"Storm" Looming Over Washington, DC Could Impact Nation's Schoolchildren

In the video to the left, Alliance President Bob Wise explains how competing "storms" around education reform in Washington, DC, could impact the educational futures of the nation's schoolchildren.

In this "weather report," Gov. Wise discusses two looming "storm" systems. The first, led by President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is focused on providing waivers and greater flexibility to states from key requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act. The other, underway in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, is about rewriting No Child Left Behind, but will require Democrats and Republicans working together on a compromise.

In the coming weeks, Gov. Wise will report on whether the Senate and House of Representatives can come together on a bill that could be sent to the White House and outflank the waiver option. "If no agreement is made, then the waiver option could overwhelm the Congress, pushing them out of the picture completely and controlling the education atmosphere in Washington, DC until after the next presidential election," Wise says.

Learn more in the Alliance's federal policy news section.

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Afternoon Announcements: November 3, 2011

A story in today’s Press-Enterprise (CA) talks about the importance of graduating all kids from high school prepared for college and a career. According to the article, experts acknowledge that improving the educational accomplishments of the region’s students won’t be easy and that it will take at least several years to implement changes and a generation to realize their benefits. Alliance President Bob Wise was quoted saying, “money doesn’t necessarily have to be an issue. We need to think, ‘What’s the end product we want?’ look at dollars available and direct them that way, instead of, ‘This is the way we’ve been educating for the last 50 or 100 years.’” he said. “We need to look at students the way Congress looked at banks and investment houses and invested in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program, the government’s 2008 effort to address the subprime mortgage crisis). This is a hard-nosed economic return on investment.”

According to an editorial in the Oregonian, the ferment in Oregon public education right now is not that our schools are crowded and underfunded; it's that they're going online in a big way.

The Hill reports that a Senate republican leader is pushing back against claims that he and Sen. Tom Harkin have a secret plan to pass the Iowa Democrat’s education reform bill.

D.C. educators rated ‘effective’ can still lose jobs, according to an article in the Washington Post. Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements--October 28, 2011

Happy Friday, everyone. Here are today's top education headlines.

Writing for the Rio Grande Guardian, U.S. Representative Rubén Hinojosa acknowledges that Congress and the president must work to reduce the nation's deficit, but argues that the federal budget cannot be balanced "on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable populations: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and our nation's children and youth." Hinojosa, who is the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, discusses the Graduation Promise Act, which he cosponsored, and says it would "lay a solid foundation for the nation's economic future" by reforming the nation's low-performing high schools. He cites research from the Alliance for Excellent Education finding that the dropouts from the Class of 2010 alone will cost the economy $337 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes.

The Huffington Post attempts to guess the fate of the bill that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed last week to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. It notes that critics of the bill, such as "data-driven education reform groups and civil rights groups," have said that Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) "watered down the bill so much in the name of bipartisanship that it would be better to go back to the drawing board and forgo the small window of opportunity this rewrite has of reaching the president's desk." It add that the bill would likely change "enormously" if it reaches the Senate floor. "In order to bring the bill through committee, Harkin cut a deal with Republican senators and teachers' unions that removed a provision mandating teacher evaluations in every school," the article reads. "The move lost the bill support from education-reform groups and earned the measure criticism from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan."

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Afternoon Announcements: October 20, 2011

According to a new report from Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia’s school closing plan probably won't raise much revenue, writes the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The New York Times reports that he Learning Network is celebrating National Day on Writing today by offering a host of ways for parents, teachers, and students to share their writing.

According to a recent report by the American Institutes for Research, students who drop out of community college before their second year have cost taxpayers nearly $1-billion annually, writes the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Education officials in Tennessee are taking flak from teachers and unions for rushing the implementation of a new teacher-evaluation system that will eventually undergird tenure decisions—a move, some worry, that could undermine redesigns of evaluation in other states, writes Education Week.

The Christian Science Monitor asks, “Can new No Child Left Behind law pass before 2012 elections?”

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Senate Committee Resumes Markup to Overhaul No Child Left Behind

On October 20 at 8:00 am, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee resumed its markup to consider legislation to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. Watch the markup live. Individuals live-tweeting the markup including @PoliticsK12 and @edfunding.

11:40 AM THURSDAY UPDATE: Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has issued a formal objection to the markup because the rules of the Senate forbid a Senate committee (other than the Appropriations and Budget Committees) from meeting after the first two hours that the Senate starts its session unless it gets consent from the full Senate. The Senate met today at 9:30 am and Paul made his objection at 11:30 am. As a result, Chairman Harkin has had to adjourn the markup until 8:00 am Thursday morning. Education Week's Politics K-12 blog has more details on Paul's objection.

More information on the markup, including opening statements by HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), the top Republican on the committee, is available below the jump.

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Afternoon Announcements: October 14, 2011

Happy Friday! Here are today's top education headlines courtesy of the Alliance's Policy Intern, Bill DeBaun.

Education Week covers the Alliance's recent announcement about Digital Learning Day, which will be held on February 1, 2012. It highlights the appearance that Alliance President Bob Wise made with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Piers Morgan Tonight.

"We're encouraging teachers and educators across the nation to either showcase what they're already doing in digital learning, online learning, software application, whatever it is that's working," Wise said of the day, "as well as those schools and teachers and educators that aren't using digital learning, [asking] what can you do that day to promote it."

The article notes that Bush and Wise have been quite effective in gaining publicity for their message, with last night's appearance on CNN the latest in a string of television, print, and online media appearances. Watch video of the Digital Learning Day announcement courtesy of CNN. Learn more about Digital Learning Day at www.DigitalLearningDay.org.

The Associated Press reports that a majority of states will seek waivers that will get them out of some of No Child Left Behind's requirements. 37 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia have indicated that they will submit the plans necessary to obtain a waiver to the Department of Education. 17 of these states will submit their plans by November 14, which would expedite the Department of Education's review and make waivers for these states possible by early 2012. States that did not file by the October 12 deadline may still do so at a later date.

For the rest of today's afternoon announcements, click the link below.

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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

Stats That Stick: October 12, 2011

Numbers of pages in new No Child Left Behind Act bill: 865
Senior Senate Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa released a 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 Senator Harkin, 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. Mr. Harkin made his draft bill public 18 days after President Obama announced that he would use executive authority to waive the most onerous provisions of the law, because he had all but given up hope that Congress could fix the law’s flaws any time soon. 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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