Professional Oklahoma Educators

NCLB Legislation from the House Education and Labor Committee Start of School for the Recovery School District U.S. DoEd Awards $13.3 Million in Grants to Help Early Childhood Educators Collective Bargaining Legislation in Colorado The New Teacher Project Record Enrollment in Schools Projected

NCLB Legislation from the House Education and Labor Committee
Recently the House Education and Labor Committee released draft legislation for the revised version of No Child Left Behind. The draft is a reflection of the numerous hearings that were held earlier this year on No Child Left Behind. Some of the key issues addressed in the legislation are growth models, special education, multiple assessments, school improvement, and college and work-ready standards and assessments.

Growth Models

Under the proposed legislation, principles for growth models are established, rather than a specific growth model, in an effort to allow states the flexibility to create their own growth model system. The criteria for growth models include:

• Continuing the expectation that all students in each subgroup will be proficient by 2013-2014 or be on a trajectory for proficiency within 3 years

• Establishing annual measurable objectives that are based upon the state’s proficient levels and not upon individual student background characteristics

• Establishing separate, measurable growth targets for mathematics and reading/language arts

• Ensuring all students who take the state’s assessment are included in the state’s accountability system

• Including comparable results from grade-to-grade and year-to-year within the definition of AYP

• Including rates of student participation in assessments and academic achievement as separate indicators in determining AYP. (source: House Committee on Education and Labor, Summary of Discussion Draft)

Before a state can implement a growth model, the legislation requires that the state has a longitudinal data system in place in order to compare the same group of students each year. The longitudinal data system must include an ability to match student test scores on state assessments from year to year and incorporate information for each student including, first-time grade enrollment, grade level retention, transfer status, and drop out rates.

Special Education

The proposed legislation would keep some of the same regulations for special education that are currently included in NCLB, but would add more flexibility when assessing special education students. The regulations that would remain include the requirement that all students participate in state accountability and assessment systems and that schools must include the scores of students with disabilities when determining AYP goals. The new provisions for special education include:

• Funding to develop appropriate assessments for students with disabilities.
  States will have two years to come into compliance with this requirement or face a loss of up to 25% of state administrative funds.
• Allowing special education students to remain in that group for accountability purposes for three years after they exit those programs.
• Maintaining the policy that allows the proficient scores of 10% of students with disabilities (1% percent of all students) with the most severe cognitive disabilities who take alternate assessments based on alternate standards to count as proficient when determining AYP.
• For three years, continues the regulation that allows the proficient scores of 20% of students with disabilities (2% of all students) with the most severe cognitive disabilities who take alternate assessments based on alternate standards to count as proficient when determining AYP. Requires the Secretary to review key studies and re-regulate the issue based on the results of such studies after 3 years.
• Allows certain districts with high numbers of students with disabilities to get a waiver to waive the 2% percent cap up to 3% without such students counting against the state’s overall cap.
• Ensures more students with disabilities have access to state assessments by requiring that state assessments minimize the effect of construct irrelevant barriers factors such as bias and disability and maximize the number of allowable accommodations. (source: House Committee on Education and Labor, Summary of Discussion Draft)

Multiple Indicators/Assessments

One of the most contentious components of the legislation is the use of multiple assessments for accountability. Under the draft legislation states would be allowed to use various measurements besides tests to determine AYP. Those measurements include graduation rates, dropout rates, college enrollment rates, percentages of students successfully completing end of course exams for college preparatory courses, assessments in history, science, civics and government, and writing, and improvements in the performance of the lowest and highest performing students in the school.

School Improvement and Assistance and School Redesign

Under the draft legislation, schools that miss AYP would be divided into two categories, Priority Schools and High Priority Schools. The priority schools category would contain schools that had one or two student groups miss AYP and only require minor changes to address the issue. High Priority Schools would be schools that missed AYP in multiple student groups and require wholesale changes. These schools would be subject to much more intense interventions than the schools in the Priority Schools group. One example of the differences between the two groups is the fact that, under this legislation, only High Priority Schools would be required to provide supplemental educational services and choice options instead of all schools that miss AYP. Some requirements would cover schools in both categories, such as the requirement that high-quality professional development and mentoring for all new teachers would be required for schools that miss AYP. This legislation would also provide schools that miss AYP with a range of intervention options. The options include:

• revision of instructional programs
• adoption of formative assessments and data-based decision-making
• parental options including free after school tutoring for low-income students
• personalized learning environment including dropout recovery and credit completion programs
• extended learning time
• supervised intervention models
• specialized support
• parent community involvement.

Priority Schools would be required to adopt two of the options, while High Priority elementary schools would be required to at least adopt the first three interventions and High Priority secondary schools would be required to adopt at least the first four interventions.

College and Work-Ready Standards and Assessments

This component of the bill would create incentives for states that have not already done so to align their standards with the national and international benchmarks and work with businesses and the higher education community to align standards that will prepare students to be successful in college and work. States who chose to revise their standards would also be encouraged to ensure that the new standards measure problem-solving skills, application of knowledge, and meet high technical quality standards.

Responses to the Proposed Legislation

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has expressed some concerns with the proposed legislation. She believes that the bill’s accountability system would create “big loopholes” allowing schools to escape accountability. “Everyone knows that the more complicated the system, the easier it is to manipulate or obfuscate or confuse the bottom line,” stated Secretary Spellings. The accountability components of the legislation have become a source of concern for other groups besides the Department of Education. The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) believes that NCLB narrows the curriculum and overemphasizes testing and reduces education to test prep. They feel that the draft legislation does not go far enough in addressing this issue. FEA is made up of education groups, including both major teachers’ unions, civil rights, religious, and civic groups. Rep. Miller, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, expects that the committee will consider the legislation by the end of the month and that the House will pass the legislation by the end of the year. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hopes to pass NCLB legislation by the end of this year as well.

For more information about the proposed bill, please ready the summary of the draft from the House Education and Labor Committee HERE. Please read the following article from the New York Times, titled “Democrats Try to Soften Bush’s Education Law.” Also, please read the following article from the Washington Post, titled “‘No Child’ Loopholes Decried.”

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Start of School for the Recovery School District

On Tuesday, September 4 a successful start of school was experienced by the Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans. The district has 13,400 students enrolled with 1,100 teachers on staff, which ensures there will be the small class sizes Paul Vallas, superintendent of RSD, has ordered. Elementary classes are capped at 20 students and high school classes at 25. One of the biggest challenges RSD faced before the start of school was finding enough teachers to meet the demands of the school district but that issue was solved by the start of school. “We are fully staffed and, in fact, we are at 130 percent,” stated Vallas. “We were able to hire teachers who are more than warm bodies.”

Prior to the start of school the school district was still registering students at a pace of about 150 a day. The school district has citywide open enrollment but in some cases the parents were limited in their choices due to caps on class sizes. About 80 percent of the district schools are currently full so Vallas and his staff have been scrambling to find enough schools for the demands the district are facing by renovating some schools and building modular buildings on some campuses. Before the start of school Vallas had stated, “This will be the greatest opportunity for educational entrepreneurs, charter schools, competition and parental choice in America.”

Some of the best school operators from around the country have been attracted to RSD including nonprofit charter networks such as KIPP and for-profit companies such as Edison schools. Compared to the 2006 school year filled with teacher shortages and violence at school the 2007-08 school year appears to be off to a good start. For more information about RSD please read the article, “Smooth Opening is Job One in New Orleans.” Also please read the Time article, “The Greatest Education Lab.”

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U.S. Department of Education Awards $13.3 Million in Grants to Help Early Childhood Educators

Recently, a total of $13.3 million in grants were awarded to four organizations to help fund professional development programs for early childhood educators. The grants were made to partnerships led by Georgetown University, Zero-Three, the South Carolina Department of Education and the Georgia Head Start Association. These partnerships are comprised of public agencies or institutions of higher ed that have experience in providing training to educators in early childhood education programs.

The grants are awarded under the Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program, which was started in 2001 and made permanent by No Child Left Behind. The program works to enhance the school readiness of young children by helping educators who work in high need communities that serve low-income families improve their effectiveness in the classroom.

For more information about the grants, please read the following press release from the Department.

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Collective Bargaining Legislation in Colorado

State employees in Colorado have recently found out that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union have met with members of Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter’s staff to push legislation to Gov. Bill Ritter’s staff titled, “Collective Bargaining Legislation,” which would give unions collective bargaining power for supervisors of the state, state universities and community colleges, grade schools, cities, counties, commissions, boards and authorities.

Employees who are not union members would be required under the proposed legislation to pay the union “fair share” payments for collective bargaining representation. This topic has been an issue that unions have pushed for many years but this is the first time in nine years that there has been a Democratic governor. Ritter’s office has not commented on whether or not Ritter will support the collective bargaining bill. For more information about the Collective Bargaining Legislation please read the following article titled, “Union Pushes Ritter for Bargaining Law.”

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The New Teacher Project

The Baltimore School District once was a hard-to-staff district. However, since 2002 they have been in partnership with the New Teacher Project and they are now finding at least 10 applicants for each available position. The New Teacher Project program in Baltimore is now used by the school district to hire up to one-fifth of its new public school teachers. “We have realized that the traditional way of recruiting teachers is not going to meet our demands,” said Gary Thrift, the director of the Baltimore schools.

The New Teacher Project uses unconventional recruitment strategies to recruit new teachers. They target midcareer professionals who are looking for a change in careers and are willing to consider teaching. The New Teacher Project also works with districts to help streamline their hiring practices. “We thought one has to go out and aggressively recruit, but that was not actually an accurate portrayal of what the problem was. You can find lots of people who were interested but couldn’t get hired because of bureaucratic barriers,” stated Michelle A. Rhee, the founder of the New Teacher Project and now the Chancellor of DC Public Schools.

To help school districts navigate hiring hurdles, the New Teacher Project has released two reports that look at the reasons why urban districts have difficult times sometimes hiring quality teachers. Two of the conclusions from the report were that the hiring process in school districts are often filled with delays and result in the loss of good candidates. It also blamed collective bargaining agreements for preventing quality teachers from teaching in hard-to-staff schools. The New Teacher Project has worked in more than 200 districts, including Atlanta, Chicago, the District of Columbia and New York City. “What I think is interesting and valuable about the New Teacher Project is the work they do with districts to help them understand systemic problems. They have done a real service by going beyond recruitment to focus on what districts need to do in terms of their hiring policies,” stated Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

For more information about the New Teacher Project please read the following article titled, “New Teacher Project Brings Holistic Style to Urban Districts.”

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Record Enrollment in Schools Projected

The National Center for Educational Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education, is predicting a record enrollment of 49.6 million pre-K-12 students for the 2007-08 school year. This record continues a 10 year trend of growing enrollments in schools. It is predicted that the most growth will occur in schools in the West and in the South with declining enrollment in the Midwest and Northeast. Harold L. Hodgkinson, an Alexandria, VA, demographer, credits the influx of students enrolled in schools in the West and South to an increase in immigrants, particularly Hispanics, who move to these areas.

The fastest growing school district in the nation is the Clark County, Nevada. The school district has grown by about 12,000 students a year for the last ten years. The growth is credited to the growing housing market and an influx in immigrants. This school year the school district is expecting enrollment to be 314,400, which is an increase from last year’s enrollment of 302,800. To accommodate the rapid growth the district has opened up nine new schools and two replacement schools.

Other school districts, such as Lee County, Georgia, credit their growth to the quality of their schools. Lawrence T. Walters, the superintendent of the Lee County school system, believes that families are moving into the district because “word has gotten out that every school in the district has made adequate yearly progress every year under the No Child Left Behind Act.” For more information about the growth of student enrollments in school please visit this Education Week resource. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/29/01stats.h27.html?qs=record+....

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