Obama pushing Congress on fixing education law

President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to rewrite the nation’s governing education law in time for a new school year next fall, the Associated Press reports. It’s an ambitious timeline but one administration official says it is necessary to start closing the achievement gap between American students and their counterparts in China and elsewhere. White House officials say Obama will lay out the goal in a March 14 speech at a middle school in Arlington, Va., where communications and technology are a focus — areas Obama views as critical in a global economy…

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Most public schools may miss targets, Education Secretary says

More than 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told Congress on Wednesday, reports the New York Times. Mr. Duncan said the estimate, based on an analysis of testing trends and the workings of the law’s pass-fail school rating system, was the latest evidence of the law’s shortcomings and the need to overhaul it. Even many of the nation’s best-run schools are likely to fall short of the law’s rapidly rising standardized testing targets, Mr. Duncan said…

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Court won’t let Conn. challenge education law

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Tuesday against hearing Connecticut’s challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law, ending the state’s six-year lawsuit over how to pay for the stepped-up student testing considered one of the law’s cornerstones, the Associated Press reports. Connecticut was the first state to challenge the 2002 law, which includes provisions requiring yearly standardized tests for children in grades three through eight. Connecticut previously tested students in grades four, six and eight. The state’s lawsuit sought to push the federal government to either change its testing rules or cover the extra testing costs, which Connecticut officials say add up to many millions of dollars…

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White House aims to revamp education law by summer

The Obama administration set a goal on Feb. 17 of revamping the federal No Child Left Behind education law before students start the next school year in the fall, a timeframe likely to clash with the priorities of congressional Republicans, the Associated Press reports. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the Bush-era law needs to be more flexible, and in some cases must reduce Washington’s role in setting education standards. In an interview with The Associated Press, Duncan said he hopes a fresh federal law can be passed by the time lawmakers leave for their summer break. “We would love to have it done by the August recess before students and teachers go back to school in the fall,” Duncan said. To reach that goal, the White House will have to persuade GOP lawmakers to move reauthorization of the law up on their priority list. The “Pledge to America,” which the House GOP released before taking power in the November elections, never mentioned education, and House Speaker John Boehner has made it clear that his focus is on jobs and the economy…

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Senators pledge bipartisan effort to revamp NCLB

Stakeholders support an NCLB overhaul to reflect realistic goals for schools.

Less than a day after President Obama asked Congress to overhaul No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in his Jan. 25 State of the Union address, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators said they would work together to revamp the nation’s education law—and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said he hopes to have a bill on Obama’s desk by the end of the summer.

“Last night, President Obama clearly stated his desire to help education and his desire to fix No Child Left Behind,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters in a Jan. 26 phone conference. “No one likes how No Child Left Behind labels schools as failures even when they are making significant gains.”

Duncan was joined on the call by Harkin, who is chairman of the Senate education committee; Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., ranking minority member of the committee; Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.…Read More

Trouble lurking ahead for Obama’s education focus

Troubled times are on the horizon for Obama's education plan.

Signs of trouble are arising for President Barack Obama’s plan to put education overhaul at the forefront of his agenda as he adjusts to the new reality of a divided government.

Giving students and teachers more flexibility is an idea with bipartisan support. Yet the debate about the overdue renewal of the nation’s chief education law, known as No Child Left Behind, is complicated by political pressures from the coming 2012 presidential campaign and disputes over timing, money and scope of the update.

While education might offer the best chance for the White House to work with newly empowered Republicans, any consensus could fade in the pitiless political crosscurrents, leaving the debate for another day, perhaps even another presidency.…Read More

NCLB: Are the fixes worse than the flaws?

Parents and teachers don’t like it. For many students, it has failed to produce the promised benefits. And experts agree it urgently needs to be fixed. But as controversial as No Child Left Behind is, there is perhaps even more controversy about how to fix it, CTmirror.com reports. For some Connecticut officials, in fact, this fresh debate over federal education policy looks like a choice between bad and worse. The Obama administration in March unveiled a “Blueprint for Reform” that outlined sweeping changes to the law, including, among other things, scrapping No Child’s 2014 deadline for all public school students to reach proficiency in math and reading in favor of making them “college- and career-ready” by the time they finish high school. But critics say the White House’s proposed fix, even if it solves some issues, could also create a new set of problems. “It’s just not a good fit for Connecticut,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, who sits on the House Education and Labor Committee. Courtney ticked off several problems he has with the White House proposal, starting with the administration’s move to make competitive grants a more permanent feature of federal education funding. Courtney and others fear that such a shift could translate into a significant disadvantage for Connecticut, which has more than 160 local education agencies–one for nearly every town or city in the state–instead of larger, county-wide school districts, as many other states have. “The notion that towns could engage in competitive grants” is not tenable, Courtney said. The town of Union, for example, with its 700 or so residents, would not be playing on a level field against Broward County, Fla., population 1.6 million…

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High court turns down No Child Left Behind case

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned away a challenge by school districts and teacher unions to the federal No Child Left Behind law, reports the Associated Press. The court said without comment on June 7 that it will not step into a lawsuit that questioned whether public schools have to comply with requirements of the law if the federal government doesn’t pay for them. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and a federal appeals court split 8-8, leaving the judge’s ruling in place. NCLB requires tests on subjects including math and reading in grades three through eight, and once in high school. Schools that miss testing benchmarks face increasingly stiff sanctions, including the potential loss of federal money. President Barack Obama has proposed major changes to the law, and he already has markedly increased federal money for public schools…

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Critics say administration’s blueprint is too similar to NCLB

Critics say the blueprint does not go far enough in changing NCLB.
Critics say the administration's blueprint for rewriting the nation's education law does not go far enough in changing NCLB.

As the Obama administration seeks support for its plan to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), many education policy analysts worry that the new blueprint’s guidelines are too reminiscent of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—most notably by continuing to place too much focus on high-stakes testing.

In the proposed dismantling of NCLB, education officials would move away from punishing schools that don’t meet benchmarks and focus on rewarding schools for progress, particularly with poor and minority students. (See “Obama offers blueprint for rewriting NCLB.”)

The proposed changes call for states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career, rather than grade-level proficiency—the focus of the current law.…Read More

Critics: Obama’s ed policies no better than Bush’s

Critics are saying that the 'new' NCLB is nothing new at all.
A trio of education experts take on high-stakes testing and accountability in interviews with eSchool News.

When it comes to education policy, President Obama is repeating the most grievous errors of his predecessor, charge a trio of venerable education policy analysts, including one—Diane Ravitch—best known for her past support of conservative positions on testing, accountability, and choice.

As Congress begins to rewrite No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Obama administration has offered its own vision for how the revised law should look, including a focus on tougher academic standards and more flexibility for schools. But a growing chorus of critics contends that too many of the administration’s policies follow the same punitive cycle of high-stakes testing and accountability ushered in under the presidency of George W. Bush—and that these policies are actually hurting students.

Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have acknowledged the need for better standards and assessments to ensure that students graduate from high school ready for college or 21st-century careers. But critics of their approach toward education reform say it continues to rely on a flawed system of high-stakes exams and accountability measures that has narrowed the curriculum, fails to take into account the various social and economic factors that influence a child’s learning, and does a disservice to those students it purports to help most.…Read More

Obama urges states to raise academic standards

In order for U.S. to be first in world education, states need to raise their academic standards.
For the U.S. to lead the world in education, states need to raise their academic standards, Obama says.

Saying America’s “primacy in the world” is at stake, President Barack Obama on Feb. 22 prodded states to raise their academic standards by using the best leverage he has: money.

Speaking to governors gathered at the White House, Obama said he won’t “accept second place for the United States of America.” He noted that it continues to lag behind other nations in critical areas, including high school math and science skills.

Obama told the governors he wants a change in the nation’s education law that would allow states to receive federal aid for poor students only if they adopt academic standards that are deemed truly to prepare children for college or careers out of high school.…Read More

Obama to propose new rules for reading and math standards

In a proposed change to the No Child Left Behind law, the Obama administration would require states to adopt new academic standards to qualify for federal money from a $14 billion program that concentrates on impoverished students, reports the New York Times. The proposal, part of the administration’s recommendations for a Congressional overhaul of the law, would require states to adopt “college- and career-ready standards” in reading and math. The current law, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, requires states to adopt “challenging academic standards” in reading and math to receive federal money for poor students under the program known as Title I, but leaves it up to states to decide what qualifies as “challenging.” The result was that states set their standards at widely varied levels, some as rigorous as those used in high-performing countries like Japan, but others at far lower levels that lay out mediocre expectations for their students at best…

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