CONGRESS DELAYS ACTION ON BUDGET RESOLUTION: Will Take It Up in June, but Expects to Postpone Final Spending Decisions Until Early Next Year

On May 20, House and Senate leaders announced a compromise on the Fiscal Year 2009 Congressional budget resolution, but a final vote on the measure was delayed because of a procedural problem. Congress is now expected to vote on the budget resolution when it returns from the Memorial Day recess in early June.

The Congressional budget resolution, a nonbinding spending blueprint that does not require presidential approval, sets monetary limits for the spending and tax legislation that Congress will consider for the rest of the year. Only the grand total of the discretionary spending laid out in the final budget resolution is binding on the appropriations committees. However, the Congressional budget resolution can provide guidance to the chairmen of the appropriations committees on how to divide resources among various federal departments and agencies, and it often sets the stage for the twelve annual appropriations bills that must be passed by Congress and signed by the president.

The budget resolution that Congress will consider in June would permit $24.5 billion more in discretionary spending than President Bush proposed in the budget he released in February. It recommends $84.4 billion in discretionary funding for education, job training, and other programs, an amount that is $8.4 billion over the president’s request.

“This conference agreement charts a new direction,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC). “It provides tax cuts for middle income families and supports investments in new businesses that will create jobs. The budget invests in our crumbling infrastructure and funds the educational tools needed to help our children succeed in the global economy, all while returning the budget to balance. This is a balanced budget with balanced priorities.”

Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, which assists the president in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget, criticized the budget resolution for raising taxes and increasing spending. “The Congressional budget is the same old tax and spend blueprint that we objected to at its inception,” he said. “The president took a principled stand for fiscal responsibility and has communicated clearly that spending beyond his reasonable and responsible levels will be met with a veto.”

A similar dispute emerged last year when Congress agreed to a budget resolution that sought to spend $23 billion over the president’s proposal. At the time, President Bush pledged to veto any appropriations bill that exceeded the amount he had requested in his budget. In November, Bush held true to his word, vetoing a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill that would have provided nearly $10 billion more in discretionary spending than he had requested in his budget, including $4.7 billion for the U.S. Department of Education. Unable to garner enough votes to override the president’s veto, Democrats were forced to combine the eleven appropriations bills that had not been passed into one omnibus bill that kept discretionary funding on par with the president’s spending target. Nevertheless, Congressional Democrats were able to move money around to fund key priorities, including a $2 billion increase for the U.S. Department of Education, while staying within the president’s overall spending limit.

This year, rather than go through months of partisan wrangling, veto threats, and veto override attempts that marked 2007, Democrats appear content to delay any decisions on the annual appropriations bills until early next year, when a new president occupies the White House. This will likely be accomplished by passing a continuing resolution that keeps the governmental agencies operating at current spending levels until bills are voted on in early 2009.

As Representative David Obey (D-WI), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in February, “Do we want to work things out, or do we just want to wait until the next president will act like an adult? We won’t waste time if the president intends to stick by his budget.”

RAISING GRADUATION RATES IN AN ERA OF HIGH STANDARDS: New Report Focuses on Graduation and College-Readiness for All Students, Calls for Greater Attention to Low-Income Students

A new report from Jobs for the Future (JFF) calls on states to pursue a “dual agenda” that would ensure not only that more students graduate from high school, but also that they are prepared to succeed in college. However, the report also notes that neither the federal government nor state governments have a blueprint on how to achieve that goal; as a result, most states have yet to act. In an effort to fill this void, Raising Graduation Rates in an Era of High Standards: Five Commitments for State Action provides state policymakers with a framework to help all students graduate from and succeed beyond high school and highlights states that are successfully raising standards and graduation rates.

“For the sake of our students and our nation, we urge state policymakers to review the recommendations in this report and commit to implementing them as soon as possible,” said Marlene B. Seltzer, JFF’s president and CEO. “In doing so, states can raise graduation rates without compromising high college- and work-readiness standards and take a critical step to improving the economic prospects of our citizenry and our nation as a whole.”

According to the report, meeting the challenge of raising standards and increasing high school graduation rates requires a new level of attention to the graduation and achievement gaps among different income and racial groups. Specifically, it singles out the “chasm-like gap” between the graduation rates of students from low-income families with limited formal education and their peers from higher-income, better-educated families.

For example, it notes that 91 percent of students from middle- and upper-income families graduate from high school (Quintiles 3–5), compared to only 65 percent of students in the lowest socioeconomic group (Quintile 1). Students from families whose income is in the lowest quintile also struggle harder to graduate from high school prepared for college and earn their college degree, as indicated in the graph below.

Even though students from low-income families struggle to graduate from high school and college, they do not lack ambition. As the report says, these students are “keen economists who recognize the demands of the workforce and aspire to a college degree.” A recent analysis of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey shows that close to 60 percent of dropouts earn a high school credential—typically a GED certificate—within twelve years of starting high school. And nearly half of these GED holders enroll in a two- or four-year postsecondary institution, but less than ten percent eventually earn their college degree.

“The achievement and graduation gaps indicated by this data augur serious consequences for both the economic standing and the social well-being of the nation,” the report reads. “Increasingly, all of our states rely on an educated workforce to fuel their major growth industries—such as health, biotechnology, and communications. Yet the percentage of young people in the United States earning a college degree remains disappointingly low.”

In the report, JFF calls on state policymakers to make five key commitments to increase the number of students who graduate from high school prepared for college:

• A high school diploma that signifies college and work readiness
• Pathways to graduation and college success for struggling and out-of-school students
• Turnaround of low-performing high schools
• Increased emphasis on graduation rates and college readiness in next-generation accountability
• Early and continuous support for struggling students

The report also provides a framework for high school improvement and dropout reduction that is organized around the five commitments and based on national and state research and the experiences of pioneering states, school districts, and best-in-class programs. Some state-level programs that are highlighted in the report include North Carolina’s “Learn and Earn” Schools initiative, which allows high school students to earn a high school diploma and up to two years of tuition-free college credit, and Louisiana’s Graduation Index, which creates incentives for high schools to keep students enrolled until they graduate and provide a rigorous curriculum through their senior year.

View the complete report.

RETHINKING COLLEGE READINESS IN MATH: Report Identifies Effective Programs for Preparing Students

A new report by WestEd highlights three high schools—all supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—that have successfully implemented programs to prepare all of their students for college mathematics. The report, titled Rethinking High Schools: Supporting All Students to be College-Ready in Math, is the latest in the organization’s “Rethinking High School” series of reports on secondary school reform and redesign.

“High schools across America face many of the same obstacles in helping students succeed in math,” said Tracy Huebner, senior researcher at WestEd and the lead author of the “Rethinking High School” series. “With high expectations for all students, opportunities for teachers to deepen their content knowledge, and continuous follow-up and support for students every step of the way, the three schools featured in this report serve as models to other communities struggling to deliver an effective math curriculum.”

According to the report, there are several barriers to ensuring that all students are college-ready in math. For one, it finds that many students start high school unprepared for college preparatory math and require intensive remediation that is not always available. On the other hand, some students who are ready for the course work may not have access to it. For example, the report notes that whereas just 44 percent of high schools in high-poverty areas offer calculus, 72 percent of schools serving the most affluent students do so. In addition, it notes that even when challenging math courses are available, not all students are aware of which ones are required for college admission. Furthermore, because state requirements are not always aligned with college expectations, some students may meet their state’s graduation requirements yet still not have met the requirement for college admission. To earn a high school diploma in California, says the report, students have to take two years of high school math. But to gain admission to the California State University or University of California systems, students have to take at least three years of math.

WestEd identifies three elements that should be part of any strong math program: high-level math courses and supports, continual improvement of teachers’ skills and math content knowledge, and use of student information to drive instruction. By using programs that incorporate these elements, all three schools featured—Interlake High School in Bellevue, WA; Granby High School in Norfolk, VA; and Fenway High School in Boston—have posted gains in advanced course taking, SAT scores, and/or state assessment scores.

At Interlake, all students are encouraged to take advanced math, regardless of their academic history. In addition, the school eliminated its lowest-level math offerings, and despite concerns that a number of students would not fare well with this change, Interlake’s Class of 2007 had an average math SAT score of 500, nineteen points higher than the state average and thirty-two points higher than the national average. 

In Norfolk, the school district decided to focus more on professional development. Granby High School, however, went above and beyond the school district’s requirements and worked to institute “a culture of ongoing learning and support” among its teachers. School leaders consider this factor a key to Granby’s success; more than 90 percent of all students at this majority-minority school passed the Virginia Standards of Learning exam in Algebra II in the 2006–07 school year, compared to about 30 percent in 1997–98.

Fenway, a school for at-risk students that became what Boston Public Schools calls a “pilot” (a smaller school at which new approaches to teaching and learning are tested), works to develop students’ deep understanding of math. There, students discuss with teachers their comprehension of math concepts as well as areas in which they are struggling. As the report points out, these conversations serve as a type of formative assessment and are tied to the school’s belief that “a student’s ability to communicate mathematical understanding to others is considered equally important” to test and quiz scores. Students also keep portfolios for each unit, in which they include their best math work and a two- to four-page summary on their understanding of certain skills. As a result of the program, more than two thirds of students scored in the top two categories on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System in 2007, a significant improvement from 2004, when barely one third did so.

Full report.

TEACHING IN CHANGING TIMES: Survey of New Teachers Finds Most Feel Prepared for Classrooms and See Teaching as a Lifelong Profession

Eighty percent of new teachers report feeling “very prepared” or “somewhat prepared” to enter the classroom, according to a new survey of first-year teachers across the country. Among new middle and high school teachers, 81 percent are comfortable teaching in their subject. However, the report also finds that large numbers of new teachers feel distinctly underprepared to deal with the ethnic and racial diversity that they often find in the classroom. These findings are captured in Teaching in Changing Times, the third and final report for “Lessons Learned,” a joint project between the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality and Public Agenda.

“The ‘Teaching in Changing Times’ report illustrates the gap between teacher training and the realities of the classroom when it comes to teaching diverse populations and students with special needs,” said Sabrina Laine, director of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. “A highly effective teacher workforce starts with quality preparation and needs to be bolstered with good induction and mentoring programs for new teachers.”

According to the report, 76 percent of new teachers say that they were trained in teaching an ethnically diverse student body, but only 39 percent say that this training helped them “a lot.” It also finds that the anxiety about dealing with diverse classrooms is greatest among new teachers in more upscale communities, pointing out that teachers who are headed for more suburban and working-class schools are “just not prepared for the diversity that they will find.”

Given this anxiety, it is no surprise that new teachers ranked diversity training high on the list of the best ways to improve teaching, with 94 percent saying it would be very or somewhat effective in improving teacher quality, a percentage that ranked only below reducing class size (97 percent). New teachers also favor increasing teacher salaries (93 percent), increasing professional development opportunities for teachers (93 percent), requiring teachers at the secondary school level to major in the subjects they are teaching (87 percent), and making it easier to terminate unmotivated or incompetent teachers (84 percent).

Among the report’s other findings, 62 percent of new teachers had been hoping to teach for a “long time;” 28 percent decided to enter the field when they were in college, and 8 percent chose teaching as their profession by chance. When asked how long they expect to continue teaching, most new teachers report being in for the long haul, with 68 percent of new teachers saying they will teach for more than ten years, and only 16 percent saying less than five years. This finding is especially interesting, as research has shown that about half of all new teachers leave the profession within the first five years.

When the surveyed new teachers were asked about salary, the results were mixed. On one hand, only 33 percent of new teachers say that low salary and not much opportunity for growth is a “major drawback” to teaching. However, 54 percent admit that a “significantly higher salary” would change their minds about leaving the profession. But when asked whether they preferred a school that paid a significantly higher salary or one where administrators gave strong backing and support to teachers, 79 percent chose administrative support over a higher salary.

Complete report.

“CULTURAL REVOLUTION NEEDED TO CURB DROPOUTS”: Detroit News Editorial Focuses on Detroit High School Students’ Efforts to Curb the Dropout Rate

A May 22 editorial in the Detroit News discusses an effort underway in Detroit to stop the “tragic tidal wave of dropouts” that plagues the city. It focuses on young men from the Class of 2010 who attend Detroit’s University Prep Academy and have committed to going to college and coming back to Detroit to change the culture of the city and help in its revival.

According to a recent report from the America’s Promise Alliance that was prepared by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, Detroit’s graduation rate is only 24.9 percent, a figure that ranks it worst among the nation’s fifty largest cities.

“It’s time for the young men in our city to get off the streets, get in school, and get a future,” says sophomore David Miller.

Student Ronald Ruffin, according to the editorial, pledged to convince his peers not to fall for the surface allure of drug dealing and fast money. “We all understand that they have a lot of flash, but it’s just a front,” he said. “They may have a wallet full of cash, but they live with their mothers and end up dead or in jail.”

He points out that college graduates earn as much as $1 million more in their lifetimes than high school dropouts and are more attractive to women. “No jail time, more money, more women—it’s not such a hard choice,” he said.

The editorial notes that the campaign is part of a “larger philosophy” at University Prep Academy, a charter public school that opened in 2000 and has promised to graduate over 90 percent of its students and send 90 percent of them to college. As part of their effort, the young men have already started to engage students at three city high schools in conversations about staying in school. To foster social ties, this summer, they also want to host a talent show.

“In a city where more young men are dropping out than staying in school, Detroit’s transformation demands nothing less than a cultural upheaval, a social movement that must begin in the hearts and homes of the city’s young people and their families,” the editorial reads.

Read the complete editorial.
Learn more about University Prep Academy.