

According to Education Week, Race to the Top, the competitive grant program first created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would become an authorized part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, under a draft of Senate education leaders' reauthorization proposal circulating around Washington. So far, states have split a total of $4 billion in Race to the Top grants, which further some of the Obama administration's top school reform priorities The draft language would allow grants to go to high-need districts in addition to states, and also to groups of states, or groups of high-need districts.

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October 4 Issue of Straight A's Is Available

The October 4, 2011 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter, is now available. This week's issue focuses on NCLB waivers, federal education funding, an Alliance report on teacher induction, and more.

Individual articles from this week's issue are listed below, or you can download a .pdf of the entire newsletter here.

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A Dose of Budgetary Reality for Policy Makers and Education Advocates

As we head into the fall, jobs and the budget are at the forefront of national discussion. President Obama has announced and is now campaigning for his jobs plan. The bipartisan, bicameral super committee continues its own discussions on the federal budget. Within this discussion, there is a larger economic debate on how to spur recovery.

One side argues that cutting spending could deepen the recession, while the other side argues that failing to cut spending would deepen the debt and prolong the recession.  Amidst this lose-lose debate, = something is missing that’s more fundamental to the nation’s long-term economic health: how the nation is educating tomorrow’s workforce. Education programs will already see cuts as part of the 10-year trillion dollar cuts to discretionary spending and could be subject to further cuts if the super committee fails to reach an agreement. With this context as a backdrop, both policymakers and education groups need to respond to the realities the nation faces.

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President Announces Waivers For No Child Left Behind, Time For Congress To Get Back In The Boxing Ring

President Barack Obama announced today sweeping changes in his administration’s plan for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as Child Left Behind. He unveiled that the Department of Education will begin to issue waivers to states from NCLB if they follow general guidelines.

In his latest video, Alliance President Bob Wise — former governor of West Virginia — compares Obama’s latest move to a punch in a boxing ring. Obama said he is allowing waivers because Congress has refused to act.

Wise said waivers are a step forward but the only real solution is for Congress to pass full legislation necessary for education reform.

“The Executive Branch has chosen to move forward with waivers because Congress hasn’t acted,” Wise said. “So here's the challenge — Congress, climb back in the ring, duke it out. Pass the legislation that truly leads to education reform and takes away the need for waivers. When you do that, you score a knock out for our kids. There's still time'

 

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