Announcements:
President Obama delivered his third State of the Union address on January 25 and called for three things in particular that he says are critical to “winning the future”: innovation, EDUCATION, and infrastructure. Of Obama’s key statements on education, he said, “Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.” He also explicitly called on Congress to “fix” No Child Left Behind (though he didn’t request a timeline), and to model it after the Race to the Top competitive grant program that allowed more flexibility for states to implement innovative changes in teacher evaluation, tenure, and technology, among other things.
President Obama is expected to release his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Request the week of February 14. Stay tuned for news from NASSP on this, and what it means for education. One thing in the budget we can expect is an investment in STEM funding, based on Obama’s remarks in the State of the Union and the following statement from the White House: “The President’s plan will invest $80 million to expand promising and effective models of teacher preparation, which will help train 10,000 more effective STEM teachers per year… The President’s plan will invest $20 million in research that will improve our understanding of how to best recruit, prepare and retain the best STEM teachers.”
Last week I mentioned that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has declared he wants to abolish the Department of Education because he sees no place for federal involvement in education. Sen. Paul sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and actually just introduced a bill reflecting his desire to eliminate federal education funding: www.randpaul2010.com [pdf]. This bill (S. 162) eliminates funding for all Department of Education programs except for maintaining $16.256 billion for Pell. This bill suggests that the federal government de-fund Title I, IDEA, Impact Aid, career/technical/adult ed, teacher quality programs, TRIO, GEAR-UP, campus-based aid, student loans, research, etc. So far there are no cosponsors on this bill, and we hope there end up being none!
News
USDA Issues New Nutrition Standards for School Lunches
In compliance with new nutrition standards set out by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has published a proposed rule to increase the level of nutrition in school lunches. The proposal seeks to align school lunch standards with those recommended by the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans”, which recommends a diet consisting of nutrient-dense foods for the promotion of healthy growth and development. In order to achieve this goal, lunches would include a higher proportion of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while at the same time limiting levels of calories, saturated fats, trans fats, and sodium. Read more on our Principals’ Policy Blog: www.principalspolicyblog.org.
Bipartisan Push For ESEA Reauthorization Looks Possible
Following President Obama’s appeal in the State of the Union address to “fix” No Child Left Behind, key Congressional education leaders seem poised to work with the White House to reauthorize this major education bill. “I don’t want to make it sound like it’s going to be a piece of cake or too easy,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a leading Republican on education issues, following the State of the Union address. But, he added, “I look forward to coming up with a consensus to fix the problems” with the NCLB law. Read more here: www.edweek.org.
Department of Education Posts “Data Dashboard” As Attempt at Transparency and Accountability
At an education stakeholder’s meeting this past Monday, Department of Education officials introduced the newly posted “Data Dashboard” (version 1.0), which lists 16 indicators of U.S. education achievement and progress. Users can use these indicators, like the percent of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool comparing 2005-07 data to 2006-08, or the percent of freshmen graduating from high school within 4 years comparing 2006-07 data to 2007-08, and can dig further into data to see state comparisons, charts of the results, and a breakdown of the data by ethnicity. Officials said that this is just version 1.0, and they will continue to add more indicators that prove rigorous in their statistical accuracy, and relevant to the national conversation of educational benchmarks for our country. Check out the Data Dashboard here: dashboard.ed.gov and read a commentary about its quality from two Education Week writers here: www.edweek.org.
Research
Study Identifies Effective Teacher Evaluation Practices
A report on the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) from the National Institute for Excellence in Teachings finds that evaluator training, classroom teacher involvement, and a thorough feedback mechanism count as the top priorities to integrate in effective evaluation systems. TAP is a comprehensive teacher compensation, career advancement, professional development, and evaluation system that 11 states have adopted to serve more than 10,000 teachers. You can read all recommendations in this report, More than Measurement: The TAP System’s Lessons Learned for Designing Bet ter Teacher Evaluation Systems, here: tapsystem.org [pdf].
Resources:
I encourage you all to see the documentary Race to Nowhere, which showcases the pressures on students of high-stakes testing, and questions the purposes of such intensive testing when the curriculum and assessments do not teach and measure what we truly need to teach and measure students to best prepare them for 21st century careers. Check out the film here (www.racetonowhere.com) and look up upcoming screenings in your area here: www.racetonowhere.com.
