Education Week

“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)

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… more

(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… more

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… more

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 more

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… more

... 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… more

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… more

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… more

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… more