Title I-derland

Night of the Living Reauthorization

October 31, 2011 – 3:57 pm | By Andrew Brownstein | 2 comments

Brains? We got ‘em. For the third time, our “best and the brightest” in education policy have assembled to peer into the future of ESEA reauthorization, which seems, zombie-like, to have re-emerged from the dead. Before we play with that particular Ouija board, however, it’s important to remember that the future seldom looks quite like we expect it to. Back in 2007, during the first big bout of reauthorization hysteria, the two big predictions were: growth models would be embedded in law (still guaranteed true) and that NCLB’s universal proficiency deadline in 2014 would remain in force (oops!). With that caveat, we offer you a Halloween treat. The recent passage of an ESEA reauthorization bill out of the Senate HELP committee marks the furthest such a piece of legislation has travelled since No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2001. So we went back to the well and asked five of the country’s leading ed experts what the chances are of seeing an ESEA reauthorization before the presidential election in 2012. The ground has noticeably shifted. Of our five experts, three still don’t see it happening, but their pessimism is not as certain as it once was, and the other two think it will happen, but they aren’t too sure either. Here they are in their own words: Ellen Forte, the president and founder of EdCount, an educational consulting firm: “I think the administration’s waiver package may have its intended effect of spurring action on ESEA. It is also likely to have the effect of limiting future Secretarys’ ability to use their discretion when implementing education legislation. I’m not sure it will be worth it. It’s not much of a deal to offer states a choice between AYP and a test-based teacher evaluation system. Both are based on rhetoric rather than evidence of effectiveness in improving schools and neither will make a dent in the issues facing our most challenged students.” [She added: “I’m going to say yes, but I really think that’s only possible if it happens quickly. Once we’re into the new year I think the likelihood will approach zero.”] Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy and formerly a long-time Democratic staffer on the House education committee: “Let me start by saying that I could easily be wrong. There are strong reasons why a bill may make it through. The main factors pushing for reauthorization are Duncan’s move to grant waivers, strong local discontent with NCLB, and Obama and some other politicians wanting to show they delivered before the election. Those factors may be enough to overcome the policy and political differences in Congress, but I don’t think so. “The factors against a bill are the lack of time late in the congressional schedule, the opposition of conservative Republicans to any significant federal role, and the lack of willingness to compromise by those same Republicans. In the Senate committee, seven of the Republicans voted against and only three for the bill. During that debate, Sen. Harkin and the Obama administration accepted Republican amendments watering the bill down in order to get those three votes. On the Senate floor, they will have to further weaken the bill to get enough Republican support to overcome a filibuster. And the Senate bill will be stronger than any House- passed bill. The Republicans in the House think more like the seven senators who voted no than they do like the three who voted yes. So, if the House Republicans can agree on any bill, it will have little accountability. Then comes the conference committee. I don’t see all that happening in the year before the election. So, my conclusion is no.” Leigh Manasevit, founding partner with the Brustein & Manasevit law firm:  “Before the recent Harkin bill, I gave reauthorization before the election a 0 percent chance. I now believe that there is a fairly high likelihood that the Senate will pass this bill in the near future. However, the House Education Committee does not have a comprehensive bill, and I do not see the House just accepting a version of the Senate bill. My thinking is based on legislative pride at developing a House bill, concern by Chairman Kline that there has not been sufficient consideration in the House yet, and finally political partisanship – even though this is a bi-partisan Senate bill, I foresee House  Republican resistance . However, I would up the percentage of possible passage to around 20 percent.” Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a top ED official under President George W. Bush: “I think there's a 50-50 chance of an ESEA bill being enacted before the 2012 elections. The contours of a bill that could pass both chambers is in sight — it looks a lot like the package put together by Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and Richard Burr. That represents a mid-point between Harkin-Enzi and what is likely to emerge from the House. It mostly represents a rollback of NCLB's overreach, without abdicating the federal role entirely. “Democrats are clearly eager to pass an ESEA reauthorization (as witnessed by their unanimous vote in the Senate HELP committee). And enough Republicans will go along if the final product is close to Alexander-Burr. And the president will sign it. “If our leaders can't get this done within the next 12 months, shame on them.” [When pressed to pick a side, Petrilli put himself cautiously in the “yea” column.] Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and partner with Bellwether Education and one-time education advisor to President Bill Clinton: “No. The odds have certainly increased that reauthorization can happen prior to November 2012, probably to about one in three.  But a number of real obstacles remain — disagreements on substance, the reticence of Republicans to hand the President a political victory, other more pressing legislative issues, an abbreviated election year calendar, and the general dysfunction plaguing Washington.” What do you think? Will it happen? Or will we see yet another sequel? Should we be afraid (very afraid) either way?

A Match.com for Innovation

October 28, 2011 – 2:49 pm | By David DeSchryver | No comments yet

This week, Michele McNeil reported on the strong demand for the second round of the Investing in Innovation program, known as the i3 grant. According to the latest statistics, which you can find at ed.data.gov, there are 587 applicants with projects tallying nearly $3 billion, vying for $150 million in awards. Most of the applicants have been here before. Three hundred of them competed in the first round of funding, which totaled $650 million to 49 winners out of 1,698 applicants. The competition is pretty intense. The grant’s matching requirement adds to the intensity. Last year, the grant required a 20 percent match from winning applicants. Given that some these projects ran into the millions of dollars, this required some sophisticated networking— all the more if the applicant was in a population dense area where applicants far outnumbered funders.  This year, applicants do not have to run-down a 20-percent private-sector match, but obtain matching funds (or in-kind donations) equal to at least 5, 10 or 15 percent of their grant award, depending on the type of grant. The thresholds are more reasonable, but the process still difficult. To relieve some of the pressure, 12 national foundations committed $500 million to supporting the effort. That included the building of the Foundation Registry. In my opinion, this one of the coolest innovations of the Innovations grants. Think of the registry as a Match.com for school districts and funders. It makes relationships (and crazy weekends — no judgments here) easier to find. At first, such an online model was awkward — I mean, who wants to go on a blind-date with someone they met “on-line”? But once the process proved fruitful, the stigma went away… and how. Consider the booming growth of dating sites over the last 10 years. It’s been insane (and why didn’t I invest in that?!). Fifteen years ago, Match.com was an idea that everyone mocked. It now boasts over 1.4 million members paying at least $30 per month just for the opportunity to meet someone. The demand was clearly there, and I think we all knew it even if we mocked it. So, too, with education funding. The Foundation Registry is onto something big. School districts need funding. They do not have the means or will to shop their programs and ideas to each philanthropy and foundation. On the flip side, few foundations have the sophistication or will to weed out innovative and effective programs across thousands of schools districts. The need for the registry for the i3 grant and beyond is incredibly obvious, maybe even more so than Match.com was 15 years ago. As with Match.com, some districts and funders were initially skeptical about the registry, but there is good reason to believe that resistance will melt over time. I see this as the emergence of a new way to fund the good ideas of districts that may otherwise have been lost in the shuffle. If your district is an i3 applicant, you would be crazy not to submit your application into the system for this funding cycle. If your district is not an applicant, make sure to keep your eye on the registry and get ready to join when it moves from a limited i3 stage to something more ambitious. Photo Credit: bizbarcelona

Arne vs. The Rules

October 26, 2011 – 8:34 am | By Chuck Edwards | 1 comment

One of the overlooked features of Duncan’s new ESEA waiver package is the fact that there is no new money in it. Yet state and local educational agencies are supposed to implement a host of intensive interventions in “priority” schools, defined roughly as the bottom 5 percent of Title I schools in the state. So, where does the money come from? Answer: The huge pot of funds “freed up” by eliminating the 20 percent set-aside for public school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) required under No Child Left Behind. (In particular, see Q&As B-10 and C-42 in the official ESEA Flexibility Frequently Asked Questions.) The problem is, by the department’s traditional enforcement norms, that money is not available for discretionary allocation by LEAs. The rules that govern an LEA’s allocation of Title I funds to schools are based strictly on poverty; that is, the more low-income kids a school serves, the more funds it gets. School achievement has no role in this process. The 20 percent set-aside for choice and SES was explicitly reserved for district-level use, so it was exempt from the regular school allocation process (as well as rules requiring that private schools an “equitable share” of the funds). But eliminating the set-aside puts that money back into the regular allocation pot. LEAs do have some discretion to retain funds at the district level to conduct “district-wide” programs serving all Title I schools. These typically consist of circuit-rider type programs, where specialists based at the district headquarters visit Title I schools as needed to provide technical assistance. But, as Nancy Connor noted recently, the Education Department recently has been cracking down on LEAs that dole out funds or resources from “district reservations” to certain Title I schools outside of the poverty allocation process. For example, you can’t just reserve funds at the district level and use them to provide extra computers or staff to a select group of low-achieving schools, unless those resources are allocated in conformance with school poverty. The new flexibility package seems to ignore these rules or — at the least — signal a new enforcement regime. For example, the guidance requires support for the implementation of extended learning programs in priority schools, even though allocation of extra funds for augmented instructional programs like this historically has been regarded by ED as an end-run around allocation rules, and worthy of rebuke. (Of course, many priority schools may happen to be the highest-poverty schools, in which case, there is no problem with giving them extra funds; but this will not always be the case.) It is no secret that Secretary Arne Duncan is impatient with Title I’s rigid allocation rules. The ESEA prohibits waiving allocations to states and school districts, but it does not explicitly prohibit waiving rules for "within-district" allocations to schools. But waiving these rules on a wholesale basis would have opened a huge political can of worms, and he chose not to do it.  The result is that ED is urging SEA and LEA leaders to exert more control over reform in the worst-performing schools even as the department is hewing to a traditional interpretation of allocation rules that prevents those leaders from spending funds where they feel best. One alternative is for the department to finally clarify the circumstances in which funds may be allocated directly to schools outside of the normal poverty-driven process. Otherwise, once the waivers go into effect, look for increasing conflict at the local level, as school superintendents try to direct more funds to their priority schools, only to be told by their Title I grant managers — or the Office of Inspector General — “You can’t do that.” Photo credit: Andy Steel

Dream the Impossible Dream

October 25, 2011 – 8:00 am | By Andrew Brownstein | 1 comment

In our last post on the Equity and Excellence Commission, we noted the resurgence of interest in a long-forgotten artifact of the Nixon administration: a plan to do away with the funding of schools via local property taxes. It was a bold plan, one that might have, once and for all, ended the uniquely American system in which the quality of one’s education depends largely on your zip code. Whatever interest Nixon had in pursuing this objective, however, was eclipsed by Watergate, and the plan never took root. Almost forty years later, we’re still talking — and talking, and talking — about the fundamental inequality in our schools. As the equity commission meets again tomorrow, one safe bet is that its final report will be nowhere near as radical as the proposal a Republican president put forward in 1974. That fact illustrates not only how much our politics have changed in the past decades, but how much the ground has shifted even in the past year. Here’s how Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, described the diminished expectations during the commission’s previous meeting in September: “We’re acting as if it’s going to be easy to get the federal government to do more on these issues, and the reality is we’ll be lucky to get them to do as much as they have.” Talk about buzz kill! Some members of the commission want to vastly expand the federal share of education funding, from its current rate of 9 percent to as much as 30 percent of total school spending. The argument is that a larger federal hand in education would diminish the influence of property taxes on school quality. Haycock held out little hope for such a proposal in the current Congress. “We all know that if we put out a series of 80 recommendations, all of which have to do with money, in this economic climate it will be dead on arrival,” she said. The topic revealed a fissure between those members pursuing a series of less ambitious but probably more feasible policy objectives and those who want to overhaul the basic architecture of education finance — no matter how quixotic that might be in the current environment. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, argued that it’s the commission’s job to take principled stands that could get President Obama or Secretary Duncan in hot water. “A commission is designed to confront those things that day to day are difficult for the secretary or the president to confront,” he said. He urged members to think past the current political season, even if it means their plan isn’t realized for another 10-20 years. He said he had “a fundamental problem with being intimidated by dissonance in the political environment, because the political environment is not static.” That said, “We’re going to fix the problem twenty years from now!” is unlikely to be an inspiring rallying cry. This blog post is adapted from a larger article that appears in the November Title I Monitor.

Stop Jerking Us Around!

October 24, 2011 – 8:00 am | By Chuck Edwards | No comments yet

The latest congressional funding fiasco might legitimately prompt local school administrators to yell “Stop jerking us around!” With almost no notice, the current temporary funding bill (or "continuing resolution") designed to buy time for Congress to finish up its long-awaited FY 2012 appropriations bills sliced funding for the current school year 2011-12 by $329 million. The cuts were distributed as follows:

• Title I grants to LEAs = $163 million
• Title II Teacher Quality State Grants = $25 million
• IDEA Section 611 grants to states = $129 million
• Career and Technical Education State Grants = $12 million

(Although the nominal amount of the cuts was 1.5 percent, budget peculiarities mean that the actual reduction was more in the neighborhood of 1.2 percent.) As a result of this retroactive cut, school districts that are already two months into their programs have to revisit their budgets and find hours to cut back, contracts to cancel or purchases to defer. In Washington, the cuts largely flew under the radar because of the complexity of the bill and the rapid pace of negotiations required to put it together before the new federal fiscal year began Oct. 1. State educational agencies got an inkling of the coming bad news in emails from the U.S. Department of Education in late September, followed by an official notice a few days later. The Committee for Education Funding, an umbrella lobbying group representing numerous different education associations, sent a letter Oct. 14 asking Congress to restore the cuts when the final funding bill for school year 2012-13 is enacted. Among other arguments, they correctly point out that draft legislation before the House actually would increase funding for Title I and IDEA next year — which makes the retroactive cuts seem puzzling. Whether Congress will have any appetite for restoring the funds that were cut, or simply regard the issue as water over the dam, is unclear at this point. But this kind of after-the-fact revision inevitably prompts frustration among state and local authorities who have real-world programs to run.    

Hark(in)! The Lessons of 2007

October 21, 2011 – 3:27 pm | By David DeSchryver | No comments yet

The ESEA has not seen this kind of action since 2007. Back then, House education committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., introduced a “discussion draft” to overhaul No Child Left Behind. The response was unanimous: everyone hated it. They beat it like piñata. Despite the opposition, then-Chairman Miller fought hard to preserve his “draft.” The conspiring forces and the pressure of an upcoming presidential election, however, were too great. The process crumbled and the unions turned against the proposed merit pay provisions. As a result, Miller never formally introduced the bill in the House. The Senate education committee, led by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., (with Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin acting as his Democratic deputy), watched the bloodletting from afar. Fast forward to a week ago. Sen. Harkin, now the chairman of the Senate education committee, floated a long-awaited draft of an ESEA reauthorization bill. The draft version contained ambitious provisions, including teacher and principal evaluation requirements that resembled those in the administration’s Race to the Top program. In particular, the proposal required the evaluation policies to account for student academic growth, with the evaluations to be used for job-review purposes. The early language also included growth models that would require students to be on track to be the “college and career ready” in three-years. That draft version did not survive the weekend. The teachers unions and other groups ripped Harkin for the teacher evaluation policies and prescriptive growth models. Memories of 2007 must have come rushing back, because Harkin did not put up a fight. Instead, he officially introduced a revised bill, stripping out the tough teacher evaluation language and proficiency deadlines for the growth models. This, of course, brought the proponents of stricter accountability measures and teacher evaluations to their feet. How could Harkin do this? And where was the support for Secretary Duncan and tougher federal accountability? (Not in the Senate chamber is your answer.) As Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute put it, the civil rights groups got “rolled.” And just like that, the Senate education committee approved the revised version of the bill Thursday night. It was a grueling day. Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., for example, tried without success to introduce amendments that would’ve set proficiency goals for students — trying to get back some accountability within a deadline attached. It was not, however, a day to stress about details. From my perspective, Harkin acted on the key lesson of 2007: On the eve of a presidential election year, always value action over detail. The details eventually will emerge from the ugliness of floor amendments, House action and conference negotiations. There is a lot of play left. But none of that is possible until something gets out of committee. Well, now it’s out there. We have something very tangible to discuss and debate. Harkin’s most difficult challenge — starting the process —  is behind him. Photo Credit: Jason Toal

Trigger Happy?

October 19, 2011 – 4:46 pm | By Andrew Brownstein | 6 comments

From the Unintended Consequences Dept.: The recently announced NCLB waivers — you know, the ones that were supposed to provide “flexibility” so states may become “engines of innovation” — may shut down a nascent state-led effort to give parents more control when their children’s schools are low-performing. The controversial “parent trigger” laws kick in when a school has reached an advanced stage of improvement under NCLB’s cascading accountability regimen and allow parents to pursue radical interventions if a majority of them sign a petition demanding them. For example, when a school in Compton, Calif., went into corrective action, parents used the law to petition to reopen it as a charter school. Similar laws exist in Texas, Ohio and Connecticut and are being considered in a dozen other states. For states that opt for waivers, however, corrective action (and other NCLB sanctions) will be a thing of the past. In an interview, Carmel Martin, ED’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy said that states with laws that cross-reference NLCB — including those with “parent trigger” legislation — will have to change those laws in order to implement the waiver. The change would not be necessary to apply or pass peer review, but must be done by the end of the current school year to access the flexibility. “In order to be free of [the] 2014 [deadline] and the current school improvement, corrective action and restructuring framework, states will have to demonstrate the capacity to execute against their new plan,” she said. “In those instances, the department would provide flexibility with the condition that the state would revise their current law before they can fully act on the flexibility.” The parent trigger laws aren’t perfect, and the California version appears to have had a rocky start. But if the goal of the waivers is to support state innovation, it seems strange to risk stifling a plan that puts school improvement solutions in the hands of parents in favor of one that is prescribed from Washington. Frequent Title I-Derland contributor David DeSchryver, vice president of education policy at Whiteboard Advisors, put it this way: “It is not in the interest of the administration to undermine the hard work of parents at the state level.” This post is adapted from a longer analysis of the administration’s NCLB waiver package to appear in the November issue of the Title I Monitor.