Transcript Slide 1

AASA Federal Advocacy Update
Bruce Hunter & Sasha Bartolf
National Conference on Education
Denver, CO
February 17, 2011
Optimism About
finishing ESEA!
• John Kline shares our concern for local
control and thinks that funding IDEA is the
best thing the federal government can do
for public education
• Divided control of the House and Senate opportunity to
• Reformers iron lock on legislative
proposals is broken
Not so fast, my friend
• Many new Members of Congress want:
– Deep budget cuts,
• $100 billion promised - will be less
• the debt ceiling vote
– Vouchers
– Eliminate the Department of Education
• Chairman Kline wants IDEA funding to be
discretionary
Possible Timeline for ESEA
• Out of Senate HELP committee by
Easter
• Through the Senate by June
• To the President by August
– Bethany Little, Chief Education staffer,
Senate HELP Committee
• At least most important parts of ESEA
this year
– James Bergeron, Chief Education staffer,
House Education and Workforce Committee
Title I of ESEA
Purpose?
• Original – supplement local efforts to improve
outcomes for low income students
• NCLB – Control over accountability, assessment,
teacher qualifications, and punishments to:
– Shed light on achievement in general and the
achievement gaps
– Drive change through punishment and negative publicity
about results
• ESEA 2011 - ??
Title I of ESEA
• Provides the most federal $$ to schools
• Definitions control eligibility for ESEA $$
• Accountability controls state testing, reporting &
punishments
• Teacher requirements control hiring, reporting
professional development and punishments
• Rules determine administrative costs for ESEA
Hottest ESEA issue for the 112th
Teachers
• Compensating teachers
– Experience & Degrees
– Student outcomes/effectiveness
• Evaluating teachers primarily by test scores
• Balancing teacher quality
– Across all schools
– By per pupil costs
• Eliminating seniority for assignment
• Alternative certification
– Special education
– Rural isolated districts
Hottest ESEA issue for the 112th
Teachers – Why?
Educational Reasons
• Importance of teachers for improving student
outcomes
Political Reasons
• Reduce the power on unions over local policy
• Reduce the power of unions over state and
national policy and politics
Hot ESEA issue for the 112th
Accountability & Assessment
ESEA 2011
– Higher standards
– Measuring growth is the goal – how?
– Better assessment(s) – how?
– Emphasis on critical thinking and application of
knowledge is a goal
– Maybe multiple measures or sources of evidence
Targeting the bottom 5%
• Administration proposes that districts will have to
choose one of four possible interventions.
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Turnaround
Restart
School Closure
Transformation
• Is this the right target for Title I and the rest of ESEA?
• Do these the models predict the greatest success?
AASA on ESEA
Our Heaviest Lifts
1. Limit the federal oversight to children served with
federal funds – in the case of school wide programs –
schools served by Title I funds
2. Separate Accountability and Assessment for learning
– Accountability assessments focus on growth (value added
if desired) by sampling & including multiple measures
– Instructional assessment includes a variety of methods of
measuring growth, formative, adaptive, embedded
teacher developed, etc., that provide immediate feedback
to teachers and administrators
Other
Hot Issues
• Standardizing public education
– Per pupil expenditures/Comparability
– Teacher contracts
– Standards/curriculum
– Personnel decisions
– Instructional strategies
– Instructional methods
Other policy initiatives within ESEA
Re-Authorization
• Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP)
Re-Authorization
• Language to require LEAs to improve
educational stability for children in foster care
REAP Re-Authorization
• Bill sponsored by Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA)/Kristi
Noem (R-SD), and Sen. Kent Conrad (R-ND)/ Susan
Collins (R-ME) to be re-introduced very soon
• Bill contains the following changes
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Transition to new locale codes
Allow districts to choose between RLIS and SRSA funding
Switch the eligibility poverty measure
Shift in the sliding formula from $20,000 to $25,000 and
$60,000 to $80,000.
Beefing up the Rural Education
Caucuses
• Find out if your representatives are on the
House and Senate Rural Education Caucus
• Key to countering Chicago-centric Department
perspective
• Fighting competitive grants
Foster Care
It all started with the Fostering Connections Act of
2008…
The old players: Senate Finance Committee
The new players: Senate HELP Committee
The good guys: AASA, Council of Great City Schools
The bad guys: The American Bar Association, The
Children’s Defense Fund
What they are claiming
• Schools don’t want to help foster kids
• Schools don’t work well with Child Welfare
agencies
• Unless schools are legally required to help kids
and work with child welfare agencies, schools
won’t do anything to help children in foster
care
What we are saying
• Thanks for never telling us about Fostering
Connections and then blaming us for not acting
on its provisions
• Most districts have great relationships with folks
at HHS
• There’s no reason for a new bill when we don’t
even know the old one exists
Fantasy vs. reality
What they want most
Language in ESEA that requires
schools to pay for transportation
for foster care kids and
immediately enroll them before
we have education records and
keep them at their school of
origin if that’s what’s best for the
kids regardless of transportation
difficulties and costs that may
arise as a result
What they could get
Legislation in ESEA that
requires states to create a
plan that is consistent with
Fostering Connections;
Secretaries of both agencies
must approve plans; failure
to compromise leaves $
decision to Governor
What is going to happen
Our GOP allies will not support any new bill or bill language; they
understand schools did not know about Fostering Connections and
want to provide training and support for schools to learn about this
bill and its requirements
If in two years time, child welfare groups can claim schools aren’t
improving education stability for children in foster care, we could
have to support a large bill with lots of regulations regarding
enrollment, liasions, etc. that exempts us from paying for foster kid
transportation. (This bill is already written and is called “Fostering
Success in Education”)
NO MATTER WHAT
• We cannot leave it to the states to decide which agency
pays for transportation.
• We run the risk of governors requiring schools to provide
McKinney Vento transportation services (this is already a
case in West Virginia) for children in foster care.
• Funding to provide transportation is not guaranteed nor
likely.
Funding IDEA
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Bill to fully fund IDEA
John Kline – our hero?
CR cuts $557.7 million
Obama increases 200 million
Blended Funding Stream?
Child Nutrition
Legislation passed during Lame Duck Session
in December 2010
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6 cent increase in reimbursement in 2013
Required staff development
Required certification of directors
New standards for food quality
Fines for non compliance
Secretary to issue guidance limiting indirect rates
Feds set the price for paid lunches
E-Rate
Opportunities for changes to program:
Re-authorization of the Telecommunications Act
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Remove 2.25 billion cap on E-Rate funding
• Permanent exemption from the ADA for E-Rate
Vouchers
• Bill to expand and re-authorize the D.C. voucher
program was introduced by Speaker Boehner and Sen.
Joe Lieberman in January
• House Education Committee held hearing last week
where vouchers were prominently discussed
• Senate Armed Services report on whether a national
voucher program is needed for special-education
students in military families
What we have going for us
National Coalition for Public Education is working 24/7 to fight
these vouchers; coalition includes education, civil rights and
religious groups who have ties to many members
Tight fiscal environment; hard to push for any new or
expanded programs
The Senate is still Democratically controlled; they voted twice
to re-authorize the voucher program last session and it failed
both times
Medicaid
Anticipate regulatory changes to parental consent
requirement
• Option 1: Rescind consent requirement entirely
• Option 2: Require consent to be given only a time
of enrollment and require schools to notify
parents that they are seeking reimbursement each
year
Criminal Background Checks
Legislation would require LEAs to perform the following checks periodically
on all school employees:
• A search of the State criminal registry or repository in the State in which the
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school employee resides and each State in which such school employee previously
resided;
A search of State-based child abuse and neglect registries and databases in the
State in which the school employee resides and each State in which such school
employee previously resided;
A search of the National Crime Information Center of the Department of Justice;
A search of Federal Bureau of Investigation fingerprint check system using the
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System; and
A search of the National Sex Offender Registry established under section 19 of the
Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (42 U.S.C. 16919)
Questions? Concerns?
Questions? Concerns?
Bruce Hunter
[email protected]
Sasha Bartolf
[email protected]