69ý

School & District Management

Chiefs Press Education Secretary on ESEA Issues

By Lesli A. Maxwell — March 23, 2010 6 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
Email Copy URL

Includes updates and/or revisions.

Even as they posed tough questions about government flexibility on overhauling low-performing schools and the disadvantages of having to compete for federal dollars, the states’ top education officials Tuesday expressed general support for how the Obama administration aims to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

“I think we’re off to a very compatible start,” said Joseph Morton, Alabama’s state superintendent at the annual legislative conference of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “When we get down to details is when we’ll know for sure how compatible we are.”

In it released Tuesday afternoon, CCSSO outlined several broad principles, as well as more finely honed recommendations for how the ESEA, now known as the No Child Left Behind Act, law ought to be rewritten. The overarching theme is that the states, not the federal government, ought to be taking the lead on setting education policy.

State School Chiefs' Blueprint

The Council of Chief State School Officers released an 11-page document that outlines broad principles and makes specific legislative recommendations to Congress on how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It calls for a reauthorized law to:

• Encourage states to develop new policy models in assessment, accountability, supports and interventions, and teacher effectiveness

• Establish broader categories of funding and give states flexibility to consolidate and coordinate programs

• Increase investments in research, evaluation, and spreading of best practices

• Base accountability primarily on school improvement and student progress over time

• Make the state longitudinal data systems competitive grant program a formula program

• Create a new literacy initiative formula program that spans birth through graduation

SOURCE: Council of Chief State School Officers

The council calls for a new ESEA that “sets goals and criteria in core policy areas but encourages sound state policy innovation,” and, more specifically, suggests that states “be encouraged to develop and submit new policy models in assessment, accountability, supports and interventions, teacher effectiveness, etc.”

Among the other 18 specific recommendations, the council asks for “broader buckets of funding streams” that would allow states to consolidate programs as they see fit and, in particular, break down barriers between early childhood, K-12, and higher education programs. It also calls for more federal investment in research and evaluation, as well as spreading knowledge about effective practices across the states and for shifting the state longitudinal data systems competitive grant program to a formula program.

But in a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the chiefs weren’t focused only on the details of reauthorizing the ESEA. They also offered specific recommendations—and made specific requests—in a wide-ranging, hourlong session.

Among the topics: the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, states’ momentum toward adoption of common academic standards, and the challenges for rural states in turning around their lowest-performing schools through methods mandated as a condition of receiving billions of dollars in Title I school improvement grants.

The needs of rural states prompted especially lively discussion. “The frontier is really where we are,” said Denise Juneau, Montana’s state superintendent. “We are more rural than rural.”

Ms. Juneau emphasized that even the so-called transformation model, which is less drastic than the three other turnaround models that the U.S. Department of Education has said are acceptable, won’t work in her state because the approach requires the principals to be replaced. The five schools that Montana has identified as the lowest-performing are all located on isolated American Indian reservations she said.

Even if those districts could find strong principals to replace the existing ones, Ms. Juneau said, there are more fundamental challenges, such as where they would stay.

“We lack housing,” she told the secretary. “If we want to get a turnaround specialist in these places, we may not even be able to buy a double-wide trailer for them.”

But Mr. Duncan would not concede that rural states can’t use the transformation model successfully, telling Ms. Juneau that Montana and others were selling themselves “a little bit short.”

He said the Education Department is trying to help by giving rural states a competitive advantage in applying for some of the $650 million in Investing in Innovation, or i3, stimulus grants, and stressed that “we are going to fund, not where there’s a capacity to write a grant, but where there’s a capacity to help kids.”

The secretary also said that Montana would be receiving roughly $10 million in school improvement money for the five schools it identified as low-performing. “Think about the resources you will have for those five schools,” he said.

Seeking Flexibility

Patricia I. Wright, the state superintendent in Virginia, asked the secretary if the department would offer the same sort of flexibility on how states develop new assessments as it has offered on the adoption of new common academic standards.

In its ESEA blueprint unveiled March 13, the Obama administration said that state officials could adopt either the common core standards—the initiative led by the National Governors Association and the CCSSO—or devise their own “college- and career-ready standards” in partnership with colleges and universities in their states.

“I am very pleased to see that you have acknowledged that college- and career-ready [standards] can come about in different ways,” Ms. Wright said. “We’d like to see the same flexibility on assessments.”

Mr. Morton, the Alabama chief, provided one of the livelier exchanges when he asked Mr. Duncan to spell out, explicitly, the importance of having a charter school law in order to win a piece of Race to the Top money. Alabama does not have a charter law, and lawmakers there recently rejected a bill that Mr. Morton and Gov. Bob Riley fought hard to pass.

Mr. Morton recalled the secretary saying at a meeting at the Hunt Institute in North Carolina that states without charter laws, “need not apply” for Race to the Top. Then, last week, the Alabama Education Association sent out a letter saying that Mr. Duncan told union leaders in a private meeting that he didn’t care about charter schools, according to the Alabama chief.

“Do we have to have charter schools?” Mr. Morton asked. “We tried, we failed. I don’t want to start a race 8 percent behind the other states,” he said, referring to the 40 points out of a total of 500 that states can garner in Race to the Top if their policies are deemed to be friendly to charter schools.

Mr. Duncan acknowledged that states without charter laws are at a competitive disadvantage, but, as he usually does, insisted that his message on charter schools has not changed.

“I don’t support charter schools, I support good charter schools,” he said. “There are communities in Alabama that need better options.”

In an earlier session on the administration’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget for education with Roberto Rodriquez, from the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, and Robert Gordon, from the Office of Management and Budget, Mark K. McQuillan, Connecticut’s education commissioner, said he believes that Race to the Top could end up resulting in “bad policy.”

By competing at least twice for Race to the Top money—and possibly a third time should Congress approve the Obama administration’s proposal to include $1.35 billion for another round in the fiscal 2011 budget—states must expend political capital and financial resources that are in short supply, he said.

“If you are going to sit and push states in this direction with no results, I think this is potentially bad policy,” Mr. McQuillan said. “You could be taking state agencies through this process three or four times with no outcome.”

Mr. Rodriguez told the chiefs that “it is not lost on us the amount of energy, political capital, human capital, and financial capital” that the states have invested in competing for a piece of the prize.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2010 edition of Education Week

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
AI and Educational Leadership: Driving Innovation and Equity
Discover how to leverage AI to transform teaching, leadership, and administration. Network with experts and learn practical strategies.
Content provided by 
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School Climate & Safety Webinar
Investing in Success: Leading a Culture of Safety and Support
Content provided by 
Assessment K-12 Essentials Forum Making Competency-Based Learning a Reality
Join this free virtual event to hear from educators and experts working to implement competency-based education.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.

Read Next

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Whitepaper
Future-Driven Leadership: Five Goals for Dynamic School Leaders in 2024
This guide offers practical strategies for district leaders to foster innovation, empower staff, support wellness, amplify student voices...
Content provided by BookNook
School & District Management What the Research Says Four Ways to Stop Teacher Turnover From Hamstringing School Improvement
Staffing instability can unravel the social fabric of schools, experts say, unless leaders work to keep connections strong.
6 min read
Woman of color exiting out of a door.
iStock/Getty Images Plus
School & District Management Spooked by Halloween, Some 69ý Ban Costumes—But Not Without Pushback
69ý are tweaking Halloween traditions to make them more inclusive to all students.
4 min read
A group of elementary school kids sitting on a curb dressed in their Halloween costumes.
iStock/Getty
School & District Management 69ý Take a $3 Billion Hit From the Culture Wars. Here’s How It Breaks Down
Culturally divisive conflicts in schools have led to increased legal and security costs, as well as staff time spent on the fallout.
4 min read
Illustration of a businessman with his hands on his head while he watches dollars being sucked down into a dark hole.
DigitalVision Vectors