Education

On June 9, 1904, Harvard's president, Charles W. Eliot, wrote a letter to Charles Francis Adams Jr. A former railroad executive, Adams was a member of the college's Board of Overseers and, as a grandson of John Quincy Adams, a multigenerational Harvard legacy. The two men were quarreling over the question of raising tuition to ease a financial crisis. Wrote Eliot:

Yesterday, President Barack Obama reiterated his call from the State of the Union to provide universal pre-K to all children in America. But tucked in with his remarks was a pitch for another proposal from Tuesday's speech: to reward high schools that are preparing their students to be not only college-ready, but also career-ready. The competition would be aimed at high schools that have reimagined how they operate: partnering with colleges and businesses, focusing on emerging fields in science, technology, and engineering, and even offering students valuable industry credentials or an associate degree while they complete high school. The administration hopes this would challenge schools to provide real-world learning experiences in their curriculum, so that students attain the “skills today's employers are looking for to fill the jobs that are there right now and will be there in the future."

Unfortunately, the administration has offered no further details on the plan. Do they envision a Race to the Top-style competition? As Alyson Klein noted on PoliticsK-12, a competitive grant aimed at high school curriculum – not just the standards high schools teach, but also how they are taught – could meet stiff opposition from conservative lawmakers. And how much money is the Department seeking for this competition? Would funding be distributed directly to high schools and their higher education and industry partners, or through states?

To complicate the matter further, it is unclear if the president is even proposing anything new at all. Last April, the Department of Education released A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education, its plan for reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. The Blueprint included “within-state competitions” to distribute Perkins funds to consortia of secondary and postsecondary institutions, with a matching contribution from employers, rather than through the formula used today. The goal of these consortia competitions would be to encourage programs that are meeting regional labor-market needs. Sounds like a “challenge to redesign America's high schools,” right?

The related initiatives President Obama proposed in the State of the Union to promote skills leading to high-quality, high-wage jobs are all ideas he has introduced (with little success) before: a STEM Master Teacher Corps of 10,000 of America’s best teachers and an $8 billion Community College to Career Fund to bolster and improve job training in two-year higher education institutions. Maybe the competition to redesign high schools is old news too.

While it is promising that the administration is focusing on the oft-neglected “career” component of college and career readiness and looking to innovative models like early college high schools, it is hard to say how effective these proposals could be without more details. Unfortunately, the answers likely won’t be provided until the president releases his budget in March. Stay tuned to Ed Money Watch for the all the specifics then. 

In President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, he called on Congress to expand high-quality early learning opportunities to low- and moderate-income children. Today, with the release of a White House document and a speech at a Decatur, Ga. pre-K center, Obama sketched more of the plan’s details.

Tuesday was a big night for early education and higher education. But what about all the education that happens in between? Teachers were mentioned once, but in the context of deficit reduction, not education. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and waivers fared even worse, with nary a word. But never fear, waiver watchers got all the coverage they needed last week from the Senate HELP Committee and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). In a hearing and subsequent CCSSO panel, policymakers and experts debated the early lessons from the waivers and implications for a near- or distant-future NCLB reauthorization.

For those following the waivers, however, the hearings were largely a disappointment – offering few specific insights from year one of implementation. District waivers? Still a possibility. Super subgroups are diluting accountability? Old news. If anything, the discussions mirrored  the HELP Committee markup over a year ago in its attempt at ESEA reauthorization. In fact, we learned more about reauthorization’s prospects than we did about the waivers. The hearing may have promised “lessons learned,” but those lessons depended entirely on who you asked:

Secretary Duncan – obviously – is a big cheerleader for the waivers, as opposed to working with Congress on a reauthorization: “My team and I put in hundreds and hundreds of hours in what proved to be a fruitless effort over the past two years. In all candor, I would like to have gone to waivers earlier.” He highlighted how states are focusing on subjects beyond math and reading, how more schools are being held accountable for student subgroup performance, and how states are promoting teacher quality, instead of credentials.

Although giving states options has benefits, not all states made good choices. As Andy Rotherham asked later, what do waivers look like in the hands of not-so-great state chiefs? Many declined to take advantage of new measures of student growth or postsecondary readiness. Worse, states often backtracked on plans to strengthen graduation rate and subgroup accountability, concerns highlighted by the Alliance for Excellent Education and Education Trust.

Democratic Senators and their allies, including Education Trust’s Kati Haycock, are no fans of NCLB, but have still taken issue with many of the features emerging in states’ waivers: super-subgroups, uneven goals that do not close achievement gaps and are not linked to any consequences, toothless school improvement policies, and more. Unfortunately, these groups are pointing out flaws in states’ waivers, but offering fewer solutions to fix them.

One option is for the Department to require states to amend their waivers if they don’t sufficiently meet the needs of vulnerable students (states can also voluntarily do so, with Department approval). But chiefs, like New Jersey’s Chris Cerf and Kentucky’s Terry Holliday, aren’t keen on the idea of mid-course corrections and more negotiations with ED. Given their reluctance and questions about how to monitor waivers, it seems unlikely that states will make significant changes. This doesn’t mean policymakers won’t learn anything from the waiver experiment, but it may take years for these lessons to be applied.

Another option is to push strongly for reauthorization. But this carries risks for civil rights groups given the preference for local control and even more state flexibility among Republican legislators, state chiefs, and governors. While HELP members like Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) spoke of reauthorization, they appear unable to offer any new solutions that would present a departure from NCLB, recognize the concerns of the civil rights community, and maintain a strong federal role in education.

State schools chiefs, however, are advocating for reauthorization, but for a variety of reasons. First, they point out that many states do not have waivers. To New York Commissioner John King, this means there is no “floor” for state policy to safeguard against poor decisions. Alternatively, Holliday cited the need for long-term stability, because the waivers are subject to the Secretary of Education’s priorities. Regardless, all chiefs would welcome a new NCLB that maintains – or expands – flexibility. And most likely, the level of flexibility in the waivers would be the default starting point for any reauthorization right now. Lawmakers would receive incredible pushback if a new NCLB required states to dramatically alter the plans in which they’ve already invested a great deal of time, energy, and resources.

Republican Senators appear to be aligning most closely with the chiefs on reauthorization – less so in supporting waivers. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) equated the waivers to an inside-the-beltway version of 'Mother May I,’ while Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) lambasted the “regulatory purgatory” the Department created. In particular, Alexander was adamant that the government should not require states to adopt teacher evaluations based on student achievement. In one exchange with King, Alexander pressed: “We only give you 10 percent of your money. Why do I have to come from the mountains of Tennessee to tell New York that’s good for you?” But despite Alexander’s strong opinions, there is no consensus among the minority either – Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) seemed quite pleased with what his state accomplished in their waiver.

In short, reauthorization has not stalled because the waivers are popular. Rather, Republicans cannot make a strong-enough case for the level of local control many in their caucus seek, and Democrats prefer the temporary waiver policy to a decade of local control with little federal oversight. Without a clear alternative to NCLB that also provides a strong, compelling case for federal involvement in education, waivers really are their best choice.

The silver lining, as Bellwether Education Partners' Andy Smarick pointed out, is that with another year, or two, or three of waivers, some actual lessons might emerge that could inform and transform the thinking of those who seek a stronger federal role in K-12 policy – and those that don’t. We’ll be watching for them. Stay tuned.

President Obama’s State of the Union call to expand access to pre-K for low and middle-income four-year olds leaves the early childhood world excited, but with many questions. The biggest: How does the president plan on funding this ambitious proposal? What might he be able to do using just the executive branch, and what would require cooperation from an often-recalcitrant Congress?

In a wide-ranging State of the Union address delivered to the full House and Senate last night, President Obama earned a long applause when he called for a new initiative to “work with states” to expand high-quality preschool to every American child.

Last week we alerted our readers to a call from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education, for comments on their proposal to collect data for the annual State of Preschool Survey. The National Institute for Early Education Research has administered this data collection, which they have used in their invaluable pre-K “yearbooks,” since 2003.

On February 12, 2013, the Early Education Initiative submitted comments in response to a request from the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education on the State of Preschool Survey 2013-2015. The State of Preschool Survey, conducted annually by the National Institute for Early Education Research, is a critical source of data and information for families, researchers and policymakers.

Last week, a district court in Texas ruled in favor of more than 600 Texas school districts, finding that the state’s education finance system is unconstitutional. This is nothing new for Texas – all told, six school finance lawsuits have been tried against the state since 1984, the last in 2005. Each round of lawsuits has prompted the legislature to tinker with the funding formulas. That has added complexity and apparently exacerbated underlying inequities.

Using data and statistics from the New America Foundation’s Federal Education Budget Project (FEBP), we were able to reveal that the inequities across Texas school districts are in fact significant. Worse yet, the inequities have indeed increased over the past several years.

The latest litigation in Texas was brought on by $5.4 billion in cuts that the legislature made to public education in the 2012-13 biennium. The cuts break down into three figures: (1) $2.2 billion from shifting public funds for schools to the 2014-15 biennium; (2) $1.8 billion from assuming no student enrollment growth over the two years; and (3) $1.4 billion from the elimination of programs such as the state pre-kindergarten grant program, as well as reductions in many other public education programs.

While these cuts sparked the latest lawsuit, the districts involved in the suit have indicated that restoring these funds would not be enough to fix the broken system. The court ruled that the state not only provides insufficient funding for education, but that it is unfairly distributed to school districts. In other words, increasing funding through an inequitable formula does not, by definition, make education spending more equitable.

The FEBP data make that abundantly clear. In 2006, per-pupil spending in Texas varied on average 9.3 percent, or $693, from district to district. Three years later in 2009, per-pupil spending varied on average 9.7 percent, or $831, from district to district. And this growing disparity is even more evident at the local level.

Consider Penelope Independent School District. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the Waco-area district is relatively property-poor – it gets only 14 percent of its per-student revenue from local taxes. And overall, it spent just over $9,300 per student in 2009 (slightly above the state average). Meanwhile, Glen Rose Independent School District outside of Dallas received more than 83 percent of its per-pupil revenue from local sources. That district spent more than $11,300 per student in 2009.

But those figures don’t necessarily align with the two districts’ needs. Whereas nearly 75 percent of Penelope ISD’s student body was eligible for free and reduced price lunches (a proxy for student poverty), only about 40 percent of Glen Rose ISD’s students were eligible. Penelope students struggled more in 2009 state achievement tests, too, with only half of fourth-grade students proficient in reading and math, while Glen Rose fourth graders were 88 and 95 percent proficient in reading and math, respectively.

Of course, research has shown that the payoff from spending more money on students is not always improved academic success. But wealthier districts tend to be at an advantage in hiring more experienced teachers and providing extra support services. Fair and equitable funding should be an essential element of state education policies.

The inequalities in Texas’s school finance formulas are mirrored in federal and state funding formulas around the country – and this week’s ruling is just the latest update to a long history of attempts to ensure equal access to quality education.

Click here to search for your state or school district.