Clips Digest 3.30.15

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HomeRoom: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/03/teaching-and-leading-at-the-5th-international-summit-on-the- teaching-profession/ Published Online: March, 2015 By: Maureen McLaughlin Teaching and Leading at the 5th International Summit on the Teaching Profession Each March I look forward to joining colleagues from around the world at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession to learn from high-performing and rapidly improving education systems about ways to elevate and enhance the teaching profession in order to improve student learning. I never imagined when we started the International Summit in New York City in 2011 that it would become a vibrant and lasting international community of practice. But the thirst among countries to learn from each other is strong and on March 29 and 30, Canada is hosting the 5th Summit, Implementing Highly Effective Teacher Policy and Practice, in Banff, Alberta. We’ve learned so much from past Summit discussions and can see a real connection to education policy and practice in the U.S. over the years, as well as significant progress on commitments made by the U.S. delegation at the end of each Summit. I am particularly excited about this year’s Summit because teacher leadership — one of our three Summit commitments last year — will be highlighted this year. Last week Secretary Duncan reported back on the first year of Teach to Lead, an initiative in partnership with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that is designed to advance the national conversation around the future of the profession and promote meaningful opportunities for teacher leadership that improve outcomes for students. Teach to Lead is teacher-designed and teacher-led and has the support of more than 70 organizations, including the AFT and NEA which, along with Secretary Duncan, are part of the U.S. delegation to the International Summit. As Secretary Duncan said in front of a crowd of thousands, “I was hopeful [about teacher leadership] last year. I am convinced we are onto something really important and special now. Change has to come from teachers who own it and lead it.” The progress and excitement in Teach to Lead over the past year has been phenomenal. Thousands of teachers have engaged in Teach to Lead through the online ‘Commit to Lead’ community, and more than 500 teachers, administrators, and representatives from supporting organizations have been at our regional summits and local leadership labs. Teach to Lead has truly been about elevating the teaching profession and supporting teachers by giving them opportunities to collaborate, plan and shape their own roles for their own contexts from the school to the state. A real question for Teach to Lead is — what next? How does teacher leadership expand and grow? This year’s Summit agenda poses three questions that can help the U.S. to reflect on possible future paths. How do high-performing countries promote deeper and more collaborative forms of leadership at all levels within education systems? What strategies allow education systems to exercise consistent and widespread teacher leadership? What should be the role of teachers and their unions and associations in creating conditions for teacher leadership?

Transcript of Clips Digest 3.30.15

  • HomeRoom: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/03/teaching-and-leading-at-the-5th-international-summit-on-the-teaching-profession/ Published Online: March, 2015 By: Maureen McLaughlin Teaching and Leading at the 5th International Summit on the Teaching Profession Each March I look forward to joining colleagues from around the world at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession to learn from high-performing and rapidly improving education systems about ways to elevate and enhance the teaching profession in order to improve student learning. I never imagined when we started the International Summit in New York City in 2011 that it would become a vibrant and lasting international community of practice. But the thirst among countries to learn from each other is strong and on March 29 and 30, Canada is hosting the 5th Summit, Implementing Highly Effective Teacher Policy and Practice, in Banff, Alberta. Weve learned so much from past Summit discussions and can see a real connection to education policy and practice in the U.S. over the years, as well as significant progress on commitments made by the U.S. delegation at the end of each Summit. I am particularly excited about this years Summit because teacher leadership one of our three Summit commitments last year will be highlighted this year. Last week Secretary Duncan reported back on the first year of Teach to Lead, an initiative in partnership with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that is designed to advance the national conversation around the future of the profession and promote meaningful opportunities for teacher leadership that improve outcomes for students. Teach to Lead is teacher-designed and teacher-led and has the support of more than 70 organizations, including the AFT and NEA which, along with Secretary Duncan, are part of the U.S. delegation to the International Summit. As Secretary Duncan said in front of a crowd of thousands, I was hopeful [about teacher leadership] last year. I am convinced we are onto something really important and special now. Change has to come from teachers who own it and lead it. The progress and excitement in Teach to Lead over the past year has been phenomenal. Thousands of teachers have engaged in Teach to Lead through the online Commit to Lead community, and more than 500 teachers, administrators, and representatives from supporting organizations have been at our regional summits and local leadership labs. Teach to Lead has truly been about elevating the teaching profession and supporting teachers by giving them opportunities to collaborate, plan and shape their own roles for their own contexts from the school to the state. A real question for Teach to Lead is what next? How does teacher leadership expand and grow? This years Summit agenda poses three questions that can help the U.S. to reflect on possible future paths. How do high-performing countries promote deeper and more collaborative forms of leadership at all levels within education systems? What strategies allow education systems to exercise consistent and widespread teacher leadership? What should be the role of teachers and their unions and associations in creating conditions for teacher leadership?

  • Six amazing U.S. teachers who have been actively involved in Teach to Lead from Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky and Massachusetts are part of the U.S. delegation to this years Summit. This is an opportunity for them to share their work, to hear what other countries are doing to support and encourage teacher leadership, and to reflect on next steps to elevate and advance teacher leadership back home. I am eager to learn from our Canadian hosts and other international colleagues and excited to do so with creative, committed teacher leaders from around the United States. HomeRoom: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/03/if-theres-no-seat-at-the-table-make-your-own-table/ Published Online: March, 2015 If Theres No Seat at the Table, Make Your Own Table A year ago when Secretary Arne Duncan introduced an effort to promote teacher leadership called Teach to Lead to thousands of educators, none of us had any real idea of what it was going to become. The speech that introduced it was long on aspirations but short on plans and details. To be quite honest, there was a hefty bit of skepticism among many I spoke with that the US Department of Education wasnt going to do anything more than rhetoric around teacher leadership. I wrote Arne to ask if I could remain as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow for a second year in a hybrid role working part-time for the Department to help structure Teach to Lead, while also teaching in Omaha. I offered to be one of the people who would lie awake nights, making sure this all came together! It was impossible to know then that Teach to Lead would come to involve thousands of educators from throughout the country, producing hundreds of meaningful ideas to improve education for young people while strengthening the teaching profession. Was I crazy to sign on to such a vaguely defined project? Obviously. But I was also passionate in my belief that only teachers could bring about real system reform that put students first. I had experienced teacher leadership as the backbone to student success. Over the previous 5 years my school, Miller Park Elementary, had been transformed. Student achievement, and students belief in themselves, had soared. What made us successful teachers leading transformation in collaboration with our principal, students and parents had to happen everywhere. My mantra, When teachers lead, kids succeed! comes from experience. The Teach to Lead team, comprised primarily of teachers from the Department of Education and National Board, knew that we had to have something that was scalable (capable of reaching teachers across the country). We developed a website that has over 2,000 members on the virtual community Commit to Lead where teachers can share their ideas and receive feedback from colleagues. The website is also a place to access the resources of our 70 support organizations and read the inspiring stories of teachers who are leading change. Three national Teach to Lead Summits were held in Louisville, Denver and Boston during the winter. The Summits were run by teachers we set the agenda and ran the show. We asked teachers to help us

  • score the ideas to select participants. We placed teachers as prominent speakers and trainers. Teach to Lead was going to walk the talk. Over 350 teachers from 38 states came alone or in teams, equipped with their ideas for change. The energy in the room at each Summit was palpable! Teachers were claiming their authority as change agents and the networking was compounding their drive towards success. We provided training on logic models and our growing list of support organizations provided the critical friends who asked the hard questions and pushed participants to think deeper. We held workshops to learn more about working with administrators, resource development, talking with policy makers, mentoring and more. Our participants arrived with nascent ideas and left with over 100 fully formed action plans to implement at home and new skills to get it done! At the end of the Denver Summit, a teacher from Eagle County schools in Colorado told me, Ive been to many weekends for teacher leaders and sometimes I feel like Im a part of somebody elses agenda. This is the first time I feel like I was supported in moving forward with my own agenda which is the agenda of helping my students. We were on the right track, but we continued to listen to feedback, reflect and adapt to make Teach to Lead stronger. Today, our last year of work on Teach to Lead culminated on stage at the National Boards Teaching & Learning conference with a panel of 4 exceptional teacher leaders and Secretary Duncan. In front of a crowd of thousands, Arne talked about Teach to Lead, stating, I was hopeful [about teacher leadership] last year. I am convinced we are onto something really important and special now. Change has to come from teachers who own it and lead it. Another panelist, Chris Todd, a history teacher and a teacher leader in residence at the Connecticut State Department of Education said Every teacher has the potential to be a teacher leader. The expertise that comes from experience makes for a better policy recommendation. The next step for Teach to Lead is to get even more boots on the ground; we are choosing 2-3 ideas out of each Summit to develop through Leadership Labs. The Labs are opportunities for local teams to receive hands-on targeted technical assistance from the Teach to Lead team and supporter organizations, convene stakeholders to discuss the status of plans and future actions, and develop approaches to integrate teacher leadership into systems and structures within local contexts. Our first Lab was in Marshall, Michigan and in just one day, our teacher leaders received tremendous community support including: Expanding their project to neighboring middle schools through a joint effort Partnering with 2 universities to assist with data collection and analyzing as well as providing pre-service teachers to help with after-school programs and other interventions Highlighting their project as an exemplar by the Michigan State Department of Education The assistance of two social workers from local organizations Greater access to mental health care for their students Working on Teach to Lead this past year has been a joy. It has given us the opportunity to offer a megaphone to the voices and incredible ideas of teachers around the country. Weve begun to change the culture of what it means to be a teacher by proving that teacher leadership can transform both student learning and the education system.

  • From the beginning of this effort, I was a fierce advocate for doing this right. To me, that meant empowering teachers to design and implement this initiative. Im so proud to say weve done that in Teach to Lead with Arnes fervent support. As he said during this mornings panel, If theres a seat at the table, grab it. If theres no seat at the table, make your own table. What an honor it has been to work with the Teach to Lead team and my colleagues across the country! Margaret Mead said it best, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has. Thanks for letting us make our own table, Arne. EdWeek: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/03/25/teacher-leadership-movement-gets-boost-from-ed-dept.html Published Online: March 24, 2015 By Ross Brenneman Teacher-Leadership Movement Gets Boost From Ed. Dept. Washington U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has pledged continued support for the Department of Education's Teach to Lead program, an effort that invites teachers to come up with ideas to promote teacher leadership in schools and offers them support for implementation. Mr. Duncan had announced the creation of Teach to Lead in March 2014 at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' inaugural Teaching & Learning conference here, vowing he would return a year later to be held accountable for the program's development. "Our hope is to accelerate the pace of change and build upon the sense of momentum," he said in a March 13 speech at this year's conference. "Our teachers and our students simply cannot wait." The secretary's announcement provides some clarity about the program's future; up until this month, even some of its organizers were unsure of its direction. However, in an interview with Education Week at the conference, Mr. Duncan also acknowledged that "there's no huge pot of funding" for Teach to Lead, which relies on financial support from nonprofit and private-sector organizations. "If we can use [existing] money in smarter and more effective ways," he said, "we can empower great teachers to lead this [program]; we can be in much better shape." Among educators who have coalesced around the idea of teacher leadership, the Teach to Lead initiative has been seen as a significant steppingstone, in part because of its potential to add authority to a movement that has remained stubbornly amorphous.

  • A Stronger Voice Teacher-leadership advocates say the interest in the concept speaks to a need many teachers feel to influence education outside the classroom, without leaving it, as well as fatigue from seeing education policy driven by people who aren't educators and then watching those policies fizzle. "The eternal optimist in me thinks that ... we're at a tipping point where we're realizing that we cannot have those outside education, with no education background, with no education experience, leading the path for our public education students," said Megan M. Allen, the director of programs in teacher leadership at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Mass. "We've got to be smarter than that, and let our teachersour expertslead the charge." Supporters of greater teacher input in education policy point to sundry initiatives designed without significant teacher involvement, or implemented without teachers' buy-indistrict-administered programs to transition to the Common Core State Standards, for example, or cuts in enrichment offerings to focus on standardized testing. Noticeably, they say, many such efforts have yet to offer much proof of effectiveness. "[Policy] implementation has been most effective in the places where it has been teacher-driven and teacher-led, collaborative change," said Ruthanne Buck, a senior adviser to Mr. Duncan. "And in some places, the structure just hasn't existed to allow that collaborative environment." Teach to Lead emerged, organizers say, in part from a growing understanding inside the Education Department that its own ambitious plans had outpaced implementation, and that implementation appeared to be smoothest when teachers had a strong voice. "There definitely has been a push to get a lot of things out, a lot of things changed," said Emily Davis, a teaching ambassador fellow at the department. "And what I've seen a lot of the past year is taking a step back, taking a look at what's working, [and] listening to the field." The ambassador fellows, a group of practicing teachers intended to serve as a bridge between the Education Department and the profession, did much of the legwork in designing Teach to Lead, working in partnership with the NBPTS. While many organizations have championed teacher leadership, the department's involvement adds heft to the movement. "What separates [Teach to Lead] is, if you have the backing of the U.S. Department of Education, which has connections and ties to different districts and states, that gives it some authority," said Genevive DeBose, a teacher who helped develop Teach to Lead as a liaison for the NBPTS. In December, Teach to Lead launched a set of three summits across the country, with events held in Louisville, Ky., Denver, and Boston. Each gathering required educators to apply for attendance by submitting an idea to cultivate teacher leadership in their schools or districts. The Teach to Lead events emphasized group work over formal presentations, even giving teachers a chance to hone their elevator pitches. Attendees also received feedback from "critical friends," experts brought in from the nearly 70 organizations that support Teach to Lead, which include the major unions, ASCD, and the American Institutes for Research.

  • "It's amazing to see this many teacher leaders together, and hear all their ideas, and to know that we are not all so different from each other," said Andrea Shunk, a Denver attendee and a co-creator of the Cadre of Distinguished Educators, a Portland, Ore., teacher-leadership program. Thirty days after each summit, participants went through a check-in with the Education Department to see how their ideas were progressing. Additional check-ins were slated for the 60- and 90-day marks. In addition, Teach to Lead organizers are selecting ideas from each event to treat as "leadership labs," which will get extra investment for implementation support and possible scaling-up. Structural Supports Whatever Teach to Lead's success, the federal government's interest in teacher leadership is no guarantee that state or district policymakers will exhibit the same enthusiasm, though states like Connecticut and Tennessee have been designing programs that bring teachers into policymaking. If teachers expect broader change and influence, advocates say, they need to pursue additional structural supports. "Teacher leadership is not just a policy, it's a systematic change," said Mount Holyoke's Ms. Allen. The structural changes needed, experts say, start with schools providing genuine professional opportunities to teachers. "If you don't offer leadership opportunities for teachers to excel in their profession, to growto be frank, to make more moneyand to have elevated roles, ... you are asking for your best and brightest teachers to leave the classroom in order to excel," said Ms. Buck, Mr. Duncan's adviser. At the same time, teacher-leadership supporters say, administrators need to make space in school cultures to accommodate teacher voice, ensuring that teachers don't have to worry about reprisals for offering their ideas or feedback. Finally, advocates say one of the best things school leaders can do to help is give teachers space to collaborate on projects and learn from each other. "Sometimes, the best thing we can do for teacher leadership is just step back and get out of the way," Ms. Allen said. "I think you put a bunch of really great, hardworking, dedicated teacher leaders together, and they can do great things." EdWeek Teacher: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2015/03/arne-duncan-doubles-down-on-teacher-leadership-initiative.html Published Online: March 13, 2015 By Ross Brenneman Arne Duncan Offers Praise for Teacher-Leadership Initiative, But Future Is Murky

  • U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan doubled down on his department's Teach to Lead program today, though without specifying how exactly the initiative would continue. Duncan spoke about the initiative at the Teaching & Learning Conference, hosted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. NBPTS partnered with the U.S. Department of Education to launch the Teach to Lead program last year. Its purpose is to spur teachers to drive innovation within school districts and states, including through networking and workshop lessons at regional summits. One year after the secretary told educators at the Teaching & Learning 2014 conference to hold him accountable for Teach to Lead, Duncan laid out how the idea grew, and how it stands today. "Our hope is to accelerate the pace of change and build upon the sense of momentum," Duncan said before an audience of roughly 3,000 educators. "Our teachers and our students simply cannot wait. For those of you are already driving this critical work, thank you so much. For those of you who are just coming into their own leadership roles, please join us in this effort." Teach to Lead is just one of many teacher-leadership initiatives, which I profiled as part of a recent special report for Education Week Teacher. But it also has the authority of the department behind itkind of a big deal. What Duncan didn't announce at the conference is a definitive future for Teach to Lead. "Where does Teach to Lead go from here, in its second year? That answer, again, is up to all of you," he said. Duncan said in an interview with Education Week Teacher following his speech that "there's no huge pot of funding" for Teach to Lead to draw from. Title II of the No Child Left Behind Act offers money for professional development, but that funding is jealously guarded. "If we can use that money in smarter and more effective ways, ... we can empower great teachers to lead this, we can be in much better shape." Duncan noted that the private sector has stepped up in helping finance the Teach to Lead initiative, which currently has upwards of 70 sponsors. Some officials tied to Teach to Lead have hinted at the development of at least two additional summits for sometime within the next year. There's similar uncertainty over the Teaching Ambassador Fellows, the group of practicing teachers within the Education Department who serve as a bridge between the profession and the bureaucracy that governs it; TAF members did a lot of the legwork on the Teach to Lead summits. TAF started at the end of President George W. Bush's administration, but its continuance remains largely tied to the secretary. "Obviously that'd be up to the next person, but that'd be the height of folly to walk away from something like [TAF]," Duncan said, noting the program's recent expansion to include a small number of principals. The secretary encouraged states to develop similar fellowship models. Tennessee and Connecticut, for example, have been pursuing their own versions of TAF. "States should replicate it, districts should

  • replicate it, buildings could do it, you can replicate it at different sizes at every level. To do it just at the federal level would be a big missed opportunity," Duncan said. Despite the glowing praise for the teaching profession offered by Duncan and other speakers at Teaching & Learning, teachers aren't necessarily the ones who need to hear them. Are policymakers hearing this rhetoric? And are they believing it? Teachers can have a great hunger for leadership, but willpower doesn't equate to authority. "We have a ways to go," Duncan said. "What I keep trying to tell policymakers at every level, is that if we want to get smarter, we have to listen. Many politicians would rather hear themselves speak than hear someone else speak. But I think what we're seeing, why this is so exciting, is when you create time, space to listen, to empower, the ideas that are generated are so much more powerful than anything you can ever do yourself." EdWeek Politics K-12 blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2015/03/investing_in_innovation_develo.html Published Online: March 30, 2015 By Alyson Klein Investing in Innovation 'Development' Grant Competition Kicks Off Attention non-profits and school districts: The competition for an Investing in Innovation "development" grant kicks off this week, according to a notice slated to be published in the Federal Register Monday. Development grants are the smallest of the three categories in the U.S. Department of Education's i3 program and are aimed at promising ideas, as opposed to programs with a lot of research to back up their approach. So what do you need to do if you want to win a "development grant"? Applicants will select from at least four proposed areas of focus, including improving principal effectiveness; bolstering science, math, engineering and technology education; strengthening the use of technology in the classroom; and addressing "non-cognitive factors" such as behavior and social and emotional skills. Previously, and at the direction of Congress, the department moved to add improving outcomes for high school students to that menu of options. That addition to the list of priorities is still going through the comment process. To ensure that at least some of the winners are from rural areas, the regulations also place a premium on applicants who will primarily serve rural students. But those applicants will also have to choose one of the other areas of focus. Development-grant applicants are urged to file a "pre-application" to help determine their chances. Pre-applications are available April 1.

  • And the new round of the i3 competition will give a competitive edge to programs that haven't secured a grant yet. (The program has had quite a few repeat winners.) Another change this time around: Previous versions of the development competition sought programs specifically aimed at improving outcomes for English-language learners and students in special education, and many of the current i3 grantees are serving these students in some way. This new iteration will seek projects that help a broad swath of students, including those special populations. The department will publish rules for the other two i3 competitions"validation," for programs with a modest track record, and "Scale Up," for programs backed by significant researchlater this spring. HomeRoom: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/03/secretary-duncan-step-up-and-fund-education/ Published Online: March, 2015 Secretary Duncan: Step Up and Fund Education On Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Edwin M. Stanton Elementary in Philadelphia to highlight the need to support teachers and students by investing in our nations schools. During the visit, Duncan joined U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Superintendent of Philadelphia schools Dr. William Hite, and acting Pennsylvania Education Secretary Pedro Rivera for a community roundtable discussion. Neighborhood residents, parents and teachers talked about how the community came together to keep the small school from closing a few years prior. Secretary Duncan highlighted the need for equitable education spending in states, and called on Pennsylvania to step up and fund education. Recent data shows that students from low-income families in 23 states are being shortchanged when it comes to state and local education funding. In these states, districts serving the highest percentage of students from low-income families are spending fewer state and local dollars per pupil than districts that have fewer students in poverty. Secretary Duncan visited a Stanton classroom, where students were holding a mock trial for Goldilocks. Twenty states also have school districts that spend fewer state and local dollars on districts with a high percentage of minority students, than they do on districts with fewer minority students. The good news is that nothing is preventing these states from funding education more equitably, and they could quickly join the dozens of states that are ensuring that low-income students are getting the resources and support they need to succeed. All of us have a role to play when it comes to ensuring that students from low-income families arent shortchanged. At the federal level, were ready to work with Congress to close the federal loophole that allows districts to allocate funds inequitably.

  • Recently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan laid out his vision for a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act, including the idea that opportunity for every child needs to be part of our national conscience. EdWeek Politics K-12 blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2015/03/q_and_a_with_arne_duncan_on_te.html Published Online: March 25, 2015 By Alyson Klein Q&A: Arne Duncan Talks Testing, Turnarounds, and ESEA at Age 50 U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has less than two years left in office with the Obama administration, and lots of initiatives in the middle of implementation, including school turnarounds, teacher evaluation through student outcomes, andoh, yeaha reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. Both halves of Politics K-12 sat down with him this week. One big take-away? Duncan is really excited that graduation rates have hit a new high and that traditionally overlooked populations of students are making gains. In fact, he brought up the good grad rate news in answer to just about every question we asked him, whether it was on the federal role in education, NCLB waivers, school turnarounds, or Race to the Top. (We edited much of that out, for brevity. But it's clearly something he wants to hammer home as folks start to take stock of whether NCLB, and the Obama administration's K-12 policies, have been effective.) What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation. (A few lines have been slightly paraphrased for clarity): The Elementary and Secondary Education Act turns 50 next month. What do you think we've learned over the past 50 years about the federal role? Where do you see it going forward? Yes, it's an education law, but it's a civil rights law. That is at the heart of what this thing is. ... The things that I think make sense for the federal government to be doing ... I think, are one, just a focus on equity. ... For me, that means we would love to see more focus on early-childhood education. ... We would love to increase resources for Title I children. ... We want to continue to be able to turn around underperforming schools. ... [Also] this focus on innovation and sharing best practices and putting resources behind what's working ... And so [among] those ...a focus on equity and a focus on innovation and a focus on excellence, I think are very appropriate, I would even say critical, for the right federal role. You've mentioned, even as recently as Monday at the Council of Chief State School Officers, that increased aid for Title I and a new investment in prekindergarten are your top priorities for ESEA. But both of these ideas seem unlikely to be embraced by Republicans who are eager to slim down the federal role. So some folks, when they saw those comments said, "Oh, the administration isn't really interested in reauthorizing this law." Is that fair? Is that what you were trying to get at?

  • I just disagree with the premise, because I look at Republican governors all over the country who are putting huge resources behind early-childhood education. And New Mexico, Nevada, Alabama, you go right down the list. ... This is an absolutely bipartisan issue, in the real world. If there wasn't a demand for this, I wouldn't be trying so hard to meet that demand ... I don't think it's a partisan issue, I mean, I know it's not. ...We have more Republican governors investing in early-childhood education than we do Democratic. ... The real world is working on this stuff, and we just want to get folks in Washington to look at the real world and meet that need. The waiver renewals you're working on now will extend beyond your administration, and I know you're hoping for a reauthorization of the law. But are you worried, if that reauthorization doesn't happen, that you have opened the door to the next administration coming in and putting their priorities in place in exchange for getting out of the mandates of NCLBfor instance, expanding school choice? We have tried to put our best thinking forward. ... I know we've done this imperfectly, but I think we've done a really good job. ... We try to, as best we can, have the principles of being very tight on goals, but much looser on how we get there, and we're learning every day how to be a good partner. ... The easiest [thing] to do would have been to not do waivers. And just [to have] lived with a broken law and our jobs would have all been a lot easier here. But we would have hurt kids, and we came here to help kids, and we feel really proud of what we've done. ... Again, the law needs to be fixed. And if somehow the law isn't, then you hope the next administration builds upon things we did well and corrects some things, does some things better. ... Obviously, during your first term, standardized tests really formed a backbone of your agenda in policies like teacher evaluation and dramatic school turnarounds, and now you're talking about paring back the number of tests. Did you have a change of heart here? I think you're, I want to say, misremembering. A big thing we did in the waivers from the start was to reduce the focus on a single test score. ... What we did was move away from proficiency, we moved to growth and gain, and what you see in so many state accountability systems is going way beyond a test score and looking at improvements in graduation rates and reductions in dropout rates. Some states look at college-going rates. ... And so, I think, we've been actually pretty consistent from day one that, assessing kids annually, we think is important, but it should be a piece of anything and just a piece, and these longer-term indicators we think are hugely important. But you were the first administration to have a federal mandate to require teacher evaluation through test scores, and so that's obviously taking high-stakes tests to another level. I think, again, you've got to look at the context. We think the goal of great teaching is to have students learn; and to have student learning be a piece of teacher evaluation, I think, actually gives the profession the respect it deserves. ... Anyone who says that student learning shouldn't be a part of teacher evaluation actually demeans the profession. ... And again, different states have done this different ways, so we've never said there is one way to do this but, yes, we have absolutely said that student learning is the goal of great teaching and great teachers, and that that should be a piece of [evaluations]. ... The real point is better support and feedback for teachers. Race to the Top was obviously your signature program in your first term. But in some places it's become a somewhat tarnished brand. Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina have either rethought or changed

  • their standards or tests. And some states are making changes to teacher evaluation, Tennessee being an example. How much influence do you think the administration has in states that got this money, how much influence do you continue to have? Influence isn't the goal here. The goal here is increased student achievement, and you see, what I've said from day one, is that you see as much reform and progress in states that didn't get a nickel as states that got hundreds of millions of dollars. .... The goal is raising the bar for all kids and seeing those gaps close. But I would push back on that to say that scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP in half the states that won Race to the Top have stayed level, stagnant, although half of them have gone up. ... I'm wondering if you feel the program has made a difference everywhere. It's made a different amount of difference in different places. Some of the places where it's had the biggest impact is where they didn't get any money. ... The lesson for meand we didn't really understand this going inwhile I don't want to say the money was unimportant ... it was really just creating space and the opportunity for people to do things that they knew were right, but that [were] hard to do or maybe politically difficult, whatever. You've talked a lot about the federal role in turning around low-performing schools. Do you think there has to be a specific percentage of [schools states must identify as needing extra help]? And I'm also wondering when the [third year of the School Improvement Grant] data is coming out? I don't know when the SIG data is coming out. ... We need to not just label the problem, we need to not just admire the problem ... we need to do something about it. ... Some [schools] have done an amazing job with [turnarounds]. Some we haven't seen as much as improvement as we'd like. But at least we're trying. At least people are in the game. And to be clear ... we did 5 percent [a reference to the percentage of schools the education required states to identify for dramatic turnarounds]... there's nothing magical [about that percentage]...whether it's 4 percent or 6 percent ... we're open to those conversations. ... We're open on models ... you have to have evidence-based stuff. ... But let's not just stand by. I promise you we would not be seeing these improvements in dropout rates, in graduation rates, if we just watched or observed or really didn't do anything about it. Last question (asked off the cuff, after the official conclusion of the interview): You going to stick around for the end of the [Obama administration]? (Laughs). Day at a time, baby, day at a time. The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/23/arne-duncan-gives-himself-a-low-grade-on-overhauling-teacher-prep/ Published Online: March 23, 2015 By Emma Brown Arne Duncan gives himself a low grade on overhauling teacher prep

  • Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday that his agency deserves a low grade for its efforts so far to overhaul regulations for teacher-preparation programs, saying that too many K-12 educators are not ready for the classroom. We have light years to go, we have so far to go, Duncan said, speaking in Washington at the annual legislative conference of the Council of Chief State School Officers. Weve changed the world in some pretty profound ways, but we have not changed the world in that way. Teacher-preparation programs are often criticized, including by educators themselves, for being mediocre and for focusing too heavily on the theory and history of education at the expense of equipping teachers with the hands-on skills they need to work with students. The Obama administration would like to require states to rate teacher-preparation programs, including those at public and private universities and at alternative organizations such as Teach for America. Such ratings would for the first time consider how teachers in training perform after graduation, including how long they work in the classroom and how their students perform on standardized tests. Duncans first effort to develop such a rating system collapsed in 2012. His agency is now trying again: Officials released draft regulations in November and plan to release final regulations in the fall. More than a dozen education school deans, including at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University, have formed an organization that supports the proposed regulations. But many colleges and some education experts have bristled at the prospect of evaluating teacher-preparation programs according to the test scores of their graduates students. If medical schools were evaluated according to the patient mortality rates of their graduates, some have said, then there would be no incentive for medical students to go into fields where they would encounter the sickest people. There is already little incentive for teachers to work in the most difficult schools, Duncan acknowledged Monday, saying that he is bothered by the fact that neither his agency nor state departments of education have figured out a way to get the best teachers into the most difficult schools. Duncan said he had recently visited an American Indian reservation where the tribal schools staff was half teachers from overseas and half Teach for America members. The school couldnt persuade anyone else to work there. There is not a state that has taken this on in a real way, Duncan said. Thats got to become the capstone of a great career, to go work in the inner city or in a tribal school, and we havent had that mentality. EdWeek State EdWatch blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2015/03/duncan_common_core_esea_reauthorization_chiefs.html Published Online: March 23, 2015 By Andrew Ujifusa

  • Arne Duncan Urges Leadership From State Chiefs on Common Core, Equity, Testing Washington In remarks at the Council of Chief State School Officers' annual legislative conference, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Monday exhorted state schools chiefs to lead by example and find a "common-sense" middle to vexing K-12 policy issues. During comments that touched on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Common Core State Standards, equity, and teacher preparation, Duncan lamented some shortfalls in his own department's work, but praised states for record-high graduation rates as well as their job boosting support for early education, a top priority for President Barack Obama. "What we don't do enough in education is scale what works," Duncan told the state chiefs. He also pitched an expansive view of what future federal work in education should look like, saying it should go beyond narrow views of elementary and secondary education and extend to both the youngest children as well as higher education. 'Pretty Darn Good Job' West Virginia Superintendent Michael Martirano asked for Duncan's thoughts about political pushback to the common core. As with his comments about federal education law (more on that below), the secretary hit on two themes in his remarks that didn't necessarily complement each other. First, he said that in the face of strong opposition to the standards in many states, and after "all the scars you have, all the blood you have shed" on the issue, the chiefs are doing "a pretty darn good job" holding the line on what he said were efforts to stick to higher standards. No state has approved legislation to repeal the common core so far in 2015, although at least a few states could approve lawmakers' proposals to review the standards. At the same time, Duncan also said that the move to the common core was not strictly a policy issue, and stressed the importance of having public perceptions in mind when discussing it. "If you're 100 percent right intellectually and you're losing the PR battle, it doesn't matter how smart you are intellectually. You are going to get run over," Duncan said. Remember, back in late 2013 Duncan himself drew heat for his remarks about parents' reaction to the common core. Check out my article last week on states' efforts to win over public support with respect to the upcoming release of common-core test scores. Optimism and Criticism The bulk of Duncan's remarks were related to the pending proposals in Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He started off by telling chiefs that, "I'm a little more

  • optimistic than most folks" about the prospect of reauthorization. But many of his subsequent remarks didn't clearly reflect that optimism. He stressed that the administration's goal to have an ESEA bill that stresses equity and social justice isn't reflected in the NCLB rewrite drafted by Republicans in the House of Representatives. (That legislation was due to be considered by the full House at the end of last month, but the GOP leadership pulled it off the floor before it could be voted onPresident Barack Obama, in turn, has said he would veto the bill.) Duncan said he was discouraged by several aspects of both the House bill as well as what he has seen so far from Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee overseeing ESEA rewrite efforts in his chamber. The secretary claimed that the House bill, for example, would actually restrict states' ability to implement innovative solutions to K-12 problems, and wouldn't provide the necessary level of resources. Any ESEA reauthorization proposal that simply passed on a party-line vote, Duncan said, is "not policy, that's politics," and he worried that progress on reauthorization will continue to stall. At the same time, Duncan stressed that he did not want to obsess about lines in the sand: "All this stuff is a negotiation." The chiefs, in turn, could lead schools on a smart, moderate path on issues related to ESEA, such as over-testing. He said that while states should respect parents' concerns about testing, they should also look for opportunities to cut back on assessment without depriving the public of key information about school performance. For example, Duncan said many districts mistakenly continue to add new student tests without scrapping the tests they've been giving for five, 10, or 20 years. "We're not great at stopping things," Duncan said of the K-12 community. And while ESEA reauthorization remains in limbo, the secretary stressed that his department wanted to be a better "partner" to states on the issue of waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act, the current iteration of the ESEA. (As my colleague Lauren Camera wrote earlier in the day, chiefs would vastly prefer an ESEA reauthorization to continued life under waivers.) Resources and Teachers Duncan also took the time to talk about funding and other support for K-12; in fact, he said that in general there is an "extraordinary appetite for more resources." He told the state chiefs that he continues to be concerned that a lack of financial support being directed to students in need of help would allow the "opportunity gaps" (such as the major differences in graduation rates between students of different demographic groups) to continue. Despite a few districts trying innovative and effective approaches to allocating K-12 resources, Duncan told the chiefs, "If we have 15,000 school districts in 50 states, we're not in the game." He did go on to praise Indiana and Minnesota for how they have distributed state aid to needy students, despite their different political environments. The secretary also discussed resources as they relate to teacher preparation, an area where Duncan said he would give himself a "low grade" in terms of progress made in improving the teacher pipelines. While

  • he said more resources should be dedicated to teacher preparation, he also indicated that too much of the focus in teacher-preparation programs has been on historical or relatively esoteric knowledge, and not on how to actually prepare people to teach in classrooms. "We're not close," Duncan said, referring to reaching teacher-preparation goals. EdWeek Politics K-12 blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2015/03/rep_john_kline_hopeful_for_vot.html Published Online: March 24, 2015 By Lauren Camera Rep. John Kline Hopeful for Vote on NCLB Rewrite After Easter Recess Rep. John Kline, R-Minn, Chairman of the House education committee, and his staff have been spending a lot of time educating members about what his No Child Left Behind Act rewrite bill wouldand wouldn'tdo, and they hope that with the air cleared, leadership will reschedule the bill for a vote in the coming weeks. "My firm hope is that when we get back from the Easter break we will be able to pick it back up," Kline said Tuesday morning to a group of state schools chiefs during the Council for Chief State School Officer's annual legislative conference. Nearly a month has passed since leadership pulled Kline's proposal to overhaul the federal K-12 law from the floor as Republican support for the measure waned amid a separate debate over how to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "I thought it would sail through," said Kline. "It didn't. Yet." Kline called the initial collapse of support for his Republican-backed bill "the perfect storm," and talked at length about the anti-Common Core State Standards blog post that played a role in diminishing Republican support for the bill. "I now know what the term 'going viral' means," Kline said. "There was a little blog from somebody who had a lot of misinformation, who put that misinformation out, and it went viral." At one point, Kline said, his colleagues approached him to say they couldn't support his bill because it enshrines the common core. As the chairman later clarified, nothing could be farther from the truth. "The entire leadership team was diverted from a really excellent piece of legislation," Kline said. "We simply stopped where we were in considering the [bill]. All the debate was complete. So now it's sitting there." Even with the chairman's focus these last few weeks on member education, the bill is not a slam-dunk.

  • Kline still faces a faction of his caucusbacked by powerful conservative lobbying groups like the Club for Growth and Heritage Actionthat would prefer the bill to be even more conservative. And the measure is now competing with a more-clogged congressional calendar, which is currently putting a priority on the fiscal 2016 budget and an annual legislative fix needed to pay doctors who treat Medicare patients. Those two annual legislative priorities tend to sap lawmakers' time and energy, Kline said, and he urged the room of state chiefs to prod their members of Congress to revisit the NCLB overhaul. "It's still a fairly close vote, so if any of you have friends and contacts in the House, it would be good if you told them to help to move this process along," he said. Kline added that should the House move on the NCLB rewrite, he would then turn his attention to the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act followed by child nutrition programs. EdWeek Politics K-12 blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2015/03/are_school_turn-arounds_a_poin.html Published Online: March 26, 2015 By Lauren Camera Are School Turnarounds a Sticking Point in Senate NCLB Rewrite Negotiations? In a town that feeds off legislative gossip, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., have been doing a really good job keeping private their negotiations on how to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law. For nearly a month now, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate education committee have been working with their staffs behind closed doors to cobble together a bipartisan bill that would give the federal K-12 law a major facelift. But other than releasing a joint statement a few weeks ago announcing a planned committee markup of the bill during the week of April 13, the two have been mum on where their compromise stands. That's smart politics. After all, when they first announced they were going down this path, Alexander and Murray were far apart on a laundry list of education policy areas, including Title I portability, accountability, and early childhood education (more on that last piece here). There's one issue, however, that seems to flying under the radar: What to do about chronically low-performing schools. Should states have to identify a percentage of their poorest performers? Should they be allowed to craft a turnaround model themselves? And if they do craft their own models, should the Education Secretary get sign-off? There's a lot of wonky history behind those questions. When the Obama administration supercharged the School Improvement Grant program back in 2009, it limited the turnaround models to some pretty dramatic interventions, including removing the principal, replacing half the staff, converting the school to charter status, or shuttering it altogether.

  • What's more, the administration essentially doubled down on that strategy in the NCLB waivers, which required states to identify the poorest-performing 5 percent of schools and put in place a turnaround plan that closely mirrors the SIG models. But, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have long pushed back on the Obama administration's turnaround vision, arguing it's too restrictive. And many felt their criticisms were bolstered when two successive years of student-outcome data from the SIG program showed that it has a decidedly mixed track record of actually improving schools. Then, in January of 2014, lawmakers incorporated language into a spending bill for the U.S. Department of Education that added additional turnaround options to the mix, including allowing states to partner with organizations that have strong records of fixing low-performing schools, or to cook up their own turnaround options and submit them to the U.S. secretary of education for approval. And under new regulations, "priority schools" in waiver states were allowed to use those new models, too. The change was a big victory for many in Congressand a blow to one of the Obama administration's top priorities. But, in a draft bill meant to spark discussion on an NCLB, Alexander signaled he'd like to go even further. The draft eliminates the SIG program entirely, instead allowing states to set-aside a greater share of their Title I dollars for school improvement. And there are no rules in the proposal about how manyor what kindof schools states need to identify for improvement. The House GOP NCLB rewrite bill, which is still awaiting a floor vote after conservative criticism, takes an almost identical approach. And over the past few weeks, there have been small signals that the turnaround question may be a point of contention between Alexander and Murray (not to mention the Obama administration, which will ultimately need to sign any compromise bill.) And we felt like it was high time to at least string them together, for whatever it's worth. So here are those bread crumbs: Evidence #1: When the Senate began debating an anti-human trafficking bill, Alexander made a speech on the chamber floor on March 11 that focused on the overreach of the federal government. The crux of his speech wasn't about education, but he quickly veered in that direction and started talking about how the U.S. Department of Education has overstepped its boundaries in regards to school turnarounds and the Common Core State Standards, and how that is one of many issues he's currently negotiating with Murray. "In No Child Left Behind, there are requirements about improving low-performing schools," he said. "The [Education] Department, in its well-intentioned activities, defined what a Governor of Tennessee or Utah or Iowa could say about his or her own idea about fixing low-performing schools. That happens all the time. It happens all the time. Over the last several years we have created, in effect, a national school board in Washington, DC, by substituting the judgment of Washington for local schools." Evidence #2: In remarks to the press after meeting with members of the Council of the Great City Schools on March 16, President Barack Obama talked about the need to continue focusing on low-performing schools. "We've got a major debate obviously taking place about the reauthorization of the major education act that shapes federal policy towards our schools," Obama said. "There is, I think, some useful

  • conversations taking place between the chairman of relevant committee, Lamar Alexander, and Patty Murray. But there's some core principles that all the leaders here believe in: ... Making sure that we continue to focus on low-performing schools and that they are getting additional resources." Evidence #3: Days later, on March 19, Carmel Martin, the executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely associated with the Obama administration and previously the assistant secretary of planning, evaluation, and policy development at the department, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about the success of targeted school turnarounds and why a rewrite of NCLB should include a federal role. "Federal policy needs to keep the pressure on school districts and states to continue the momentum," Martin wrote. "We have an opportunity to make great strides in improving educational outcomes, but passing a bill that does not include federal guardrails would be a step backward." Evidence #4: In an interview with Education Week on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he's open to various different levels of federal involvement in turning around low-performing schools, but that an NCLB rewrite should include a role for the feds in school turnaround. Here's what he said: You've talked a lot about the federal role in turning around low-performing schools. Do you think there has to be a specific percentage of [schools states must identify as needing extra help]? We need to not just label the problem, we need to not just admire the problem ... we need to do something about it. ... Some [schools] have done an amazing job with [turnarounds]. Some we haven't seen as much as improvement as we'd like. But at least we're trying. At least people are in the game. And to be clear ... we did 5 percent [a reference to the percentage of schools the education required states to identify for dramatic turnarounds]... there's nothing magical [about that percentage]...whether it's 4 percent or 6 percent ... we're open to those conversations. ... We're open on models ... you have to have evidence-based stuff. ... But let's not just stand by. I promise you we would not be seeing these improvements in dropout rates, in graduation rates, if we just watched or observed or really didn't do anything about it. What does this all mean? Well, maybe nothing at all. It could simply be one of several threads in a broader conversation about the federal role in K-12, which we know is the crux of Alexander and Murray's ongoing negotiations. Or it could be something the White House considers important enough to go to bat for. Either way, we'll see in the coming weeks when Alexander and Murray unveil the long-awaited results of their ongoing negotiations. EdWeek Politics K-12 blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2015/03/which_states_are_applying_for_.html Published Online: March 20, 2015 By Alyson Klein

  • Which States Are Applying for NCLB Waiver Renewal? The political sheen may have been worn off of No Child Left Behind waivers for a while now, but nearly every state that has a waiver is planning to file a renewal request, according to an Edweek survey of state education agencies and their websites. However, in a couple of statesLouisiana and Texasthe waiver renewal response wasn't really a straight yes or no, more of an "it's complicated." Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican presidential candidate is locked in a stand-off on common core testing with the Obama administration, is still mulling its options, a spokesman for the Education Department said. (The Pelican State better hurry and make up its mind. Renewal requests are due March 31.) When it comes to standards, Louisiana may go the Oklahoma route of ditching Common Core, switching back to its old standards, and then having its institutions of higher education sign off. And Texas, which had been warned that its teacher evaluation system didn't pass federal muster, is sticking to its guns and filing a renewal request without including changes the feds asked for, according to a department of education official. It sounds like edu-folks in the Lone Star State are fine with that. "It's fair to say the feedback has generally been appreciative of the stance TEA has taken to assure the teacher evaluation process continues to be under local control," said the official, who also noted that Texas' waiver hasn't been put on high-risk status. More background on the back-and-forth between Texas and the Education Department here. Meanwhile, nearly every state that's figured out its timeline is planning to file a renewal for three years, the maximum for most states. (A select few can apply for a four-year renewal.) Two exceptions: Georgia and Utah, both of which are going for a one-year renewal. That could make the process easier for those states, and will also allow them to carefully consider whether they want their waivers in place beyond the Obama administration. Background on Utah here. Plus, some states have been willing to make changes called for by the U.S. Department of Education. Maine, for instance, recently passed a bill that would make it crystal clear that state test scores are a factor in its teacher evaluation system, after the feds cited a lack of clarity there as a flaw in a letter last year. (Maine was never explicitly threatened with waiver revocation, but Washington state lost its waiver because its evaluation system explicitly gave states a choice between incorporating state or local tests in evaluations.) The Pine Tree state made the change in time to get its flexibility request in early next week, ahead of the federal deadline, Samantha Warren, a spokeswoman for the department said in an email. The Journal: http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/03/16/esea-loophole-costing-title-i-schools.aspx Published Online: March 16, 2015

  • By: Dian Schaffhauser ESEA Loophole Costing Title I Schools $1,200 per Student What could $668,900 buy? That's the amount on average not received by Title I schools owing to a "comparability loophole" in funding that some education experts would like to close in the upcoming Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization process. ESEA's Title I lays out what kind of financial assistance is made to states to pass onto local education agencies, which in turn provide extra funding to specific schools that need it for educating children of low-income families. Districts use various formulas for determining this percentage; but in general, a school qualifies for Title I funding when at least 35 percent of students are part of low-income families. The goal is to enable the school to provide comparable education services as other schools in the district, but how that term, "comparable," is defined is tricky. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research and educational institute, districts can compute comparability by using average teacher salaries or teacher-to-student ratios. What they should be using, the Center found, was actual expenditures on teacher salaries. However, a calculation approach that uses actual expenditures is prohibited by federal law. The problem, as laid out in "Comparable but Unequal," is this: Because teacher salaries make up the largest portion of school budgets and teachers with more experience earn higher salaries and tend to teach in schools with lower rates of poverty schools, a disparity arises that the formula doesn't take into account. ESEA "chooses to treat teachers as interchangeable widgets," the report's authors wrote. However, they pointed out, teachers are not equal. "Schools disproportionately serving low-income students also have more than their fair share of new teachers. Additionally, though individual teacher effectiveness varies, schools with more new teachers are, on average, not comparable to schools with more experienced teachers." To understand the impact of on schools, the center analyzed 2011-2012 data from the U.S. Department of Education to understand how much districts spent on each of their schools and compared how districts funded schools eligible for Title I funds against non-Title I schools in the same "grade band." In cases where that comparison wasn't possible, the researchers did a comparison among Title I schools of high poverty and low poverty. In both scenarios, they made adjustments for differences in cost of living across districts. What they found was that the federal loophole resulted in more than 4.5 million low-income students attending "inequitably funded" Title 1 schools. Each of those schools received about $1200 less per student than comparable schools in their districts. That tallied to $668,900 less per year per school. They also found that if the loophole were closed, high-poverty schools would benefit by the addition of $8.5 billion in new funds each year. While $668,900 could be invested in hiring "more experienced and thus more costly teachers," the report stated, it could also be spent on other kinds of resources in the district, including technology and arts programs:

  • Purchasing new MacBook Pro computers for more than 550 students; Constructing six new libraries; Implementing a new music education program that serves more than 3500 students; Instituting a new arts program covering more than 190 classrooms; Hiring 12 new guidance counselors with an average salary of nearly $54,000; or Giving $10,000 bonuses to more than 60 teachers. "Simply put, the size of these funding gaps is appalling. But contrary to popular belief, these gaps aren't too large to be closed feasibly. Considering how much states and districts spend on education, closing the gap would only cost between 1 percent and 2 percent of their total education budgets on average," said co-author Max Marchitello, a policy analyst at the center. The report offered three recommendations to Congress as it debates updates to ESEA: First, base the comparability calculation on actual expenditures, including teacher salaries; Second, require districts to achieve comparability between Title I and non-Title I schools by proving that Title I schools receive state and local funding at least equal to the average of the district's non-Title I schools; and Third, require districts that serve only Title I schools to show that higher-poverty schools receive no less than the average total of state and local funds for lower-poverty schools. "Notwithstanding the fact that comparability is the law of the land, the way districts comply with the provision undermines its true intent," the report stated. "Under the current fiscal policy, districts can spend less of their own state and local dollars on the schools with the highest needs, and most do spend millions of dollars less in these schools. Therefore, Congress should close the comparability loophole by requiring that districts fund their Title I schools at the same level as or higher than--based on actual spending--their other schools." The full report is available on the Center for American Progress site. VOX: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8284637/school-spending-US Published Online: March 25, 2015 By: Libby Nelson America spends more than $600 billion on schools. Here's where it goes and why it matters. By the time a student finishes college, more money is spent on his or her education in America than in nearly every other country in the world. That's because the US, compared with other developed countries, spends a lot on education. Yet all that money is yielding only middling results on international tests. So why is American education so expensive? Partly because other social spending is low; education is expected to play a bigger role in social mobility, particularly for low-income students. And partly

  • because education is mostly a state and local policy issue, so the way the money is spent isn't always equally distributed or particularly logical. School districts in some states spend more to educate wealthy students than poorer ones. Court cases have forced states to divide the money more equally. But often that just increases the overall pot of money rather than redistributing it even though the spending increases appear to make a difference in students' lives. 1) The US spends more on education but less on other social programs The US spends the most per student of any nation in the developed world: $15,171 per student in 2011. The average in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was just $9,313. That number factors in spending by everyone, not just governments. And it includes higher education which is more expensive in the US than anywhere else in the world. Still, even when you look just at K-12, the US is spending more on each student than most other countries. The US spends $11,193 for each student at the primary levels, more than all but three other nations Switzerland, Norway, and Luxembourg. Those three, as well as Austria, also spend more than the US on secondary education. The US spends $12,464 per student on high school. But nations that spend less on education are faring far better on international tests, and the US isn't seeing bigger scores as a result of its larger spending. Poland, Finland, and South Korea, where 15-year-olds performed better on those 2012 tests than American students, spend less per student than the US does. There are a few possible explanations for this. The first is that the US spends less on social programs than some other countries. Finland spends much less per student than the US. But it spends more to reduce poverty, and across the OECD, students in poverty have lower test scores than their higher-income peers. The United States has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world five times higher than Finland's. The money Finland spends to close that gap doesn't show up in the school spending numbers. Another explanation is that US education is simply inefficient and could be better run without additional spending. Poland, for example, has made dramatic improvements in its students' performance on international tests while still spending much less per student than the US does. Even when education spending is expressed as a share of the economy, South Korea spends about as much per student as the US does and sees much better results. 2) Teachers in the US make more than teachers in other countries, but less than other American college-educated workers About 60 percent of the $12,608 spent on each public school student in the US in the 2010-'11 school year went to instruction paying and providing benefits to teachers and teachers' aides. When compared with teachers in other countries, American teachers are generally well-paid: they make more at all points in their career than the average for teachers in the OECD. But teaching isn't a

  • particularly well-paid profession anywhere. In all OECD countries, teachers make less than the average person with a bachelor's degree. Because American salaries for people with a bachelor's degree are unusually high, that gap is wider in the US than anywhere else. In other words, teachers are well-paid by international standards for teachers. But they're underpaid by the standards of what college graduates in the US generally make. Schools spend much more per student today than in 1970 more than twice that amount, after adjusting for inflation in part because they employ many more teachers than they used to. There are now about 12 students for every teacher employed by a school, down from 22 students per teacher in 1970. (Salaries have increased only slightly: after adjusting for inflation, public school teachers make about 10 percent more today than in 1970.) Part of the reason education spending has increased is because the number of children with disabilities has grown much faster than the general population of students, and schools are now required to educate them. Special education students cost, on average, about twice as much to educate as other students. So one reason education in the US has become more expensive is that it's trying harder to serve all students and that can come at a price. 3) More spending doesn't seem to have increased test scores in the US The Programme for International Student Assessment, the international test used for comparison among OECD countries, has only been around since 2000. But students in the US are performing only modestly better on American standardized tests than they did in the 1970s. At least, that's how it seems at first when you look at scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test of reading and math given to a nationwide sample of students that's known as the Nation's Report Card. Here are math scores over time:

    And here are reading scores over time:

  • But those graphs don't tell the full story. Since the 1970s, the racial composition of American school children has also changed dramatically. In 1975, 80 percent of students who took the NAEP were white; in 2008, white students made up just 58 percent of test-takers. Students of color have historically performed worse on these tests than their white peers. So if there were really no improvement in American education, and students from lower-scoring groups made up a larger share of the school-age population than in the past, you'd expect scores to go down rather than inching up. Concealed within those unimpressive averages, in other words, is a fairly dramatic improvement for black and Latino students, and a slight improvement for white students. Since 1971, reading scores for nine-year-olds have increased only 13 points. But they've increased 25 points for Latino students and 36 points for black students. The improvement is equally dramatic in math, where scores have increased 36 points for black students and 32 points for Latino students. So just looking at the averages can be misleading. Still, it's difficult to argue that spending more on education caused the gain in academic performance. The past four decades have seen significant policy changes, such as No Child Left Behind, as well as spending increases. And it's difficult to untangle which, if any, of those changes was the key. 4) The Great Recession led to real cuts in education spending The trend of spending more on education every year uninterrupted since 1996 seems to be in decline. For the past two consecutive years, per-pupil spending in the US has fallen. In 2012, the US spent an average of $10,667 per student, a 2 percent decline, after adjusting for inflation, from 2011. Thirty states have cut per-pupil funding since 2008, and some of the cuts have been significant: Oklahoma is spending 24 percent less per student in the 2015 fiscal year than in 2008, before the recession. At the same time, property values fell, making it harder for local districts to collect the same amount of property tax as before without raising taxes. The budget cuts have led to teacher layoffs and larger class sizes. The federal stimulus helped shore up state and local education spending through the 2011 fiscal year, but then it expired, leaving states to cover the gaps. Although states are spending more this year than in the past, in most cases budgets still haven't recovered from the recession.

  • 5) Rich kids have more money spent on their education than do poor kids Historically, local property taxes have provided much of the support for education. This means wealthier areas with higher property values had more resources for their children's education. The federal government tried to close this gap through grants to schools with a high population of students in poverty as well as to schools located in areas without a lot of taxable property. Even including federal funding, though, nationwide the poorest districts have slightly less money per pupil on average than the richest. States are providing more support to public schools than they used to, in part to try to break the vicious cycle where high-poverty areas had fewer resources to educate their needier students. Sometimes, though, state formulas don't alleviate inequality. In Illinois, for example, Chicago public schools have more poverty than average but get less money per pupil. This is why over the past 40 years, virtually every state been sued over how it sends money to school districts. At first, the lawsuits focused on making sure the same amount was spent to educate poor children as rich ones. Since the 1990s, lawsuits have sought more resources for districts with large numbers of poor students, arguing that states have the responsibility to ensure students get not just an education, but an adequate education. And the cost of an adequate education for children with disabilities or who are learning English, to give two examples of students who might require more resources, is higher than for well-off students without those challenges. Those lawsuits have driven up education spending. But they've also made more funding available to students who need more help, and research suggests the decisions made a difference. 6) School funding has gotten fairer in the past few decades and it's made a difference in students' lives State by state, education spending per student doesn't correlate strongly with test results: states that spend more per student, such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, tend to have strong results, but Idaho and South Dakota also get respectable scores despite spending much less. Studies in the 1960s and 1980s found no correlation between school spending and standardized test results. But recent research argues that focusing solely on test scores misses other positive effects of school spending. A working paper published in early 2015 by the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at the long-term effect of court decisions that forced states to spend more on low-income districts. For low-income children, more money made a big difference. A 10 percent spending increase each year in kindergarten through 12th grade, researchers found, led students to complete a few more months of school, to earn 7.25 percent more, and to be less likely to be poor. Those aren't improvements that show up in test scores, but they suggest that spending more on education made a long-term difference in students' lives. "Money does matter and better school resources can meaningfully improve the long-run outcomes of recently educated children," the authors, C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico, wrote.

  • 7) Money matters, but how it's spent matters just as much Jackson, Johnson, and Persico found that even when more spending made a difference, the effect was bigger for low-income students than for better-off ones. Students who weren't low-income didn't see the same effects on lifetime earnings and poverty rates. That's one reason the researchers caution that spending alone isn't enough. The other is that simply spending more money isn't likely to make a difference unless the money is spent well. Schools could increase spending by sending teachers on lavish retreats, which probably wouldn't make a difference. Or they could pay teachers salaries more in line with what other bachelor's degree holders make, which some people argue would impact the quality of teaching. The researchers argue that spending more on instruction and support for students was key, and that smaller class sizes, more time for instruction, slightly higher teacher salaries, and more adults in the building were probably key. Still, students in wealthy districts in the US have more spent on their education than poorer students in 23 states. And research suggests the marginal returns on that investment are lower: compared to wealthy students in other countries, US students still underperform on standardized tests. That suggests that money matters more for some students than for others, and that it's not just poverty holding American students back. nprEd: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/30/395322012/the-hidden-costs-of-teacher-turnover Published Online: March 30, 2015 By: Owen Phillips Revolving Door Of Teachers Costs Schools Billions Every Year Every year, thousands of fresh-faced teachers are handed the keys to a new classroom, given a pat on the back and told, "Good luck!" Over the next five years, though, nearly half of those teachers will transfer to a new school or leave the profession altogether only to be replaced with similarly fresh-faced teachers. We've been reporting this month on the pipeline into teaching and hearing from teachers themselves about why they stay. Richard Ingersoll, who has studied the issue for years, says there's a revolving door of teacher turnover that costs school districts upwards of $2.2 billion a year. Ingersoll studies teacher turnover and retention at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the reasons teachers quit, he says, is that they feel they have no say in decisions that ultimately affect their teaching. In fact, this lack of classroom autonomy is now the biggest source of frustration for math teachers nationally.

  • I spoke with Ingersoll to ask him about his research and what schools can do to fix the problem. What do we know about why some teachers stay in the profession and why some don't? We actually don't have a lot of research on the decision to stay or not. But we have a lot of data on the flip side: why teachers move to other schools or leave the profession. For example, beginning teachers are more likely to drop out. Those from top colleges the most selective colleges and universities are more likely to drop out. And we know that minority teachers are more likely to drop out than white, non-Hispanic teachers. But most of the turnover is driven by school conditions. Salary is not the main thing. It's important, but not the main thing. And that's an important finding because the teaching force is so large it's now America's largest occupation that raising everyone's salaries is a very expensive proposition. What are some of the important factors driving the decision to stay or leave? One of the main factors is the issue of voice, and having say, and being able to to have input into the key decisions in the building that affect a teacher's job. This is something that is a hallmark of professions. It's something that teachers usually have very little of, but it does vary across schools and it's very highly correlated with the decision whether to stay or leave. I've worked with these data a lot going back last couple of decades. Where nationally, large samples of teachers are asked, "How much say does the faculty collectively have?" And, "How much leeway do you have in your classroom over a series of issues?" It turns out both levels are really important for decisions whether to stay or to part. And what's interesting about this finding [is that] this would not cost money to fix. This is an issue of management. Does the issue impact some groups of teachers differently than it does others? One thing we've found is that the shrinking classroom autonomy is now the biggest dissatisfaction of math teachers nationally. And this has been a growing issue for math teachers and it's no doubt tied to the testing and accountability environment where math is one of the main subjects tested. This is a far bigger factor for math teachers than, for instance, salaries. This is the biggest complaint nationally of math teachers. This shrinking autonomy. What else is highly correlated with the decision to stay or leave? A whole other big one that always rises to the top is student misbehavior and discipline. But there's an interesting thing in the data, which is that the amount of student behavior and discipline problems varies dramatically between schools. And poverty is by no means the only, or main factor. And some schools do a far better job of dealing with it, coping with it and addressing it than other schools. And those schools that do a better job of coping with it have significantly better teacher retention. We have this finding that schools can manage behavioral issues in good ways or bad ways. Can you give me an example? What's a good way of handing behavioral issues?

  • Get the teachers on board. You get everyone together and say, "Look, we have this issue. Do we want to have a rule or not? What would it be? How do we want to address it?" And a decision is collectively made as opposed to being imposed on the faculty. There are all kinds of behavioral issues to address, particularly when you're working with kids or teenagers. I mean, I'm an ex-high school teacher. The idea is to bring everyone on board even bring students on board and figure out what policies do you want, how they're going to be enforced, and what would be the sanctions. You do it in a much more democratic and professional way. That's the model I think that works best, particularly from a teacher's viewpoint. When I saw your estimates of how much teacher turnover might be costing school districts, I was surprised. Do you think school districts are aware how much teacher turnover costs them? No. I don't think so at all. There's a tremendous amount of research in business schools on the whole issue of employee turnover. And the corporate sector certainly understands turnover is not cost-free. And there's this one industry that's never been paid attention to, and that's education. As if it's sort of cost-free! I don't think there's been any recognition of the costs. What's the response from school leaders when you show them your estimates of the cost of teacher turnover? I've given these talks where I've had superintendents say, "Well, look Dr. Ingersoll, we like employee turnover because we can hire more beginning teachers at a lower salary. We count on it in order to balance the budget." And I'll say, "Fine. You've identified one of the benefits." But you know there's two columns here. There's the benefits and there's the costs. Now if you consider what the costs might be, both financial and nonfinancial, to your school system if you average 24 percent of your teachers moving out of buildings each and every year. It's sort of striking. But on the other hand, of course, you wouldn't ever get, nor would you want 100 percent retention. You want fresh blood coming in. You want your lower performers hopefully to move on to greener pastures. Not all turnover is bad by any means. What can schools specifically do to address the problem of teacher turnover? One growing genre of initiatives is the idea of supporting beginning teachers. Beginning teachers have the highest turnover rates. We generated data over a decade ago showing somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of those that go into teaching are gone within five years. The term "induction" is often used for beginning teachers in the first couple of years. To help them learn the ropes and get better and survive. The percentage of teachers that get some kind of induction has doubled over the last couple of decades. So that's one example of trying to pay attention to retention instead of just ignoring it. Induction sounds rather broad. What does it mean? It can mean having a mentor for instance. But having a veteran teacher as a mentor can vary anything from a 20-minute cup of coffee in September to someone that comes in your classroom and gives you feedback. You sort of get what you pay for. But the question is, "What's the optimal?"

  • One thing that we've found that's effective is freeing up time for the beginning teachers so that they can meet with other colleagues. And learn from them. And compare notes. And try to develop some kind of coherence of curriculum. You say induction programs are a growing genre of reform. How much do we know about their effectiveness? I've done some of this research myself to answer that very question. We carefully went through a lot of research and found, indeed there are positive effects. That induction and mentoring help beginning teachers' classroom teaching practice. They help their retention. And they also had a randomized-control trial that showed that student achievement was better for those beginning teachers that got some [induction]. Real Clear Education: http://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2015/03/27/education_federal_role_expand_1179.html Published Online: March 27, 2015 By: Peter Cunningham Expand the Federal Role in Education RCEd Commentary The debate in Washington around reauthorizing No Child Left Behind is driven mostly by falsehoods and fear, rather than values and vision. Worse yet, the broken politics in the nations capital limits the conversation to whats politically possible rather than whats educationally needed. We need to revisit our core values and ask: Does America truly cares about equity and integration? Do we care about rigor and high standards? Do we care about restoring the middle-class American Dream for more people and reversing income inequality? Do we really want opportunity for everyone or just for some? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then we need a wholly different conversation in Washington based on a 21st Century vision of schools. In this vision, needed resources are provided not just in some schools but in all schools. The profession of teaching is revered, empowered and appropriately compensated. Instead of a tiresome debate around accountability, we agree on simple measures of progress and shared responsibility among teachers, principals, superintendents and taxpayers. The only way to achieve this vision in a decentralized system like ours is with a much bigger federal investment. Today, 1-2 percent of the federal budget goes to K-12 education, while 16-20 percent goes to defense, when you include the wars. But education is the real defense industry of the 21st Century so lets talk about shifting a few percentage points from unwinnable wars and unneeded weapons programs toward public education.

  • Conservatives will insist we also talk about entitlement reforms that could shift dollars from the elderly to the young. We should all welcome that conversation, including those of us who no longer have kids in school and are busy tracking our retirement portfolios. Our collective interest trumps our self-interest. A bigger federal investment would allow states and districts to reduce local and state taxes and achieve greater funding equity between rich and poor districts. Boosting the federal share of education funding reduces state and local political pressures on annual school budgets and provides more certainty for administrators. Affluent communities always have the option of over-taxing themselves for schools, but at least poor communities will reach a higher funding threshold. This was always the intent of the federal law but loopholes have undermined the goal. Its time for people on all sides of the debate to admit that if not for the federal government, most of Americas schools would still be in the 1950s in terms of quality, equity and diversity. Sadly, school systems are reverting to this era because of increasing economic inequity and self-segregation shaped by housing patterns and school boundaries. Only the federal government can stave it