YouTube: DOE MEETING WITH PARENTS: A Conversation with Parents about Parental Involvement and Education

Washington DC: May 26, 2010:
"A new era of cooperation with parents, students and families across the nation"

Report: SCHOOL STIMULUS FUNDS NOT USED AS INTENDED

 

Listen to the Story: Weekend Edition Sunday [3 min 45 sec]

Read The Report: Education Department IG On States And Stimulus Funds

by Claudio Sanchez | National Public Radio | Weekend Edition Sunday

October 11, 2009 -- The Department of Education's inspector general reports that some states are using stimulus dollars to replace money they've cut from their education budget — despite instructions to the contrary.

When the Department of Education began releasing stimulus funds last April, it told states the money was to be used to boost funding for schools and colleges and protect key programs and jobs.

And from the get-go, the Obama administration's message to states was that stimulus funds earmarked for education are to "supplement, not supplant" state funding for schools and colleges.

"We're really focused on making sure states are using the stimulus money well," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan."But what we want to do is make sure people aren't playing games."

Shuffling Funds

Nonetheless, it wasn't long before the Education Department started hearing about states playing what it called "shell games" with stimulus funds. In at least one case, department officials blocked a state from drawing stimulus money because it was cutting school funding so deeply.

This growing dispute with states has become so politically charged that the department declined to comment for this story.

The department's inspector general, on the other hand, isn't shy at all.

In its report about how states were spending stimulus funds, the inspector general's office found that over a dozen states are inappropriately using stimulus dollars to replace the money they're cutting from education. It specifically cited Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

"We're really perplexed at this report and need to sort it out," says Thomas Murphy, spokesman for Connecticut's department of education. He says his state got high marks this summer, when federal education officials looked at its proposal for spending stimulus funds.

"These funds came with the greatest flexibility to help states stabilize their education programs, and that's how Connecticut used those funds," Murphy says.

Murphy says Connecticut is in compliance as long as it doesn't cut education spending below 2006 levels. But it's clear that lots of states won't be able to maintain that level of funding, let alone boost spending on education, as the Obama administration would like.

Not Enough To Cover Shortfalls

According to Jon Shure of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 25 states have cut funding for K-12 education, and 34 have cut higher-education funding. Shure says that the stimulus has covered no more than 30 percent of states' budget shortfalls.

"States are facing such a severe crisis that a lot of the federal money is just helping states stay even and avoid further budget cuts," Shure says.

Minnesota, for example, is balancing its budget by delaying almost $2 billion in payments to schools. Michigan plans to cut per-student funding by $218. Missouri has indefinitely frozen funding for its public colleges.

"We have to make do with the money we have, and given that our revenues are doing much worse than anticipated, we will have to make additional reductions in the budget to keep it in line with available revenue," says Linda Luebbering, Missouri's budget director.

Education, says Luebbering, will be the last thing Missouri cuts.

Duncan warns that if states cut education below 2006 levels and use stimulus funds to plug holes in their education budgets, he may exclude them from billions of dollars that the administration is offering states for reforming their schools.

• The OIG Hotline is a toll-free telephone number (1-800-MISUSED) and email box (oig.hotline@ed.gov) where individuals can report potential instances of fraud, waste, or abuse relating to Department programs.
• The percentage of the State’s total revenues expended on education must be greater than or equal to the percentage expended in the fiscal year preceding the year for which the waiver is being requested.

IN EDUCATION REFORM, SOME STATES RACE FROM THE BOTTOM: According to a report by the New Teacher Project, state laws have disqualified some states from winning Race to the Top money

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California was one of five states ranked least likely to compete for the money, according to a report released this August by the New Teacher Project.    “California will take whatever money it can get,” said Brian Edward, a policy analyst for EdSource, a California education watchdog.

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by Chris Linden | Medhill Reports - Northwestern University.  A Washington publication of the Medill School.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 -- WASHINGTON—State officials are scrambling to win a federal competition that encourages education reform, but as they modify their education laws to get in line, high hurdles are forcing some of the states into a race from the bottom.

At stake is $4.35 billion in federal stimulus cash from the Department of Education. The Race to the Top Fund is only a small chunk, but states are finding it’s difficult to pass up the money.

Experts suggest Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is using Race to the Top as political leverage, positioning states for an upcoming revision to No Child Left Behind. Some states are perfectly positioned, experts said, but there’s a long road ahead for others.

“California will take whatever money it can get,” said Brian Edward, a policy analyst for EdSource, a California education watchdog.

California was one of five states ranked least likely to compete for the money, according to a report released this August by the New Teacher Project. The group, which supports initiatives to train teachers and measure their performance, also rated Nevada, Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania as ineligible because state laws and revised stimulus requests disqualify them from the federal competition.

To qualify, states must show reformed education laws fitting four federal priorities: standardized curriculum; building new student data systems; linking teacher performance to test scores, and raising the number of charter schools.

In California, the biggest hang-up involves the use of test data to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness. State law prevents using students’ test scores to rate a teacher, except for the purposes of local school districts, where officials can monitor a student’s progress from year to year.

Secretary Duncan has several times called those laws a “firewall” that stall reform. He has suggested student test scores should be used to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness.

Duncan’s suggestion has met with fierce resistance from teachers and their unions, who argue that student scores should not be a sole factor in evaluating teachers.

Chris Linden/MNS

Representatives for state and national teachers unions said test scores must be combined with other factors, such as observation by a principal, lesson planning forms and portfolios. They said they fear test data vary too much from year to year and build only a partial picture of a teacher’s performance.

“Just like we think a student is more than a number, we think a teacher is more than a test score,” said Robert Kim, a senior policy analyst for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

The temptation of those federal dollars, though, is driving states to fall in line. Officials in many states are proposing changes that would better position them for a stake in that cash from Washington. But places like California and Wisconsin, where the barriers are higher, will need more time to prepare, experts said.

States can apply for the money later this year, though other states will wait for the second phase in late 2010. Most states are mobilizing now.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late August proposed sweeping changes to state laws that would link test scores to teacher performance, lift charter school caps and provide more options for children in under-performing schools.

Given the state’s budget crisis, it’s hard to pass up additional federal money, said Edward, the California policy analyst. Despite the best of intentions, it will take time to develop the best reforms, Edward said. California has a long road ahead.

“Right now, some of those [reforms] are a dream in California,” Edwards said.

AMID FISCAL CRISIS, L.A. GIVES SCHOOL SITE COUNCILS REINS

Published Online: July 14, 2009

Published in Print: July 15, 2009

By Stephen Sawchuk | Education Week

Los Angeles -- In theory, it is every school’s dream to control its own destiny, rather than having administrators impose spending plans and reform initiatives from the central office.

At Jefferson High School, one of the largest high schools here, a governing body made up of teachers, nonclassroom-based educators, parents, and Principal Michael Taft appears to be living the dream, to the extent such a thing is possible during a staggering fiscal crisis.

The leadership team, officially known as a “school site council,” has mainly used an infusion of federal stimulus funding to keep class sizes around 25 students. With its remaining money, it has preserved a successful “eighth period”—a mandatory after-school class for students struggling to pass the California High School Exit Exam, or CAHSEE, a graduation prerequisite.

The example sums up the goal of district leaders, who have allotted nearly $114 million in Title I economic-stimulus funds to school site councils like the one at Jefferson High to spend on their own needs.

Decentralized Decisionmaking

According to the California Education Code, school site councils are elected bodies charged with setting and measuring the effectiveness of improvement strategies at the school, seeking input from other school advisory committees, revising strategies and expenditures, and creating and monitoring the approved “single plan for student achievement”—a consolidated plan requested of schools receiving state or federal school improvement funding.

The councils are made up of:
• The principal
• Representatives of teachers selected by teachers at the school
• Other school personnel selected by peers at the school
• Parents of students attending the school selected by such parents
• Students selected by students attending the school (at the middle and high school levels)

Middle and high school councils are composed to ensure parity among the principal, classroom teachers, and other school personnel. additionally, they must ensure that equal numbers of parents or other community members selected by parents and students serve on the council.

SOURCE: California Education Code

“If parents and the community feel they have some responsibility, they’ll be accountable for the direction of the school,” said Ramon C. Cortines, the superintendent of the district. “When [a school] is faced with the draconian cuts I’ve made, ... [it] needs parents and the community to be engaged and involved on an ongoing basis.”

Decentralization has long been a rallying cry among constituents in this sprawling district of 700,000 students. But as some Los Angeles educators are discovering, it pays to be careful what you wish for.

The influx of money this year through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act carries much higher stakes for the site councils for several reasons. First, the funding will double some schools’ typical Title I allocations, and thus it will be closely scrutinized.

These are not funds for a rainy day; they are a stopgap. In preparing budgets, the councils have had to determine how many teaching positions to preserve, how small they can afford to keep class sizes, and which local initiatives are worth saving. Many are making those decisions for the first time.

In effect, the district has spread the decision about cutting programs and personnel from seven school board members to 700 councils.

The decentralization has been praised by some Los Angeles administrators for moving instructional policy closer to the schools. But it has raised the hackles of other administrators, some parent groups, and the teachers’ union.

“There was no transition plan to develop the capacity of these schools that in some cases received an embarrassment of riches,” said Bill Ring, who heads TransParent, a grassroots organization that seeks to increase parents’ voices in school decisions.

Back and Forth

Required by the California Education Code, the school site councils have been around since the 1970s. But the discretionary pots of money they oversee typically wax and wane depending on the current district leadership. Some superintendents have funneled more discretionary funding, including federal Title I aid for disadvantaged students, to the councils; others have chosen to manage those funds centrally.

Mr. Cortines, who became the district chief in 2008, has generally favored a more localized approach to school instruction. Previously, during a stint as Los Angeles’ interim superintendent, in 2000, he broke the district into subdistricts, each overseen by a superintendent.

His latest push for decentralizing is unusual, though, not only for the amount of money involved, but also in its timing.

As the councils geared up to meet this spring, Los Angeles officials watched as their tax revenues dropped and as Sacramento made a succession of cuts to state funding. To reduce the resulting shortfall, the school board canceled programming, sent out more than 4,000 layoff notices to teachers, and pared the central-office staff. Upon receiving its first stimulus allocations, the district put most of its state-stabilization money and eligible money from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act toward its bottom-line deficit. But officials also decided to pass the Title I stimulus dollars to the councils, rather than filling in holes centrally.

With the money, schools could, for instance, “buy back” classroom teaching positions that had been eliminated under the central budget. Alternatively, they could choose to maintain after-school tutoring, preserve the jobs of school psychologists and counselors, or hire instructional coaches to help teachers make sense of the data from periodic student assessments.

More Discretionary Aid

In addition, the district liquidated a centrally run coaching program and federal Title II teacher-quality funding and disbursed those dollars to schools—a change officials said provided more discretionary aid to schools receiving small or no allocations under Title I.

The district, the Los Angeles teachers’ union, and others collaborated on a series of training sessions for school-site-council personnel, beginning last winter. Part of that training included mock council meetings to give educators clear examples of good and poor collaborative decisionmaking.

Mr. Cortines also gave each school a lot of data on student demographics and test scores to help the councils as they set their budgets.

Mr. Taft, the Jefferson High principal, and members of that school’s team—while not in agreement on every detail—felt it was worthwhile to maintain classroom teaching positions and the eighth period, and they had three years of higher scores to back up their decisions.

“Because of the success we’ve had, our parents are getting more involved in their child’s education,” Mr. Taft said. “When their child comes home and says he passed the math portion of the CAHSEE, that’s like handing them a $20 bill. They can see it, they can feel it, they understand it.”

But others say that Mr. Taft’s experience has been the exception, not the norm. Mr. Ring of the parents’ group said that the district’s efforts to build schools’ capacity to spend the money wisely have so far only scratched the surface.

“It’s exposure, not culture change,” he said of the training.

The teachers’ union, meanwhile, has grown increasingly critical of the plan, saying it has unnecessarily compromised teachers’ jobs and raised class sizes. District figures show that schools have kept a significant number of nonclassroom positions, such as coaches.

The district, officials of United Teachers Los Angeles say, shouldhave spent the stimulus money centrally to ensure a minimum class size for all elementary students and to preserve more classroom teaching positions.

“I honestly don’t think Ray [Cortines] understood that you can’t just snap your fingers and go turn an authoritarian system into a decentralized one,” said Daniel Barnhart, a UTLA board member.

The union has also accused the district of pressuring principals on the councils to maintain reading coaches over classroom teachers, and it has filed 17 grievances alleging that schools didn’t staff or conduct their councils in accordance with state law.

“Decentralization is illusory,” said Sean Leys, a teacher at Lincoln High School who went on a well-publicized hunger strike to protest the layoffs. “Without a doubt, there are hundreds of school councils that show no oversight because they have no idea what the role of the council is.”

District Response

Monica Garcia, the president of the Los Angeles school board, concedes that the district has more work to do on training. But she argues that the district’s centrally mandated strategies were not always effective for all schools.

Schools likely to benefit most under the shift are big high schools like Jefferson, which serves 2,800 students, many disadvantaged. At Jefferson, Mr. Taft estimates that during the upcoming school year, the council will oversee a total of $8 million to $9 million in regular Title I money, stimulus funding, and other state and federal bilingual education grants, for instance.

“For the first time, our large high schools have a good chunk of money to do things with,” Ms. Garcia said. “I think that is probably the silver lining, that these large underperforming high schools got attention on what they needed, rather than what we prescribed.”

And district officials flatly deny the union’s charge that they have acted as puppetmaster over councils and principals.

“It’s very frustrating because [the union] supported decentralization in 2000,” Mr. Cortines said. “But it came to the bottom line. If [the council] didn’t spend the money the way UTLA wanted, it was wrong.”Michelle King, a local area superintendent in west Los Angeles, said that schools there did make classroom teachers a priority.

But councils nevertheless struggled with the buy-back process because of seniority provisions in the district contract, she said. Local schools budget classroom “positions,” so buy-backs do not guarantee the return of beloved instructors—merely teachers who fit the appropriate categories and are next on the seniority roll.

“I think of all the messages, that was the one we had to repeat over and over,” Ms. King said.

Still, Ms. King expects councils to take on more responsibilities over time, such as promoting school safety and ensuring spending is aligned with academic goals.

“[Decentralization] was a shock to the system, but it’s something the community has been asking for a long time,” she said.

Observers hope for the best, but some harbor doubts. David Tokofsky, a consultant for the principals’ union and a former school board member, worries not just about the logistics of the move, but has a philosophical concern, too.

While it may complete Mr. Cortines’ long-held decentralization plans, it may not satisfy the reform-minded rhetoric coming from President Barack Obama’s administration on the use of stimulus funds, he suggested.

“They say all politics are local politics. Well, in Los Angeles, we say all politics are ‘loco’ politics,” Mr. Tokofsky said. “And right now, the politics of the past are racing forward at the very time that Obama is putting more money and attention toward education.”

Coverage of leadership is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.

The news that didn’t fit from April 19th

THE TWO MAJOR CALIFORNIA TEACHERS UNIONS AGREE THAT THE STATE OWES EDUCATION BILLION$, CTA Goes to the Ballot Box, CFT to the Courts
Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:43 PM
The latest on California politics and government  Posted by Kevin Yamamura, SACBEE  April 16 - The California Teachers Association has pumped $5 million so far into a campaign to pass Propositions 1A and 1B, with the carrot of $9.3 billion in total additional education revenues starting in 2011-12 under 1B.  But the California Federation of Teachers believes there's a different way to get that

L.A. ACADEMY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST PROPOSED LAUSD TEACHER CUTS
Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:57 PM
by Nadra Kareem | Contributing Writer The Watts Times  April 16, 2009 -- Lamar Queen considered applying to three school districts in Southern California upon graduating from Louisiana’s Grambling State University. In the end, the math teacher settled on the Los Angeles Unified School District.  “They had a nice incentive program for new teachers who were going to teach math, so I went with

YouTube: CTA’s YES ON 1A & 1B COMMERCIAL
Thursday, April 16, 2009 6:16 AM
4LAKIDS unenthusiastically recommends  YES votes on 1A, 1B & 1C. We don’t like any of them, but they are the best we are going to get in this economy with politics-as-unusual in Sacramento.     1D  and 1E hold early childhood education and mental health programs temporary hostage for education, if you can accept that – vote YES.     1E is a no brainer.    Familiarize yourself with the measures

NY Times’ Los Angeles Journal: GIVING LESSONS IN TRAFFIC SAFETY AT MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Thursday, April 16, 2009 5:18 AM
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER | NEW YORK TIMES    Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times - Mitchell Summer, the dean of students at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Los Angeles, helps students cross the street  April 10, 2009 — LOS ANGELES — At 2:58 each weekday afternoon, the adults brace for traffic chaos at Florence Nightingale Middle School.  The bell sounds, and children dash to the left

5000? 5400? 6850? THE NUMBERS OF LAUSD LAYOFFS LIKE THE SIZE OF THE BUDGET DEFICIT AND THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL STIMULUS REMAINS UNKNOWN. BUT HOWEVER MANY OF THEM THERE ARE THEY ARE LIKE, SO FIRED! OR NOT.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:17 PM
Update 4/15 | 3pm:           Before yesterday’s vote to “save” 1996 elementary school jobs Reduction in Force/RIF/layoff  notices  had been sent to 10,571 employees.            The final vote technically authorized 8,541 layoffs,             Superintendent Ramon Cortines and Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said the district would route state funding to individual schools, allowing them to

“DO THE RIGHT THING FOR KIDS …AND THE RIGHT THING IS NOT TO PROCEED WITH THIS BUDGET”
Saturday, April 18, 2009 2:48 PM
“You have heard from Jackie Goldberg and John Mockler;  you have heard from teachers and parents and student. Listen to them.” 

smf to the Board of Ed at the April 14th Meeting:  Members of the Board of Education, I speak today as Vice President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTA and I bring the greetings of Thirty-first District. Together we represent the entirely of PTA in LAUSD.   I am here in

LABOR ORGANIZES AGAINST BUDGET MEASURE 1-A + Strange 1A fellows move their beds closer together
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 8:10 AM
By Kevin Yamamura | Sacramento Bee     Monday, Apr. 13, 2009 - A powerful California public employee union formed a campaign committee Monday with two other labor groups to oppose Proposition 1A, a May 19 ballot measure that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have said will solve future budget problems.  Service Employees International Union's California State Council, which says

 

COALITION OF LAUSD UNIONS & H.O.P.E PARENT COALITION TALKING POINTS

Saturday, April 11, 2009 10:34 PM
Spend the Stimulus monies to ensure a future for the kids  &  Deny the District’s self-defeating and rash cuts.     Guiding Principle From 4/6 Meetings                        Public Interest Message of Hope· Maintain level of consistency of instructional and operational support.· Equity.           ·

THE LAUSD BUDGET: What we know/What we don't know.

by smf for 4LAKids

●THIS MUCH WE KNOW:

· The Federal government though the stimulus package is committed to maintain and create jobs in public education – that is the goal of this initial phase of the stimulus. Reform comes later, with different dollars.

· LAUSD's budget, approved last Tuesday, is reform and 'rightsizing' driven: the Board of Ed voted to reduce and eliminate, not save and create jobs, positions and programs.

· Yes, 1996 elementary teacher positions from a Reduction-in-Force (RIF) pool of over ten thousand were 'saved' – but 8,541 jobs were done away with Tuesday. The possibility of saving 3,167 of these jobs through the federal stimulus was relegated to the school sites' discretion – if they can find the money and can figure out the district, state and federal mandate. 5,374 jobs cannot be saved under the 4/13 budget plan.

· The California Ed Code says that only the Board of Education has hiring and firing authority.

· The first of the Federal Stimulus was released by the feds to the state Friday; California was the first state in the nation to receive the funding.

· The feds say the governor has authority and responsibility to send the money to school districts. The legislature says the California Constitution gives them that sole authority. Where the California Superintendent of Public Instruction – the state's premiere elected official in education fits in is unclear – but he has weighed in (see $3.1-BILLION ECONOMIC STIMULUS WINDFALL OFFERS A CHANCE TO REFORM CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS, TOP EDUCATION OFFICIAL SAYS, following) In LAUSD the Board of Ed and the superintendent are at odds with O'Connell's advice to come up with "creative solutions that benefit all students" while saving jobs of teachers, administrators and employees. They are intent on rightsizing – pushing the decision making authority on saving jobs out to the 900 school sites.

· The March 10th Board of Ed meeting – the first reading of the district budget – was held with no public witnesses, broadcast by a single TV camera controlled by the board from am undisclosed location behind locked doors, inaccessible to the public — in extremely dubious compliance with the state's open meeting law.

· At the next Board of Ed budget hearing on March 31^st Dr. Vladovic recused himself – removing himself from the process – citing a conflict of interest. His son was subject to layoff under the proposed RIF proposal.

· Absent consensus, under pressure of the District's congressional delegation and in deference to the public the board voted to postpone to a certain time (the regular April 13^th meeting) the motion on the floor (the budget resolution).

· Immediately prior to the April 13^th meeting a special meeting was held and Dr. Vladovic's son and 1995 other teachers were removed from the RIF list. Dr. Vladovic did not participate in the special meeting.

· At the April 13 regular meeting – at which the budget resolution was reconsidered as amended – Dr. Vladovic was recorded at the opening roll call as absent. Whether he was ever recorded as present is unclear. From time to time he came and left. At no time did he announce he was no longer recused.

· When the final vote was taken there was a 3 to 3 tie; Dr. Vladovic not being present. In a tie vote the motion would have failed – but the vote was left open pending Dr. Vladovic's return

· When Vladovic returned he explained his absence as illness (…with perhaps more detail then was required!) Asked for his vote he made an inquiry of counsel: [LATimes: "He then asked for a legal opinion on whether the district could spend more restricted money to save jobs. The district's top lawyer warned against it." — this in itself is parliamentarily questionable, no further information should be provided during a vote], He got a reply and recorded an Aye vote. 4 to 3 the motion carried.

● WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW:

· Questions arise as to whether Dr. Vladovic's participation was correct in light of his:

1. previous recusal on a continued motion,

2. absence at the roll call and

3. absence at the vote – which was understood by some witnesses as his continued recusal.

· There is also question as to whether the decision to save the 1996 elementary positions was engineered to secure Vladovic's participation.

· 4LAKids questions what the intended and unintended consequences of saving the 1996 elementary teachers will be. The initial RIF was proposed to facilitate class size increase; now 2000 more teachers are available but the class size increase mandate was not addressed in the budget. What exactly will those teachers are doing?

· How School Site Councils – charged under this budget with determining which RIFed teachers and staff will be rehired — and untrained and unprepared for this fiduciary and ethical responsibility – will function when they are likely to be composed of RIFed employees and their co-workers – and by parents whose children will be served by impacted employees.

· The composition of SSCs is statutory, they are elected bodies and their makeup is formulated to create equitable representation of employees, administration, parents and community, and in secondary: students. Wholesale recusal would disturb the equity

· SSC meetings, normally open, will be closed as they would be discussing personnel matters. This creates both the appearance-of and actual conflicts of interest of biblical proportions with little or no transparency, accountability or oversight. Stay tuned.

Tune in and watch: The April 13th Board meeting will be rebroadcast Sunday, April 19, 10:24 AM on KLCS/Channel 58 - CHANNEL 58.1 Check your cable listings for which channel it is carried.

REAL TRANSPARENCY WILL BE TRICKY WITH STIMULUS SPENDING: Following the money will be the hard part

Obama says he wants the public to know exactly where the stimulus aid is going. But watchdogs complain that the White House disclosure guidelines have loopholes.

By Paul West | The Baltimore Sun | From the Los Angeles Times

March 21, 2009 — Reporting from Washington — Barack Obama says unprecedented transparency will be a hallmark of his presidency. But following the money in the stimulus package won't be easy.

Many of the most important spending decisions aren't being made in Washington. They're getting thrashed out at state and local levels, where accountability is a wild card and there's no guarantee that taxpayers will get the dollar-by-dollar information Obama is promising.

In some cases, money that goes to a local government may be impossible to follow under White House guidelines, advocates of open government say.

"It could go to the mayor's brother-in-law. We don't know," said Craig Jennings of OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group.

It is up to the states, for example, to decide how to divvy up the $28 billion for "shovel-ready" highway projects.

In Maryland, for example, none of the funding that will flow to subcontractors on highway projects will be disclosed, said David Buck, a State Highway Administration spokesman. The state also doesn't provide detailed information about the location of most resurfacing projects, which will account for the largest share of highway spending under the stimulus plan.

Under the Obama administration's transparency guidelines, "the money disappears after it changes hands twice," said Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, a watchdog group.

As things stand, the federal government will disclose how much money it gives to a state, and the state must report back on how the money is distributed to a private company or to a local government. Beyond that point, there is no requirement for disclosing where the money ends up, LeRoy said.

His group is part of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, which has warned there could be "corruption on a massive scale" as stimulus and financial bailout funds are spent.

The "only antidote is millions of eyeballs watching the money," LeRoy said, referring to ordinary citizens tracking the spending on government websites.

Obama emphasized transparency in his 2008 campaign and is continuing that theme.

"Instead of politicians doling out money behind closed doors, the important decisions about where taxpayer dollars are invested will be yours to scrutinize," Obama says on recovery.gov, an administration website.

Some states have created stimulus websites, but at least 18 -- including California -- have not.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell said states should go the extra mile in laying out exactly how federal money gets spent, even if it means providing more information than the administration requires.

"I think this is the biggest test of government in my lifetime," the 65-year-old Democrat, who also chairs the National Governors Assn., told a group of reporters.

"I don't want people to say, 'You hid this. You hid that,' " he said. "Regardless of the federal requirement, I'm hopeful that a lot of us will try to make this the most transparent, because it's important."

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACCOUNTABILITY

: As it prepares to revamp the No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration must show what we're getting for the money.

Editorial From the Los Angeles Times

March 2, 2009 - The conundrum of school reform is that you can't expect more accountability without funding, but you also can't add significant new funding without demanding accountability. As the Obama administration gears up to reveal its proposals for revamping the No Child Left Behind Act, it has sent confusing signals about which it will emphasize.

If the economic stimulus package is any indication, so far spending is winning out over accountability. Aside from $10-billion extra for impoverished schools under Title I -- a program that has never been found to improve student achievement -- the package added $3 billion for schools that are failing academically. In addition, Education Secretary Arne Duncan gets a giant new pot of $5 billion to spend on raising standards and funding innovative programs -- money he is free to allocate as he chooses.

In a news conference last week, Duncan made all the right noises, saying money would go to states that develop comprehensive programs to boost standards and provide stronger assessments of children's academic progress. But Duncan has a lot of money to work with, and he will undoubtedly feel pressure to spend it to help the president's political allies. Further, his plan for new accountability programs could potentially give states an alternative to participating in No Child Left Behind, long before he has articulated a new direction for the law and the nation's schools.

The school reform law is so broadly -- and rightfully -- disliked that even its clumsy label is the butt of jokes. In fact, the clearest statement given so far by Duncan is that he wants to rename it; an education website has posted a contest to do so. Our vote for the most humorous, if not the best, entry: The All American Children Are Above Average Act.

Even Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), one of the principal authors of the law, has come to admit that it is overly rigid, inherently unfair and so poorly written that it actually encourages teachers not to focus their efforts on the lowest-achieving students. Yet No Child Left Behind produced some valuable results: It required schools to report, for the first time, just how little was being learned by poor and minority students. It opened the door to revelations about shockingly high dropout rates. And it introduced the long-overdue notion that schools should have to show results for the federal money they receive.

As much as schools could use federal funding, nothing will improve if the new money is spent in the same old ways. Now it's up to Congress and the Obama administration to balance the higher spending with higher expectations.

Opinion: INNOVATION WILL DRIVE NEW FEDERAL FUNDING FOR EDUCATION

By Ted Mitchell and Reed Hastings | Special to the San Jose Mercury News

02/27/2009  -- The passage of the stimulus bill last week instantly doubled the federal role in funding schools, with an unprecedented influx of $95 billion. The question is, in education, what will that money buy?

Most of the answer is jobs: fewer pink slips for teachers, and dirt finally moving on long-stalled construction projects. Yet in a welcome and farsighted move, the Recovery Act not only shores up the system, it also invests in fixing it where it's broken.

In California alone, tens of thousands of school jobs are at risk now, and the vast majority of education spending in the bill rightly targets saving jobs and restoring state budgets. In mere weeks, we likely will see school building projects finally break ground, after long delays forced by the shutdown of California's bond authority.

Yet the bill also takes short-term steps toward reform and innovation that will pay long-term dividends, helping to make America's economy competitive again. Reform is an essential element of recovery, because an educated work force is the core of our productivity.

That thinking underlies the $5 billion Race to the Top fund, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan will distribute to states to make critically needed short-term improvements that will lead to major gains for students. Within that fund is $650 million aimed at innovation to begin correcting the sore lack of research and development education.

We claim no special insight on the decisions Duncan will make, but it's worth pondering: What does innovation in education look like?

For starters, the federal government will invest in building data systems, so we can stop driving without a dashboard and see clearly the progress students are making. Most states today, including California, cannot accurately track a student's academic performance subject by subject, year by year, much less week by week. That information is central to smart decision-making for teachers, parents, administrators and policy makers. Such systems will make every education dollar more effective.

International tests prove that American students lag behind their peers in other industrialized nations. In part, this is because we don't ask enough of our kids. The Race to the Top fund encourages states to develop rigorous, internationally benchmarked college- and career-ready standards as well as thoughtful assessments that go beyond filling in bubbles.

But kids in failing schools need more than just rigorous standards and assessments; they need schools that work better. Toward that end, the recovery bill includes a "Grow What Works" fund that will expand innovative programs proven to make a real difference for low-income kids.

That approach will help to scale up organizations and ideas that come from both inside and outside the traditional system. Organizations like KIPP, Teach For America and Aspire Public Schools have helped to blaze this trail, creating outstanding public schools and putting thousands of great teachers in the classroom; this funding will help scale up organizations in that mold. The ideas could range from new pathways for teacher training to public-private partnerships that fix failing schools. What they will have in common is a track record of improving education.

After decades of under-investment in innovation, this badly needed funding will foster new technologies, alter classrooms and, ultimately, help reverse the slide in our international competitiveness. It's more than just rescuing the schools that got us to where we are today. To fuel a lasting recovery, we have to build a system that works better.

Ted Mitchell is the chief executive officer of the San Francisco-based philanthropy NewSchools Venture Fund and the president of the California state board of education. Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO of Netflix and a former member of the California state board of education. They wrote this article for the Mercury News. Both are charter school advocates.

THE ACTION AMERICANS NEED

“Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.”

Op Ed By Barack Obama | Washington Post

Thursday, February 5, 2009 -- By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now.

Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.

Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.

Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.

And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.

These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They're patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide.

So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

The writer is president of the United States.

FOLLOW THE LEADER: The federal stimulus package should serve as an impetus to state legislators to fully fund the education system.

By Senior Editorial Board | The Daily Californian Online

The Daily Californian is an independent, student-run newspaper serving the UC Berkeley campus and its surrounding community, publishing Monday through Friday during the academic year and twice a week during the summer. Established in 1871, The Daily Californian is one of the oldest newspapers on the West Coast and one of the oldest college newspapers in the country.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - Year in and year out, the fate awaiting California's education system has been the same-cut after cut after cut. State legislators, though alleged believers in education as the greatest investment for the future, have yet to demonstrate that belief with adequate state funding.

Last week, the federal government acted on that belief when the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Obama's $819 billion stimulus package, a much-needed jolt designed to create jobs.

The package could translate into millions of dollars for California's public schools and higher education systems, the University of California and the California State University.

If passed in the U.S. Senate, those critical funds will go towards infrastructure on university campuses, saving jobs in California's school districts and a $500 boost to the maximum Pell Grant award amount.

This significant show of support for education, especially in a time when funding is being cut left and right, is something we firmly stand behind and hope to see become a priority in Obama's administration.

The funding, unfortunately, can only go so far. Bill Huyett, superintendent of Berkeley schools, has already said that because of state funding decreases, the federal funds won't be enough to dramatically improve the quality of education.

Furthermore, although the package's provisions for financial aid and research could help the university greatly, state budget cuts are still projected to continue.

As of Sunday, $13 million in Cal Grants are being delayed by the State Controller's Office, plus millions of dollars in tax refunds-a move that is certain to hurt thousands of UC students dependent on those funds.

Rather than eliminating the need for state funds, the stimulus package reinforces the importance that funding for education should carry; state legislators ought to take a cue from the President and Congress and immediately resolve to pass a budget that prioritizes education.

STIMULUS. CIRRUS. CUMULO NIMBUS II: Sometimes you do need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows!

 

Below is a document prepared by the Congressional Research Service which estimates the amount of education funding that each school district will receive from certain aspects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill.

Specifically, this document estimates what each school district in California would receive under the bill’s program allocations (not including the $79 billion State Stabilization Fund) for Title I ($11 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), and K-12 School Modernization ($14 billion) over FYs 2009 and 2010.

These are estimates only based on available and current data and may not reflect exact allocations that school districts receive when these funds are actually allocated.

This is all based on the HOUSE VERSION OF THE BILL. Everything is subject to change in the Senate and in the Conference Committee that will craft the final compromise legislation. See 4LAKids: Stimulus. Cirrus. Cumulo nimbus. (Feb1)

 

Click the link below and see how much money your school district will be receiving (a  guestimate):

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/CALIFORNIA2009Stimulus.pdf

CREATION v. EVOLUTION: In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives the Debate

 

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. – New York Times

January 22, 2009 — AUSTIN, Tex. — The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories, exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

Already, legislators in six states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent-design movement.

Stephen C. Meyer, an expert on the history of science and a director at the Discovery Institute, denied that the group advocated a Biblical version of creation. Rather, Mr. Meyer said, it is fighting for academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.

Testifying before the board, he asserted, for instance, that evolution had trouble explaining the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began about 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms.

Of the Texas curriculum standards, Mr. Meyer said, “This kind of language is really important for protecting teachers who want to address this subject with integrity in the sense of allowing students to hear about dissenting opinions.”

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”

Many of the dozens of people who crowded into the hearing room, however, seemed unimpressed with the body of scientific evidence supporting evolution.

“Textbooks today treat it as more than a theory, even though its evidence has been found to be stained with half-truths, deception and hoaxes,” said Paul Berry Lively, 42, a mechanical engineer from Houston who brought along his teenage son. “Darwinian evolution is not a proven fact.”

Other conservative parents told board members that their children had been intimidated and ridiculed by biology teachers when they questioned evolution. Some asserted that they knew biology teachers who were afraid to bring up theories about holes in Darwin’s theory.

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.

●●2¢ more: a longtime 4LAKids reader, who submitted the above, opines:

this is a national issue - and its been going on for many years - some of you, I have written to already about this subject. (I apologize for repeating myself)others not- please read the following links-

we need a nationalized standards based education -that is not based on testing, but on teaching.

the undermining of our US educational system has been going on for 40 years, see below-interestingly enough-these links were from BJU Press - apparently a Christian textbook publisher who also publishes for "conventional" schools and who questions the educational "superiority" that the Gablers' and their organization have promoted for decades

http://www.christianvssecular.com/higher_standards/censorship-complexities.htm

http://www.christianvssecular.com/authors/no_author.htm

then I googled the organization "Educational Research Analysts"

http://www.textbookreviews.org/

here is Ms Gabler's obituary

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01gabler.html

I think its too bad that Obama closed the door on Bill Ayers because I think he is rather brilliant, and his lessons are of huge benefit to our teachers:

http://billayers.wordpress.com/

and the thoughts of a british columnist-who couldn't help but notice the conditions we are in:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/10/28/the-triumph-of-ignorance/

best wishes to all of you-and I am so thankful to our fellow americans for electing our new president, so we could enjoy the beautiful inauguration day!

SCHOOL GROUPS HOPE K-12 GETS SHARE OF STIMULUS: Some hope education programs—not just school construction projects—will snare funding to help boost the economy.

By Alyson Klein | Education Week

December 23, 2008 -- As President-elect Barack Obama and Congress begin laying the groundwork for a massive economic stimulus package, education groups are hoping for a major infusion of cash—beyond just construction projects—to help put financially struggling school districts on firmer fiscal footing.

Mr. Obama announced in a recent radio address that his administration would seek to direct a portion of a federal spending bill aimed at getting the economy back on track to school construction and to expanding broadband access in schools. The overall legislation could cost as much as $850 billion, according to published reports.

But, as more states warn of substantial cuts to K-12 spending, some school and state officials are lobbying lawmakers and the Obama transition team to include money for programs such as special education, teacher training, and grants to help districts educate disadvantaged students.

“The context has shifted so dramatically with this economic meltdown, but I think it also creates an opportunity for bold action, and that’s what it will take to make education a priority,” said Edward R. Kealy, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a Washington lobbying coalition.

He argued that, over the long term, education is one of the best places to target federal dollars because “it actually has the strongest possibility of being able to pay back” the government, since students and workers will be better equipped to compete in the global economy.

Best Approach Debated

President-elect Obama said he would like Congress, which convenes next month, to get a stimulus package ready for his signature shortly after he takes office Jan. 20, providing an immediate jolt to the stumbling economy.

But fiscal-policy experts are split over whether aid for schools’ operating costs—such as materials and teacher salaries—will help create jobs and eventually generate revenue for states and the federal government.

Many states already face yawning deficits, and it’s possible that federal relief would simply help stave off cuts to education programs, rather than allow schools to purchase more materials, or hire additional teachers, said Nick Johnson, the director of the state fiscal project at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group in Washington focused on the needs of low-income families.

Still, in tight times, even keeping major cuts at bay might help save jobs, he said.

“When states make cuts, it is very bad for the economy,” Mr. Johnson said. “They lay off workers, cancel payments to vendors and so on.”

But Chris Edwards, an economist at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, said the projected size of the stimulus package is simply opening the door for education organizations and state policymakers to “recycle long-standing requests for aid” that may have nothing to do with stimulating economic growth. Mr. Edwards is also skeptical that increased government spending will spur a recovery.

It’s too early to say if federal relief for cash-strapped states—if any—can help states avoid or scale-back cuts to K-12 programs.

When President-elect Obama met with the majority of the nation’s governors in Philadelphia earlier this month, most expressed support for federal help, but education took a back seat to other priorities. ("Governors Make Pitch to Obama for Stimulus Money," Dec. 10, 2008.)

And in testifying before the House Appropriations Committee this month, Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat from Wisconsin, said that extra money for programs such as Medicaid might help state legislatures shift resources to education programs.

But another Democratic governor, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, said he’d like to see “some kind of block grant,” possibly geared just for schools.

Some lawmakers on the panel agreed with him. “Count two for that plan,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., said, noting that schools in her South Florida congressional district were considering hiring freezes and layoffs. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Special Education Relief

Education organizations are encouraged by the President-elect’s high-profile support for making school construction money and funds for expanded broadband access part of a stimulus package.

In a letter sent this month to congressional leaders, the Committee for Education Funding said that investing $20 billion over five years in school facilities could support about 50,000 jobs. If such construction took a “green,” or environmentally friendly, approach, it could save up to $20 billion in energy costs over 10 years, the organization wrote.

But education lobbyists are also hoping for money for career and technical programs, Pell Grants for college students, pre-kindergarten programs, and state data systems.

And one item makes nearly everyone’s wish list: Increasing the federal share of funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Under the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA, the federal government is authorized to cover up to 40 percent of the states’ excess special education costs, based on the national average per-pupil expenditure. That 40 percent is what is considered “full funding.” But annual federal appropriations have fallen far short of that goal. In fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, the federal government covered 17 percent of such costs.

In November, the National Governors Association sent a letter to Congress asking for $19 billion over the next two years to fund IDEA. And some groups, including the American Association of School Administrators, want the funding to become mandatory, meaning that the federal share of IDEA would be financed automatically by law and not subject to the annual appropriations process.

Providing more money for special education would take pressure off state coffers, help relieve property taxes, and boost districts’ bottom lines, said Mary L. Kusler, the assistant director of government relations for AASA, which is based in Arlington, Va.

“If the federal government really wanted to do something that would help everybody at the local level,” it would fully fund IDEA, she said.

If the federal government decides to provide substantial funding for IDEA and other programs in the stimulus, it’s likely that education organizations and state policymakers will keep pressure on Congress to continue with the investment even after the economic outlook has brightened.

“We will hold their feet to the fire to make sure they keep full funding,” said Randall Moody, the chief lobbyist for the National Education Association, a 3.2 million member Washington-based union.

BUSH IMPACT ON SCHOOLS TO OUTLIVE TERM: NCLB Law Key Element of President’s Domestic Legacy

By David J. Hoff | Education Week | Vol. 28, Issue 15, Pages 1,18-19

President Bush sits with 4th graders, from left, Khadijah McCain, Damien Goolsby, and Darlet Horton, at Pierre Laclede Elementary School in St. Louis on Jan. 5, 2004, for the second anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act. The law was a top priority of his first term. —Lawrence Jackson/AP-File

10 Dec 2008 - George W. Bush entered the White House determined to change federal education policy.

“Bipartisan education reform will be the cornerstone of my administration,” he wrote in the foreword to a 29-page document outlining his K-12 agenda, released five days after his 2001 inauguration.

By the end of that year, President Bush had forged a bipartisan consensus around the No Child Left Behind Act, which he signed into law on Jan. 8, 2002. For the first time, states receiving federal K-12 education funding would be required to hold districts and schools accountable for the achievement of students, regardless of their income levels, special education status, or ethnic, racial, or native-language backgrounds.

As Mr. Bush prepares to leave office Jan. 20, he is calling the NCLB law one of his most important domestic accomplishments.

“It focused the country’s attention on the fact that we had an achievement gap that—you know, white kids were reading better in the 4th grade than Latinos or African-American kids. And that’s unacceptable for America,” the president said in a Nov. 28 interview conducted by his sister Doro Bush Koch for an oral-history project.

An aide prepares for a speech by President Bush at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., in 2005.

—J. Scott Applewhite/AP

“And the No Child Left Behind Act started holding people to account, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Bush said, according to a transcript released by the White House.

While many educators disagree with Mr. Bush about the success of the law, most observers say that his administration has had a greater impact on local schools than any since President Lyndon B. Johnson won passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the original version of what is now the NCLB law.

President Bush “was the first one to set specific targets for the achievement of poor and minority kids in the basic subjects,” said Charles Barone, who helped draft the law as an aide to House Democrats. “People pay more attention to the education that poor and minority children are getting.”

Focus Too Narrow?

Yet the nearly 7-year-old law is unpopular, particularly among educators, who say that its accountability rules focus too narrowly on test scores, and that it doesn’t provide schools with enough money and other support needed to improve student achievement.

“Right now, the only accountability is for standardized-test scores,” said George Wood, the principal of Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio, and the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. That coalition of researchers and educators is trying to eliminate use of standardized tests in accountability decisions.

The NCLB law’s accountability system is so focused on improving test scores in reading and mathematics, Mr. Wood said, that schools have responded by narrowing what they teach to what’s measured on those tests, which often are low-level skills in those subjects.

Despite the flaws in such tests, the test-score data have alerted the public that not all schools are successfully educating students, said Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president of national programs and policy for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank dedicated to education policy.

“What No Child Left Behind has done is, it has created a sense of urgency at the local level,” said Mr. Petrilli, who served as a political appointee in the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 to 2005.

Because the law’s accountability system has identified struggling schools, it has encouraged local officials to add charter schools, attempt new ways of recruiting and rewarding teachers, and other efforts that they believe will improve achievement, Mr. Petrilli said.

But the law has overreached, he added, because it assumed that the federal government could be instrumental in turning around low-performing schools.

Domestic Priority

The most pressing issues of President Bush’s tenure have been the post-Sept. 11, 2001, fight against terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the financial-sector crisis and current economic recession. But one of his first priorities in 2001 was to improve schools.

Five days after taking office, he invited four leaders of the congressional education committees to the White House to discuss the topic and release an outline of his plan to reauthorize the ESEA and rename it the No Child Left Behind Act.

“It was remarkable that [early on] he was putting his attention on education,” said Christopher T. Cross, a educational consultant based in Danville, Calif., who was an assistant U.S. secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush. “That gave him leverage from that day on.”

The younger President Bush’s desire to address schools was no surprise. Throughout the 2000 campaign, he had emphasized his education plan, which was modeled after the testing-and-accountability measures crafted on his watch as governor of Texas in 1995.

In his proposal, Mr. Bush embraced the notion that the federal government should require states to set academic standards, create assessments to measure students’ knowledge and abilities, and hold schools accountable for improving student achievement based on those test scores.

Building on the previous version of the ESEA, passed in 1994 and signed by President Bill Clinton, the new Bush administration proposed to expand the amount of testing—in reading and mathematics—from three times in a student’s career to every year in grades 3-8 and once during high school.

Going further than the 1994 law, the administration wanted to require schools to report test scores broken down by students’ income levels, race, ethnicity, and factors such as their disability status and whether they were English-language learners.

The administration also proposed requiring states and districts to offer public school choice or free tutoring to students in schools that did not meet achievement goals.

President Bush and his appointees have often referred to what he calls the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in advocating the need for disaggregated data that show the academic shortcomings of disadvantaged students.

“Before ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ became part of the political landscape, most citizens admitted [the achievement gap] was a problem, shrugged their shoulders, and walked away,” said Eugene W. Hickok, who served as deputy secretary of education during President Bush’s first term.

While all of the president’s proposals built on pieces of the 1994 version of the ESEA, congressional Republicans never embraced the standards-and-accountability provisions in the Clinton-era legislation.

“Nobody would have thought” that a conservative Republican would lead the expansion of federal influence over K-12 schools, Mr. Cross said.

But Mr. Bush’s experience as Texas governor had convinced him that the standards-and-accountability model should be replicated throughout the country, and that schools should be held accountable for improving the achievement of children from all backgrounds.

“Democrats were willing to go along [with the Bush proposals], and it was Bush’s job to bring along the Republicans,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that has tracked the law’s implementation, and a former longtime aide to House Democrats.

Democratic Partners

As President Bush said in the January 2001 blueprint for the NCLB law, he wanted his education bill to be a bipartisan effort.

Starting with the event on his fifth day in office, he met several times with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House education committees.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, the president invited congressional education leaders to the White House to reinvigorate negotiations on the NCLB bill.

The Democrats’ involvement added key components to the law, particularly around accountability.

“There was a feeling in the room—and it was bipartisan, no doubt about it—that we needed to be tougher,” said Sandy Kress, an Austin, Texas-based lawyer and lobbyist who worked as an unpaid White House adviser helping to get the NCLB law through Congress.

Rep. George Miller of California, the senior House Democrat on education issues in 2001 and now the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, was “as hawkish about this as anyone at the table,” Mr. Kress said. “Any sign of softness and he was on you.”

President Bush speaks at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., on Jan. 12, 2005. He was launching a push to require high school students to take the same mathematics and reading tests required of younger students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

—Susan Walsh/AP-File

The final version of the NCLB law required schools to meet achievement targets in every designated subgroup of students. Under the law, a school fails to make adequate yearly progress—a central measure of performance—if any subgroup fails to reach the achievement goals set by its state.

Under President Bush’s original plan, test data for each subgroup would have been reported to the public, but only the results for low-income students would have been used for accountability purposes.

The legislation also added the goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year—an element that wasn’t in the White House’s original plan.

The alliance with Democrats became strained, however, over the president’s proposals for funding the law. The dollar figures appropriated for the NCLB law’s Title I program for disadvantaged students grew quickly in the two fiscal years after President Bush signed the legislation.

On the law’s second anniversary, in January 2004, Rep. Miller, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and eight other Democratic senators sent a letter to then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige saying the law had been underfunded by $7.5 billion in fiscal 2003.

“Underfunding by such a drastic amount undermines not only successful implementation, but the very spirit of the law,” the letter said.

Making It Work

It took the first year of President Bush’s administration to get the NCLB law through Congress. Implementing the law over the next seven years was more difficult.

From Mr. Bush’s signing of the measure in 2002 through the 2004 election, the administration strictly enforced the law’s rules, denying states’ requests to reduce the number of grades in which they had to assess students and turning down requests to ease the potential accountability sanctions.

The idea was to send a message to states that they wouldn’t be able to avoid the law’s goal that the achievement of all students would increase on a pace necessary so that all would be proficient by the end of the 2013-14 school year, Mr. Hickok said. ("Commentary: Secretary Spellings' Unintended Legacy," this issue.)

Part of the reason for the inflexibility, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said, was that states didn’t have the data or the technical expertise to pursue accountability programs that differed from the law’s method of comparing one year’s cohort of students against the previous year’s.

“We couldn’t do growth models and graduate-level accountability,” said Ms. Spellings, who was President Bush’s domestic-policy adviser during his first term and played an oversight role in the law’s early implementation.

Shortly after Ms. Spellings became education secretary in 2005, she launched a series of efforts intended to reduce states’ burdens under the law. ("Spellings' Worldview: There's No Going Back on K-12 Accountability," this issue.)

Those efforts included creating a pilot project to let some states make accountability decisions based on the year-to-year growth of student achievement—so-called “growth models”—and to create alternative assessments for a wider population of students with disabilities.

But Ms. Spellings refused to approve proposals that would have delayed the target for achieving 100 percent proficiency, and she stood fast on requirements for disaggregating achievement data.

With those requirements in place, educators continue to feel pressure to reach goals that most consider unattainable. That pressure has led to the widespread unpopularity of the law itself, even though polls suggest the public supports the premise that schools be held accountable.

“There could’ve been more done to make it clear to educators that the law was not out to get them,” said Mr. Petrilli of the Fordham Institute.

What’s Next?

The Bush legacy on education won’t be complete until Congress decides on the NCLB law’s future.

The backlash against the law may lead to major changes when Congress finally revisits it. Lawmakers were scheduled to reauthorize the law in 2007 but were unable to do so before the presidential-election campaign revved up.

Rep. Miller, the California congressman who is one of the law’s architects, said last year that its accountability and other rules are too rigid and don’t always fairly assess schools.

President-elect Barack Obama has endorsed the law’s goals and its use of testing. But he also has said he wants to improve the quality of testing and change the law’s focus to reward good schools rather than target low-performing ones.

The law could be in for major changes. The Democratic majorities in the incoming 111th Congress may back away from much of the NCLB law’s testing and accountability rules, mostly because they’re associated with an unpopular president, said Maris A. Vinovskis, a professor of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the author of a new book on the history of national education policy since the 1983 report A Nation at Risk.

“The story isn’t going to be written until the new Congress meets,” Mr. Vinovskis said.

Although the law certainly will change, members of Congress are unlikely to abandon the federal government’s role in school accountability, Mr. Vinovskis and others said.

“The rhetorical emphasis on accountability will remain,” said Mr. Hickok, who is now a senior policy director for Dutko Worldwide, a Washington-based lobbying firm. “They would have a difficult time walking away from accountability.”

 

The Bush Record On Education

President George W. Bush’s administration has been notable not only for one of the most significant shifts in federal oversight of education, under the No Child Left Behind Act, but also for new laws, programs, and developments in other areas affecting schools.

No Child Left Behind Act
President Bush made the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act a top priority upon entering office. The resulting NCLB law, which he signed Jan. 8, 2002, expanded student testing and introduced new accountability rules for schools that receive federal aid. It requires schools to assess students in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school. If schools fail to keep their students on pace toward proficiency in those subjects, they are identified as needing improvement and face a series of interventions, such as offering public school choice and free tutoring, and eventually being restructured. The law also added a requirement that all teachers be highly qualified according to federal and state rules.

Reading First
The NCLB law also created the Reading First program, which provided some $1 billion a year to pay for curricular materials and professional development focused on the primary grades. Although popular among educators, the Department of Education’s inspector general issued a series of reports questioning whether department officials overstepped their authority in pushing states to use specific curricula and assessments under the program. The department’s research office also released a report saying that the funding had been successful in improving students’ decoding and other basic skills, but not their reading comprehension.

School Choice
As part of his original plan for the NCLB law, President Bush had sought to allow students in low-performing public schools to use federal aid to attend private schools, as well as to transfer to higher-performing public schools. But facing staunch Democratic opposition, he agreed to drop the voucher element. The public-school-choice provision was enacted, but is widely viewed as ineffective, with very few parents transferring their children to other public schools.

In 2002, the Bush administration argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the constitutionality of including religious schools in publicly funded voucher programs. The court agreed, ruling that the inclusion of religious schools in such programs does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against a government establishment of religion. In 2004, the president signed into law the nation’s first federally funded voucher program, which targets students from low-income families in the District of Columbia. It was narrowly enacted in 2004 when Republicans held majorities in Congress, with most Democrats strongly opposed. It provides vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year, and they can be used at religious schools.

Special Education
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was reauthorized during President Bush’s first term, with language that ties the special education law to NCLB on such issues as highly qualified teachers for students with disabilities, and the importance of including students with disabilities in assessments. The administration introduced some testing flexibility for states by allowing different state assessments to be used for students with significant cognitive impairments, and students who could meet modified grade-level standards.

Educational Research
The 2002 passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act gave the Bush administration a rare opportunity to abolish the Department of Education’s existing research operation and create a new research agency out of the ashes. The newly christened Institute of Education Sciences, under Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, spearheaded the department’s campaign to transform education into an evidence-based practice, much like medicine.

Under Mr. Whitehurst’s six-year tenure, the agency increased the number of randomized experiments the department finances, revamped the agency’s peer-review process, retooled the federal education research laboratory system, and created new grant programs to nurture research talent for the field. The office’s best-known accomplishment, though, may be the What Works Clearinghouse, a sometimes-controversial project set up to vet the evidence base that undergirds many of the programs, policies, and practices used in the nation’s schools.

Gender Issues
First-term Secretary of Education Rod Paige in 2002 established a commission to study Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded schools and colleges. Some civil rights and women’s advocacy groups feared the effort was a bid to soften enforcement of the law. After receiving a report full of mostly minor recommendations about athletic participation at the college level, the Education Department largely ignored them, issuing a document in 2003 clarifying previous Title IX guidance.

Meanwhile, citing research that educating boys and girls separately was proving effective in some circumstances, the department in 2006 issued regulations making it easier for public schools to experiment with single-sex education.

Race Issues
The Bush administration weighed in against the use of race in education in a series of landmark Supreme Court cases. In appeals involving race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, the administration struck a cautious tone, and the Education Department issued reports emphasizing ways in which schools and colleges could achieve racial diversity without relying on racial preferences. In those cases, from the University of Michigan, the justices affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action but struck down some practices.

The administration was more assertive when the justices took up race-conscious student-assignment policies from the Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., school districts in 2006. It urged the Supreme Court to strike down the plans, which the court did in a 2007 decision that sharply limited the ways K-12 schools could rely on race.

Higher Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings helped spur a dialogue over student financial assistance and college accountability by convening a task force to study higher education. The panel’s 2006 report called for a major new investment in federal student aid. And, more controversially, it encouraged colleges and universities to use value-added assessments to measure students’ skills at the beginning and end of their college careers. Colleges and universities should make the results of those tests public, the panel concluded.

—David J. Hoff, Alyson Klein, Erik W. Robelen, Christina A. Samuels, Debra Viadero, and Mark Walsh