Education Week

MaryEllen McGuire in Education Week | ' K-12 Issues Will Await President'

Articles — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:36:00 -0500

New America in the News:
“There can be a case to be made that education becomes the vehicle that helps fuel the economy,” said MaryEllen McGuire, the director of the Education Policy Program of the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “Education is the building block, and we can’t lose sight of that now.” LINK (subscription required)

Sara Mead in Education Week | ' Congress Approves New HEA'

Communications — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:58:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The bill would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which was last renewed in 1998 and has been due for an overhaul since 2003. The HEA governs a broad swath of federal student-aid and other college-level programs.

In addition to tweaking the law’s teacher-training elements, the bill simplifies the main federal student-aid application from seven to three pages and alters eligibility and evaluation components of the college-access programs known as TRIO.

Congress approved the bill on July 31, two days after a conference committee hammered out remaining differences between the House and Senate versions. The bill next heads to the president, who is expected to sign it.

Observers noted that the stiffer teacher-college accountability pieces constitute one of the few parts of the bill to focus on a concrete student-outcome variable, such as test scores.

“The vast majority of the [higher education accountability] debate is focused on college costs and money—the finance piece, rather than focusing on the outcomes we’re getting for that money,” said Sara Mead, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. LINK (subscription required)

Education Program event in Education Week | 'Obama/McCain Advisers Debate'

Communications — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:01:00 -0400

New America in the News:
(Campaign K-12)-Today the forum was the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank and the advisers were the Ubiquitous Lisa Graham Keegan, a former Arizona schools chief, appearing on behalf of Sen. John McCain's campaign, and Jon Schnur, who heads up New Leaders for New Schools and is informally advising the Sen. Barack Obama's campaign (along with just about every other Education Dem).

Neither covered much new territory on K-12 education, and neither one seemed eager to address the 800- pound gorilla in the room: No Child Left Behind. At one point, Keegan sounded incredulous that nearly every question she's asked on the campaign trail "pivots around NCLB" as if that is "the universe of education."

For an inside-the-Beltway education reporter like me, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act pretty much is the "universe of education" since that's the main federal lever for shaping K-12 policy. But maybe I'm too Washington-focused or maybe it's just too complex or too much of a political hot potato to talk about on the campaign trail. Anyway, there were no mentions today of deadlines, or sanctions, or staggered testing, or anything else for which the devil is in the details. But both reiterated their candidate's support for some federal accountability based around testing, and Schnur talked up Obama's plans to improve the quality of assessments. LINK to Blog

Michael Dannenberg in Education Week on NCLB Funding

Communications — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:29:00 -0500

New America in the News:

For all of this year’s debate about the future of testing, accountability, and other policy issues around the No Child Left Behind Act, virtually no one has brought up the question of how best to give out billions of dollars a year under the law.

Until 2001, debate over the allocation of funding often dominated efforts to revise the main federal K-12 law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Members of Congress concentrated on how to distribute money to the point, sometimes, of overshadowing other policy discussions.

But that hasn’t been the case in the early work to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law, the current version of the ESEA, even though the nearly 6-year-old law has dramatically shifted the distribution of money under the $12.8 billion Title I program for disadvantaged students. The changes have benefited the nation’s largest cities, as well as suburban areas with pockets of poverty.

“The increase in targeting of federal aid in NCLB is a success story that nobody knows about,” said Michael Dannenberg, the director of the education policy program for the Washington-based New America Foundation. In 2001, Mr. Dannenberg worked as an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and who advocated a formula that helped districts with large concentrations or numbers of students eligible for Title I services. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

Sara Mead Featured in Education Week on 10 Ways to Tweak NCLB

Communications — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:47:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Spend Unused NCLB's Tutoring Funds on PreK, Mead Says

Yesterday at the New America Foundation, Sara Mead released a list of 10 ways NCLB could be tweaked to bolster prekindergarten programs. In a panel discussion, which I moderated, she highlighted three items:

Require districts to use their unspent money for tutoring and choice on preK in schools that are in need of improvement;
Allow schools required to restructure to transform into "early education academies" serving preK-3; and
Expand Reading First so districts can use the money for preK literacy.

The ideas aren't meant to be a comprehensive preK agenda, Mead said. They can be "a bridge to get to places that people want to go to get a greater federal investment," she said. ...

For the complete story, please follow this link. Audio from the panel discussion is available here.

Sara Mead in Education Week on 'The Next Education President'

Communications — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:14:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The candidates for the 2008 presidential nominations have not been as detailed about education policy as in some recent elections. But that doesn’t mean the stakes of the Democratic and Republican races aren’t high for K-12 schools. ...

As the campaign edges closer to the stage when votes are cast, candidates will start answering those questions in more detail, suggests Marc Lampkin, the executive director of Strong American Schools, a nonpartisan effort aimed at encouraging the presidential candidates to lay out their plans for K-12 education. The Washington-based effort is financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation.

"They know the electorate is starting to look a little deeper at them,” said Mr. Lampkin, a Republican who worked on President Bush’s 2000 campaign and has worked for GOP members of Congress.

But others believe that school issues will continue to be eclipsed by other concerns.

“It’s hard for education to get a lot of attention in this climate,” said Sara Mead, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, a [nonpartisan] think tank in Washington.

What little policy debate over education has occurred so far has focused on prekindergarten and college.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has emerged as the Democratic front-runner, according to national opinion polls, has proposed spending $10 billion a year to expand pre-K programs for 4-year-olds and expand existing tax credits to offset the costs of college tuition so low-income families can take advantage of them.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., wants to provide $5 billion in state grants to double participation in federal Head Start preschool programs and quadruple the number of students in Early Head Start. He, too, would expand tax credits and financial aid to help make college more affordable.

Two other Democrats, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, also have proposed major expansions of the federal role in early-childhood education.

By contrast, the Republican candidates generally haven’t put forward proposals on early education or college aid. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is an exception. He wants to establish a federal program that would pay the tuition costs at in-state colleges and universities for high-performing students. The program would be modeled after one he helped create in Massachusetts. ...

For the complete article, please visit the Education Week website.

Heather Rieman in Education Week on Federal Education Spending

Communications — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:52:00 -0400

New America in the News:

... The 2008 fiscal year began Oct. 1. Congress has passed a measure that continued to finance most federal programs at fiscal 2007 levels until mid-November.

If President Bush follows through on his threat, Democrats in Congress would likely attempt to override a veto of the Labor-HHS-Education bill, but most observers say it doesn’t appear that congressional leaders would have the necessary two-thirds majority.

The House approved the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill by a vote of 276-140 on July 19. More than 140 GOP lawmakers signed a letter, sent to President Bush in May, pledging to support any presidential vetoes on spending bills.

Still, a handful of those Republicans then voted for the education spending bill, so it may be difficult to predict how many lawmakers would agree to sustain a veto, said Heather Rieman, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

If Congress could not override a veto, the administration and congressional leaders would have to work out a compromise on spending—or agree to continue financing education programs at fiscal 2007 spending levels through the rest of the 2008 fiscal year. ...

For the complete article, please visit Education Week's website.

Michael Dannenberg on National Standards in Education Week

Communications — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:20:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The politically sensitive idea of increasing the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to standards set at the national level is getting a push from prominent lawmakers as Congress moves to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act as early as this year.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee and a newly announced candidate for president, introduced a bill with Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., last week that would provide incentives for states to adopt voluntary “American education content standards” in mathematics and science, to be developed by the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress...

The Dodd-Ehlers bill—called the Standards to Provide Educational Achievement for all Kids, or SPEAK, Act—would authorize grants of up to $4 million each for states that adopted the new math and science standards as the core of their own state content standards...

The standards debate is arising in the context of renewing the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, due to happen this year. Whether a standards bill could be considered apart from that reauthorization, which many doubt will happen on time, remains to be seen.

Michael Dannenberg, the director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank that co-sponsored the event with Sen. Dodd, spoke strongly in favor of voluntary national standards.

“The country is on an inexorable march toward national education standards,” Mr. Dannenberg said. “The question is no longer if, but when and how...”

For the complete article, please visit the Education Week website.

Michael Dannenberg on National Standards in Education Week

Communications — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:15:00 -0500

New America in the News:

As Congress moves to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act as early as this year, at least one topic will be high on the list: increasing the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to those set at the national level...

On Monday, Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, the committee's second-ranking Democrat and a potential presidential contender, introduced a bipartisan bill with Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., that would go a step further by providing incentives for states to adopt voluntary "American education content standards" in mathematics and science, to be developed by the governing board for NAEP...

Incentives for States

The Dodd-Ehlers bill, the Standards to Provide Educational Achievement for all Kids, or SPEAK Act, would require the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, to create voluntary national education standards in math and science for grades K-12 and ensure that they are internationally competitive. States could compete for grants of up to $4 million each to adopt the math and science standards as the core of their own state content standards.

States that won the awards would have to align their state tests in math and science with the standards and with NAEP achievement levels in those subjects. They also would have to align teacher licensure, preparation, and professional-development requirements with the new standards.

As a further incentive to adopt the voluntary national standards, the bill would permit the U.S. secretary of education to extend the 2014 deadline for states to get all students to the proficient level on state reading and math tests under the NCLB law by up to four years. In addition, states that fulfilled the grant requirements would be eligible for additional bonus grants, equal to 5 percent of their Title I allocation under the federal law, to develop data systems that can track individual student performance over time...

'An Inexorable March'?

"The country is on an inexorable march toward national education standards," said Michael Dannenberg, the director of the education policy program at the Washington-based New America Foundation. "The question is no longer if, but when and how."

At the Monday event, which was co-sponsored by New America Foundation, Sen. Dodd played down differences between the two bills, saying that there are a variety of bills focused on raising education standards "is very encouraging..."

For the complete article, please visit the Education Week website.

America’s Million-Dollar Superintendents

Articles — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:49:00 -0500

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the financial statements of public companies, has rigorous rules requiring the disclosure of compensation for senior executives. These rules should serve as a model for the disclosure of compensation for public school employees, especially superintendents.

The SEC’s rules were gradually built up in response to frequently recurring scandals revealing that, absent forced government disclosure, corporate CEOs, often with the tacit approval of their boards of directors, have strong incentives to secretly pay themselves above market compensation at shareholder expense. For each of the top five highest-paid executives in a public company, the SEC… more