Fwd: [oaklandteachers] Pushing NCLB renewal

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jim Mordecai <jim2812@yahoo.com>
> Date: Wed Feb 6, 2008  7:27:21 AM US/Pacific
> To: oaklandteachers@lists.riseup.net
> Subject: [oaklandteachers] Pushing NCLB renewal
> Reply-To: oaklandteachers@lists.riseup.net
>
>
>
> From Edweek online
>
> Published Online: February 4, 2008
> Published in Print: February 6, 2008
>
> Key Democrats Join President in Seeking to Revive NCLB Renewal
> By David J. Hoff
>
>
>
>
> Washington
> President Bush and key members of Congress said last week that they 
> want to
> jump-start the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. But 
> the success
> of their efforts may depend on their ability to work together.
>
> The president called on Congress to reauthorize the 6-year-old law, 
> one of his
> most important domestic accomplishments, during his State of the Union 
> address.
>
>
> “Members of Congress: The No Child Left Behind Act is a bipartisan
> achievement,” Mr. Bush said in his Jan. 28 speech. “It is succeeding. 
> And
> we owe it to America’s children, their parents, and their teachers to
> strengthen this good law.”
>
> Democratic leaders on education said they are restarting their efforts 
> to renew
> the law and plan to move quickly. But the frayed relationship between 
> Democrats
> and the president over issues such as NCLB funding and accountability 
> measures
> may make it hard for them to work together, said Rep. George Miller, 
> D-Calif.,
> the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
>
> Rep. Miller said that the Bush administration had been “very critical” 
> of
> the draft bill that he and his Republican counterpart released for 
> discussion
> last year, and that the criticism had contributed to last fall’s 
> postponement
> of work on an NCLB bill. Meanwhile, Rep. Miller’s Democratic 
> colleagues are
> upset that President Bush hasn’t proposed budgets with enough money to 
> fully
> finance the law, he added.
>
> “The track record [on NCLB spending] has poisoned the well with 
> members of
> Congress,” Rep. Miller said in an interview.
>
> Senate at Work
> Rep. Miller said he and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman 
> of the
> Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, are working 
> to send a
> reauthorization bill to the president this spring. The Senate 
> education panel
> is planning to mark up, or amend and vote on, a bill in March, said 
> Melissa
> Wagoner, the spokeswoman for committee Democrats.
>
> As federal legislators work to reauthorize the law, the most recent 
> version of
> the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first passed in 1965, they 
> face
> several significant policy questions. Should Congress keep the law’s 
> goal
> that all students be proficient in reading and mathematics by the end 
> of the
> 2013-14 school year? Should the law continue to rely primarily on 
> annual test
> results of students in grades 3-8, and once in high school, to track 
> schools’
> and districts’ success in reaching the proficiency goal? Should the 
> federal
> government underwrite teacher pay-for-performance experiments in school
> districts?
>
> Congressional leaders acknowledge that it may be difficult to generate 
> answers
> to all of those questions that can elicit widespread support.
>
> In the interview, Rep. Miller said it “would be preferable” to craft a
> bipartisan bill, but he didn’t commit to seeking GOP support for the 
> next
> version.
>
> Moreover, the factions that have formed over big NCLB policy questions 
> don’t
> always cluster neatly along party lines, congressional aides said at a 
> Capitol
> Hill panel discussion last week.
>
> “This is like a jigsaw puzzle the size of a football field,” Alice 
> Johnson
> Cain, Rep. Miller’s senior adviser on K-12 policy, said at the Jan. 31 
> event.
> “The edges are done, and we’re still filling out the inside.”
>
> Lighting a Fire
> But the divisions could drive different factions toward a deal, said 
> Carmel
> Martin, the Democratic counsel of the Senate education committee.
>
> Although people may disagree on some policy issues, there’s consensus 
> across
> both parties that Congress needs to fix the law’s problems, Ms. Martin 
> said
> at the panel discussion, sponsored by the Aspen Institute’s Commission 
> on No
> Child Left Behind, a private group that issued extensive 
> recommendations for
> revising the law.
>
> The divisions may “make it complicated,” she said, but it also may 
> stop it
> from becoming a partisan fight.
>
> While Congress tries to work out the details of the law’s future, 
> education
> advocates are pressing them to make decisions soon.
>
> Congress should act to take advantage of the emerging consensus that 
> the
> federal government should hold schools and districts accountable for 
> student
> achievement and that it should help districts intervene, said Tommy G.
> Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin and the U.S. secretary of 
> health and
> human services during President Bush’s first term. Mr. Thompson, a
> Republican, is the co-chairman of the Aspen Institute’s NCLB panel. 
> The other
> co-chairman expressed a similar sentiment.
>
> “We’re trying to light a fire here,” said Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat and
> former governor of Georgia. “We hope there will be something to mark 
> up and
> move.”
>
> Vol. 27, Issue 22, Pages 20-21
>
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>   Kathy wrote:
> What if NCLB provided funding for schools based on the four core 
> curriculum
> instead of just reading and math. In Houston County Ga. primary grades 
> focus on
> only those two subjects. In the case of my 5th grade son, during the 
> first
> semester his class received three days of social studies or science 
> (those
> classes are rotated every six weeks) He only received three days of 
> instruction
> because of ADVANCE and computer. I would like to see NCLB utilize some 
> sort of
> sliding scale to award extra funding for schools, not districts, that 
> show
> progress in all four areas of the core curriculum.
> For us to focus solely on math and reading simply means that "other" 
> areas of
> the academia and the child's cognitive development suffer. The only
> accountability system parents have is to review the scores on high 
> stakes tests
> in Georiga. If one examines the high school exit exam for social 
> studies and
> science, you will understand my concern. Scores normally are higher 
> for reading
> and math because that is where the focus is, and that is only due to 
> federal
> and state accountability. Can you imagine what our great nation might 
> become if
> we really taught social studies and science too?
> 2/6/2008 10:11 AM EST on EdWeek
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