NREAC Update

October 2011

This is a rather intense wrap-up of what has happened in the last month. It includes the information we discussed in our conference call in October, as well as the conversation we had while meeting at the NREA Conference in Hilton Head on October 27. Given the amount of information in this write-up, here’s a quick overview/table of contents, for your reference:

ESEA

  • House ESEA
  • Senate ESEA
  • Points of Support
  • Points of Concern
  • Senate Moving Forward
  • ESEA Flexibility Waivers

BUDGET & APPROPRIATIONS

  • FY12
  • Continuing Resolution (including urgent information related to 1.5% cut to Title I, IDEA, Title II and Perkins)
  • American Jobs Act
  • FY11 Title I LEA Allocations
  • Updated ARRA Spending
  • Super Committee

MISC.

  • NREAC Legislative Meeting Date: Jan. 31 and Feb. 1
  • Next Conference Call: November 17, 2011, at 2 pm
  • AASA Policy Insider – Sign up for our latest newsletter!
  • White House State-Specific Calls for FY12 and American Jobs Act (Nov. 10 and 14)

ESEA

HOUSE ESEA: The House has made no public action related to ESEA reauthorization since the bills it moved through committee earlier this summer. As a quick refresher, the House has moved three bills through committee (one related to funding flexibility, one on charters, and one on program eliminations). The charter bill also moved through the Full House. It is expected that the House committee will move two more pieces by the end of the calendar year, related to teachers and accountability. Touching base with the committee last week, there were no specifics available related to the timing of the bills.

SENATE ESEA: In the last month, the Senate HELP committee has introduced—and passed out of committee—its ESEA reauthorization bill. FULL ANALYSIS

The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee held a mark up for its draft reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Over the course of 12.5 hours, the committee reviewed 53 amendments (144 had been filed). The table below is a quick representation of the number of amendments that were filed and the number that were subsequently considered, adopted, defeated, or withdrawn. The right side of the table corresponds to an AASA letter supporting/opposing specific amendments and how those 19 amendments fared. You can read that letter here.

ALL Amendments / Amendments AASA Followed
Introduced: / 144
Considered: / 53 / Considered: / 19
Adopted: / 23 / Adopted: / 5
Defeated: / 10 / Defeated: / 3
Withdrawn: / 20 / Withdrawn: / 7
Ignored: / 91 / Ignored: / 4

A quickoverview of the hearing/markup itself: The mark-up was held over two days. On the first day, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) exercised a technical Senate rule that forbids any committee from meeting for more than two hours at a time while the Senate floor is ‘live’. This halted all reauthorization activity for the day. The hearing reconvened on Thursday morning, and Senator Paul had already filed a similar objection for that day as well, meaning the hearing would be adjourned at 12. Mid-morning, a compromise was met and the hearing that started at 8 am lasted all day, finally adjourning just before 9 that evening. As part of that compromise, Senator Paul will host a hearing on the marked-up bill, tentatively scheduled for November 7.

In the marathon mark up on October 20, the Senators considered 53 amendments of the 144 that had been filed, adopting 23, defeating 10, withdrawing 20 and ignoring 92. Those that were withdrawn or ignored can still be brought to the floor when/if the bill goes to the full Senate. Ultimately, the bil1 was passed out of committee by a vote of 15-7, along party lines, with the exception of Republican Senators Enzi, Alexander and Kirk, who all supported the bill.

AYES: Harkin, Mikulski, Bingaman, Murray, Sanders, Casey, Hagan, Merkley, Franken, Bennett, Whitehouse, Blumenthal (R), Enzi (R), Alexander, Kirk (R)

NAYS: Burr, Isakson, Paul, Hatch, McCain, Roberts, Murkowski

RELATED MATERIALS

  • Oct. 20Blog postwith opening statements
  • Edu Groups Letter: AASA joined four other national education organizations, including the National Education Association, National School Boards Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals, in a letter to Senators Harkin and Enzi in response to the initial legislative proposal, which included problematic requirements around teacher evaluation systems. Please note the problematic areas re: teacher evaluation systems were removed in the Manager’s Amendment released October 17.
  • AASA Response Letter: This letter, dated October 17, is AASA’s response to the initial legislation and the Manager’s Amendment. Note that AASA has neither endorsed nor opposed the legislation at this point. While there are some good aspects in the law, there is enough in it that gives us concern so as to keep us from supporting the legislation.
  • AASA Summary: A quick overview of what is included in the bill.
  • AASA Wishlist: As much as the manager’s amendment includes very important improvements, there remain several areas of concern. Use this list to drive a conversation with your Senators, asking them to make the changes we have outlined here.
  • From the Senate Website:
  • Initial Legislation (Oct. 11)
  • Section by Section Analysis (Oct. 11)
  • Manager’s Amendment (Oct. 17)
  • AASA Response to ESEA Amendments

POINTS OF SUPPORT IN SENATE ESEA PROPOSAL: Overall, the biggest changes in the bill are also its biggest improvements, and are related to assessment and accountability. The Senate HELP committee bill implemented changes supported by AASA and address virtually all of the current law’s major flaws. AASA has identified at least 11 improvements related to accountability and assessments:

  1. Eliminating the impossible goal of 100% of students getting a high score on a challenging test.
  2. Eliminating the unrealistic Adequate Yearly Progress, AYP, premised on increases in student test scores from the starting point in 2002 to 100% high scores 12 years later in 2014.
  3. Eliminating the utopian Annual Measurable Objectives, AMOs, that assumed linear annual increases in student test scores which ignores the realities of children’s development and the erratic test scores caused by the weaknesses of the current crop of state tests and the problem of using a single data point to make high stakes decisions.
  4. Eliminating the flawed scorekeeping used in accountability where failure to hit the AMO for any one of the 8 student subgroups for which test scores are disaggregated is equated to total failure of all student groups.
  5. Eliminating the unworkable 2% cap on type of tests special education can take created to work around the inaccuracy of the tests required in the NCLB regulations premised on much more accurate tests under development by two large consortia of states and some private test developers.
  6. Changing the requirement that students who didn’t speak English had to be tested in English after attending school for one year to two years, recognizing that some students take longer to master the formal English used in test items.
  7. Shifted from measuring status of achievement based on one test score to measuring growth in achievement from year to year.
  8. Changed from reliance on a single test score to judge schools to multiple measures.
  9. Including computer based adaptive assessment which will more accurately assess achievement and growth for individual students.
  10. Shifting control of accountability to the states, away from the federal government.
  11. Requiring adoption of new more accurate assessments to replace the outdated annual state tests whose accuracy for individual students has long been questioned.

Moving beyond accountability and assessment, the portions of the bill related to teachers are both promising and problematic. Looking at the good, the Senate bill does not bow to the administration priority that states be required to establish a single teacher evaluation system based largely on state test scores. The tests used by the states have been shown to be inaccurate enough to cause an unacceptably high rate of error in teacher ratings. This fact helped the Senate side step the administration’s priority. The Senate bill did not completely skip over teacher evaluation, though. The bill, as passed out of committee, does require new evaluation systems aimed at promoting improvement, not systems focused on firing teachers and principals. One point of concern related to teachers is that the bill retains the unworkable provisions related to highly qualified teachers. These provisions are especially problematic for small and/or rural school districts.

When it comes to federal intervention in schools, the Senate bill follows the administration blueprint in that it is focused on the bottom 5 percent of schools based of state test scores. The Senate version looks at the bottom 5 percent in two ways, in terms of achievement gaps and in terms of lowest aggregate test scores. Schools with the lowest aggregate test scores will have a menu of seven options to improve student achievement over five years. The school improvement menu, called turn around models, includes the administrations four models and adds a state developed model, a whole school improvement option, a state-designed model, and an additional waiver, available to rural schools, that allows them to choose one of the four original models and waive one required aspect.

While AASA supports the more nuanced approach to identifying low performing schools and targeting school improvement efforts on the bottom 5 percent, we are concerned by the continued reliance on the four original turn around models (closure, restart, transformation and turnaround). Luckily, recognizing broad concern from the field and the lack of research supporting such prescriptive models, the Senate bill also includes three additional models that give flexibility to schools: a strategic staffing model, a whole school model, and a state-developed option. Further, the Senate bill recognizes the unique challenges facing the nation’s rural schools and provides a waiver that would let REAP-eligible schools adopt one of the four original models and waive one aspect.

There are still problems in the Senate Committee bill with new unfunded federal mandates. The worst example of a new unfunded mandate concerns foster children. The new educational mandate is supposed to complement a new federal mandate for child welfare departments regarding school placements. Unfortunately the mandate to child welfare agencies was not made clear to state departments of education school districts until this year. The new mandate for schools in fact goes further than the mandate to child welfare agencies and requires new staff and transportation costs. This is an example of a belief that there is a problem in foster children’s school placements in search of an actual problem. And in this fiscal climate the only way such mandates can be funded is to reduce funding for other existing federal programs.

POINTS OF CONCERN IN SENATE ESEA PROPOSAL:

  • RURAL: While the Senate proposal contained, in large part, our priorities related to the Rural Education Achievement Plan, it did NOT include the switch in poverty indicators. We hope to move an amendment on the Senate floor that would make the switch, allowing LEAs to use free/reduced lunch poverty data in place of census data.
  • RACE TO THE TOP and I3: The Senate ESEA proposal codifies both of these competitive programs in statue. AASA will be supporting an amendment to strike both programs from the bill, which we anticipate to be introduced by Senator Roberts (R-KS).
  • FOSTER CARE: The Senate Education Committee agreed to an amendment by Senator Franken that would require state education and welfare agencies to create a plan for how children in foster care can remain in their school of origin. This plan would include deciding who would pay for transportation to/from school for children in foster care. AASA had great concerns with this amendment because we believe that child welfare should be solely responsible for paying for transportation to and from school for children in foster care. Given that child welfare receives 50% of its funding from the federal government and that child welfare is responsible for every other cost associated with a child in foster care, we see a federal requirement to provide adequatetransportation for a child in foster care to be the responsibility of child welfare, not schools. Moreover, no funds have been associated with this amendment which could mean this could be an unfunded mandate for school districts. In addition to the transportation requirements, the amendment would compel school districts to disaggregate student outcomes by foster care status. It would also mandate the school to appoint someone in the district (essentially a liaison) who would be the point of contact for foster care students when child welfare agencies needed information, records, etc. Note: AASA worked vigorously to try and defeat this amendment and after considerable debate, Sen. Franken almost withdrew the amendment without a vote. However, his staff pushed him to call a roll-call vote where the amendment passed by 13-9.

SENATE ESEA MOVING FORWARD: As part of the compromise reached between the Senate HELP Committee and Senator Rand Paul (who exercised procedural rules to initially halt the ESEA mark up), the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the ESEA reauthorization bill it passed out of committee.Beyond NCLB: Views on the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act was part of a compromise reached between Senate HELP leadership and Senator Rand Paul, who had exercised Senate procedural rules to halt last month's mark up. Sen. Paul felt he did not have enough time to read/analyze/discuss the bill before it moved through committee.The hearing will be held on Tuesday, November 8 and will feature a cross-cutting of education stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and other education stakeholders. Full hearing details are available online.

While there were some rumblings that the Senate would bring the bill to the Senate floor before Thanksgiving or the end of the calendar year, the chances of that look increasingly slim, whether you are considering the political implications of ESEA, the capacity of the Senate to pass the bill, or the mere ability of the Senate to have the time to consider the bill (they have a very limited number of days left, and must wrap their FY12 appropriations work and take votes related to the deficit commission/super committee).

ESEA WAIVERS: As of November 3, 39 states and the District of Columbia have have submitted their intent to request ESEA Flexibility. Full information related to the waivers, including who has applied/expressed interest in applying, application materials, updated FAQ and updated guidance, visit the Department of Education’s website.

14-Nov-11 / Mid-February, 2012
Colorado / Arkansas / New Hampshire
Florida / Arizona / New York
Georgia / Connecticut / Ohio
Indiana / D.C. / Oregon
Kentucky / Delaware / Puerto Rico
Massachusetts / Hawaii / Rhode Island
Michigan / Idaho / South Carolina
Minnesota / Illinois / South Dakota
New Jersey / Iowa / Utah
New Mexico / Kansas / Virginia
North Carolina / Maine / Washington
Oklahoma / Maryland
Tennessee / Mississippi
Vermont / Missouri
Wisconsin / Nevada

BUDGET & APPROPRIATIONS

FY12 Appropriations: Neither the House nor the Senate has wrapped their work for FY 2012, which started October 1. That means the country is currently operating under a continuing resolution, which expires November 18 (see section below for details). Specific to the FY12 process, both the House and the Senate have indicated their thinking/plan of action related to funding the Labor, Health-Human-Services, and Education appropriation. AASA has endorsed neither, given points of concern with both proposals. The Senate FY12 LHHS proposal includes an overall increase for education funding, but puts next-to-nothing in to IDEA and Title I in terms of funding increases while continuing to fund competitive programs. Their colleagues on the House side propose more than $1 billion in new money for both Title I and IDEA. Unfortunately, they do so at the expense of countless other programs whose funding is either reduced or completely eliminated. ASA sent a letter to the House and Senate appropriations committees, urging them to make continued and increased investments in education in the final FY12 bills, urging both chambers to prioritize funding for Title I and IDEA while supporting overall increases. Read the letter.

Continuing Resolutions: The federal government is currently operating on a continuing resolution that expires on November 18. Before adjourning for recess at the end of October, the Senate was unable to take any long-term action, making it all but certain that Congress will pass a second CR, lasting through either December 18 or December 23, to support the federal government while Congress works to wrap up the FY12 appropriations bills. It is widely expected that the LHHS appropriation will be one of the final bills to move in both the House and the Senate. The current process is one of ‘mini bus’, where the chambers groups a handful of individual appropriations bills and pass them. It remains to be seen whether LHHS will be grouped in to a mini-bus or left as a stand-alone appropriation subject to a year-long CR.