Legislation and Guidance
- Congress Finally Reauthorizes HEA
- Second Stimulus Bill Could Bode Well for Education Community
- New NCLB Bill May Reignite Debate
- ED Releases new MEP Guidance
News
Reports
- CTE Report Looks at National Efforts
- ED Looks at State Spending Across U.S.
- State Initiative Leads to Common Core Standards
Legislation and Guidance
Congress Finally Reauthorizes HEA
Five years after the bill was set to expire, Congress finally reauthorized the Higher Education Act (HEA). The Senate voted 83-8 in favor of passing the conference report, just hours after the House passed it by a vote of 380-49. The bill, last reauthorized in 1998, is now on its way to the White House, where the President is expected to sign it, despite his reservations about costs associated with new programs authorized in the legislation.
The compromise language provides additional information about college tuition and fees and it simplifies the financial aid application process. The legislation requires colleges to establish codes of conduct that prohibit their financial aid employees from receiving anything of value in exchange for advantages sought by lenders. It also requires greater disclosure in college costs, which includes college price watch lists, Internet-based calculators of the net cost of college, and greater disclosure of textbook costs. In addition, the bill provides in-state tuition for members of the armed forces and their dependents who have lived in a state for more than 30 days and it authorizes year-round Pell Grants so that students can accelerate their course of study. Congressman Ric Keller (R-FL), head of the Pell Grant Caucus, applauded this particular provision above all others.
The compromise also includes language that would require states to maintain their education investment to the average of the past five years' investment. While this "maintenance of effort" provision was included in the House version of the HEA in February, the Senate intentionally left out requirements on state spending in the version of the bill they passed last year. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) fought against adding this provision into the conference report, claiming that Congress has no right to tell states what they must spend with their own budgets.
There are a number of provisions that effect K-12 schools, including:
- The consolidation of state grants, partnership grants, and teacher recruitment grants into one program focused on training and professional development for teachers and school leaders (authorized at $300 million for FY 2009);
- A five-year grant to Teach For America Inc., authorized at $20 million for FY 2009 and $25 million for FY 2010;
- State grants to encourage students in secondary and postsecondary schools to pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering, math or health-related fields;
- The establishment of a professional development and career task force for early childhood education program staff, directors, administrators, and faculty;
- Authorization of Project GRAD, a program to improve high school graduation rates and college attendance and completion rates for disadvantaged individuals;
- Goals to double the cap of the Pell Grant, by lifting the $4,050 cap to $6,000 for the 2009-10 school year, until it reaches its cap of $8,000 by 2014-15; and
- Grants to partnerships with programs to improve the ability of general education teachers, who teach students with disabilities.
Another item of interest to K-12 advocates and officials is that with the HEA out of the way, legislators are now free to take another stab at reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, though any meaningful debate and discussion will likely wait until the next Congress comes into session next year.
Resources
Kelly Field, "Long-Overdue Higher-Education Bill Is Close to Becoming Law," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 1, 2008.
Stephen Langel, "Senate Agrees to Higher Education Reauthorization, Sending Bill to President's Desk," Congress Now, July 31, 2008.
Libby George, "Higher Education Reauthorization and Overhaul Cleared for White House," CQ Today, July 31, 2008.
Second Stimulus Bill Could Bode Well for Education Community
Congress is moving forward with a second stimulus bill, despite Republican objections and warnings from the White House. While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) worked to rally bipartisan support for the legislation, Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) released a summary of his proposal for the new supplemental spending legislation, which is aimed at helping a lagging economy. Despite the talk and efforts at coalition building, Congress will not begin to mark up any legislation until they return from their month-long August recess, which begins on Monday.
On Wednesday, Chairman Byrd outlined a proposed $24.1 billion supplemental spending measure that aims to help the economy by providing funding for infrastructure, energy initiatives, and natural disaster relief. The bill is expected to reach the Senate floor in September. Reportedly, the proposal includes $850 million for school repair and renovation, $400 million for a one year extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, and $22 million for school libraries and museums affected by natural disasters. Senator Byrd attempted to pass the rural schools extension as part of the last emergency supplemental bill, but the measure was left out in the conference with the House .
While Speaker Pelosi has yet to release as detailed of a proposal as the Senate, the House's bill could authorize up to $50 billion in domestic spending initiatives. While the House has consistently failed to provide a rural schools extension, the fact that their bill could more than double the Senate proposal would lend credibility to hopes that the two chambers would be on the same page on the issue this time around. The true barrier will come in the form of the President and his supporters in Congress. Republicans want to wait to see the actual impact of the first stimulus bill before moving on to a second. Democrats, however, are more interested in trying to push items that they were unable to include in the emergency supplemental. September will prove to be a crucial month for these domestic priorities.
Resources
Vicki Needham, "Byrd Outlines Plan For $24.1 Billion Supplemental," Congress Now, July 30, 2008.
Liriel Higa and Edward Epstein, "Pelosi Says Second Stimulus Bill Must Have Bipartisan Support," CQ Today, July 31, 2008.
New NCLB Bill May Reignite Debate
Tuesday, Congressman Mike Castle (R-DE), ranking member on the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, introduced the Improving NCLB for All Students Act. The bill, mostly consisting of previous proposals for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is the first significant effort at jumpstarting the NCLB debate since last fall. While the bill itself is not expected to go anywhere, it may provide the spark necessary to get lawmakers to turn their attention back to the K-12 legislation.
Congressman Castle's bill has already generated discussion, despite a lack of new ideas or proposals. Pulling generally from previous reform discussions, this bill would:
- Allow states to use growth models for accountability;
- Create a national uniform graduation rate calculation;
- Allow districts to administer alternate assessments to limited-English-proficient students and extend the time in which they can receive credit for their scores;
- Create a two-tiered differentiated school accountability system; and
- Reauthorize Reading First and expand the program into high school with the Striving Readers program.
Aside from the specific proposals, the bill's greatest contribution is acting as a focal point for debate to begin again on NCLB reauthorization. Last fall Congressman George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, tried to introduce a discussion draft for reauthorization, but various aspects of his bill were met with too much opposition. The draft was tossed out and the House moved on to other issues.
Hoping to get the wheels turning in 2008, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee planned to have a draft bill ready in the spring. After multiple delays, the effort was finally derailed when Chairman Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and was forced to take a leave of absence from Congress. Lawmakers occupied their time trying to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), despite Senator Kennedy's absence.
Now that the HEA is approved, it seems that Congressman Castle is trying to redirect attention back to NCLB. However, the Congressional schedule is working against attempts to debate reauthorization this year. After adjourning today, Congress will be on a month long recess, returning to Washington in early September. In the weeks following their return, a number of issues will take precedence, primarily related to annual appropriations. Congress will adjourn again in early October, allowing members to campaign for the November elections. With all of these distractions, NCLB will have to wait until 2009, which many Washington insiders predicted.
Resources
"Castle Proposes NCLB Overhaul," Education Daily, July 30, 2008.
ED Releases new MEP Guidance
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) published its long awaited final regulations for the Migrant Education Program (MEP) this week, a year after publishing the proposed amendments to the MEP regulations. The new regulations were motivated, in large part, by the results of the Office of the Inspector general's (OIG) audits and investigations of several states' MEP programs that found significant errors in state counts of children eligible for the program. Because MEP allocations are based on state counts of eligible children relative to other states, ensuring accurate and consistent determinations of student eligibility under the program across the states is very important to ED.
The new MEP regulations aim to improve accurate and consistent state counts in several ways. First, the regulations clarify and expand upon the definitions governing who qualifies as a migratory child. The new regulations are seen by many as narrowing the scope of children that will qualify for MEP services, although the final regulations appear to provide slightly more flexibility than the proposed regulations. The final regulations explicitly exclude, however, the hunting or harvesting of whales, walruses, or seals from the types of qualifying work. ED explains this restriction based on the grounds that these animals are not fish and that this exclusion is consistent with ED's longstanding policy that hunting of deer, moose, or elk is not an agricultural activity.
Second, the regulations establish a mechanism to adjust the base amounts of the MEP basic state formula grant allocations for fiscal year 2006 and subsequent years. This mechanism includes retrospective re-interviewing to establish each State educational agency's (SEA) defect rate. The final regulations clarify that retrospective re-interviewing will be required of SEAs that have not conducted retrospective re-interviewing, SEAs that submitted a defect rate that was not accepted by the Secretary, and SEAs implementing retrospective re-interviewing as a corrective action based on prospective re-interviewing results. In addition to adjusting the base amounts for state formula grant allocations, the final regulations establish requirements for SEAs to develop and implement rigorous quality control procedures in order to improve the accuracy of MEP eligibility determinations and state counts of eligible migratory children.
One of the new requirements is that SEAs must conduct annual re-interviewing for improved quality control. States generally will be required to use a face-to-face approach to conduct these annual interviews. Although the final regulations allow for exceptions where extraordinary circumstances make the face-to-face re-interviews impractical, the use of re-interviewing via telephone would be a proper alternative. The final regulations also clarify that ED anticipates each State "on average" would prospectively re-interview "no more than 50 families" on an annual basis (as opposed to 100 families as stated in the preamble to the proposed regulations).
In ED's discussion of the comments received on the proposed regulations, ED identified several items that will likely be included in future non-regulatory guidance for MEP. These topics include: the meaning of initial processing, how to properly validate and document that particular types of year round employment are temporary for purposes of the MEP, required sample size for prospective re-interviewing, and recommended re-interviewing processes.
The final regulations are available at the ED Website (Outside Source). The effective date for the final regulations is August 28, 2008.
News
ED Holds Data Conference
This week, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) held its annual National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Data Conference. The conference provides an overview of national activities affecting data collection and reporting and information about the best new approaches in collecting, reporting, and using education statistics. It also was designed to update the attendees about how ED collects and uses data and about developments in electronic data standards for schools, school districts, and states.
The presentations were technical and designed for the data guru in states and districts. Many of the federal sessions, for example, focused on the development of data standards and how states and ED are working to standardize the data specifications required for reporting between and within the variety of federal education programs. But the importance of the work being conducted by ED and those in attendance cannot be understated because data drives policy making and that was a point made by Dr. Stettner-Eaton who works in ED's Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development (Outside Source).
Dr. Stettner-Eaton presented on the relationship between EDFacts and the Consolidated State Performance Report (CSPR). EDFacts is an ED initiative to put performance data at the center of policy, management and budget decisions for all K-12 educational programs. The CSPR is the required annual reporting tool for of each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as authorized under Section 9303 of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This document used to be submitted in word processor format (such as Microsoft Word) but since 2004 ED has been transitioning the data collection to the web based Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) and ED hopes to use EDEN exclusively in the coming years (how soon is not certain, but soon).
Dr. Stettner-Eaton made the point that the submitted CSPR/EDEN data is delivered to the Secretary of Education and to Congress in order for them to review program effectiveness and make policy decisions based on that data. The reauthorization discussions, now underway, in the House and Senate rely on the data collected and Secretary Spellings relied on this data for the Title I proposed rule making, and she relies on it for her NCLB speeches across the nation. This data is critically important, but when she asked how many states used the data for program and policy discussions with their chiefs, nobody made a sound -nobody. This lack of use by state leadership, Dr. Stetttner-Eaton observed, is a matter that states must address. The importance of EDEN and data collection will only grow exponentially in the coming years and the states' use of data must grow with it.
Resources
"Summer Forum and Data Conference (Outside Source)," Institute of Education Sciences, United States Department of Education, August, 2008.
See "Common Acronyms (Outside Source)," Institute of Education Sciences, United States Department of Education, August 2008 ("EDEN is a centralized portal through which states submit their educational data to the U.S. Department of Education.…).
Reports
CTE Report Looks at National Efforts
On Tuesday, July 22nd, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released its report on Career and Technical Education (CTE). According to Career and Technical Education in the United States: 1990 to 2005 (Outside Source), it seems that efforts to merge CTE and core academic programs have made significant progress. Increased CTE student participation in core academic programs is a sign of such success, though gaps still exists between CTE students and their non-CTE counterparts. The report states that "there is a trade-off between the number of occupational credits and the number of academic credits that students earn in high school," a finding that illustrates the differing perspectives of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and CTE supporters.
The report found an increase among students who took four or more CTE credits in their core academic course load, rising from 12 credits to 14 credits from 1990 to 2005. There were also significant increases in the number of CTE students that met the New Basics core academic standards, rising from 18 percent to 60 percent between 1990 and 2005, a 42 percent gain compared to the 17 percent gain by non-CTE high school students. The New Basics standards are a set of core academic class minimums created by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
With the notable success amongst CTE student performance, it remains true that non-CTE students earn an average of 1.2 more core academic credits than CTE students earning four or more occupational course credits. And while the number of CTE students meeting New Basics standards rose dramatically, 70 percent of students who took no CTE courses met the standards while just 60 percent of CTE students followed suit.
Nonetheless, the report illustrated that significant progress has been seen in attempts to reach a balance between CTE and core academic course work. In 2005, 92 percent of high school graduates enrolled in at least one CTE course, which illustrated that occupational courses are a fundamental portion of students' educational experience. With a lack of increased federal investment for CTE programs, no changes have been seen in student participation in CTE courses between 2000 and 2005. Such steady enrollment is a major accomplishment of CTE programs, especially in light of the budget restraints the programs face. With state budget deficits and uncertain federal funding levels, continuing current enrollment levels and student performance success may be a challenge for CTE programs in the future.
Resources
Erin Uy, "CTE Students Make Overall Academic Gains, IES Report Says," Education Daily, Tuesday, July 29th, 2008.
ED Looks at State Spending Across U.S.
On Tuesday the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a report on data from the School District Finance Survey, a district-level survey administered annually. The report includes data provided by State education agencies (SEAs) from all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia for fiscal year 2006 (FY06). Notable findings from the report are listed below:
- Regular school districts had median total revenues per pupil of $10,173. The difference between total revenues per pupil at the 5th ($7,349) and 95th ($21,048) percentiles of districts was approximately 190 percent.
- Independent charter school districts had median total revenues per pupil of $8,357.
- For regular school districts, median current expenditures per pupil were $8,587, with $5,528 of expenditures spent on instruction and instruction-related activities.
- For independent charter school districts, median current expenditures per pupil were $7,499, with $4,123 of expenditures spent on instruction and instruction-related activities.
- The lowest 5 percent of regular school districts had current expenditures per pupil of $6,464 or less, while the highest 5 percent had current expenditures per pupil of $16,150 or more.
- The lowest 5 percent of independent charter school districts had current expenditures per pupil of $4,728 or less, while the highest 5 percent had current expenditures per pupil of $15,095 or more.
- Unified regular school districts had median current expenditures per pupil of $8,401, while unified independent charter school districts had median current expenditures per pupil of $7,076.
- The independent charter school districts had greater variation in spending.
- There were 20 states that reported data for independent charter school districts in FY06. Median current expenditures per pupil ranged from a low of $6,321 in Utah to a high of $13,446 in the District of Columbia for regular non-charter districts that included no charter schools.
- Median current expenditures per pupil ranged from $4,952 in Idaho to $13,970 in Oregon for independent charter school districts in the same set of states.
- In FY06, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts ranged from a low of $4,918 in Alpine School District, Utah, to a high of $17,421 in Boston City Schools, Massachusetts.
- Approximately $47.5 billion was received by local education agencies from the federal government for public elementary and secondary education in FY06.
In the context of current state budget deficits, it is likely that both public and charter school per pupil spending will decrease significantly over the next few years. This downward trend in spending will become more clear when data for the current fiscal year becomes available.
Resources
National Center for Education Statistics, "Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts: School Year 2005–06 (Fiscal Year 2006) (Outside Source; PDF; 644KB; 28pp), July 29th, 2008.
State Initiative Leads to Common Core Standards
Despite the controversy surrounding discussion of federally mandated national standards, a report released by Achieve, Inc. on Thursday shows a network of states voluntarily adopting a common core of standards in order to better prepare students for life after graduation. The report, entitled Out of Many, One: Toward Rigorous Common Core Standards from the Ground Up (Outside Source; PDF; 565KB; 31pp), highlights accomplishments of the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network. ADP, created in 2005 by a partnership of 13 states and Achieve, Inc., seeks to help states better prepare students for "postsecondary success" by increasing high school standards and attempting to unify these standards across state borders.
Unlike the concept of federally mandated national standards, states voluntarily agree to implement the common core standards set up by the ADP. Currently 33 states are network members and are educating about 80 percent of public school students nationwide. While only 21 states are reported to have aligned high school standards with postsecondary performance demands of colleges and the workplace, 11 more states hope to implement such standards in the coming year. Furthermore, 20 states, along with the District of Columbia now require completion of postsecondary prep courses in order to graduate.
The ADP allows for significant flexibility among its member states, including the required grade at which students must meet the implemented standards. Currently, the group focuses on English and math skills. In English, benchmarks focus on reasoning, logic, oral and written communication, analytical, and reasoning skills. Mathematics benchmarks include number sense, numeric operations, algebra, geometry, data interpretation, statistics and probability, and mathematical reasoning. The ultimate goal of such standards is not only to get students to graduate, but also to succeed and truly prepare students for post-secondary education and the workforce.
When asked about how educational success and progress can be sustained through times of economic hardship much like the budget challenges states face today, Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, stated that a program such as the ADP "should be a long-term and sustained effort regardless of economic conditions." Mike Cohen, President of Achieve, also pointed out that the program actually decreases costs for states because they "share the cost of development." Furthermore, he stated, "the cost per student goes down as the number of students taking the test goes up."
While subjects other than English and math need improvement, the group stressed the need to focus on these core subjects as a means to make meaningful progress before attempting to widen the scope of the program. Through a program like the ADP, it is clear that states are taking a serious initiative to prepare students for the workforce and life after graduation. However, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen (D), pointed out that this program has even broader goals of preparing students "not only to be good workers but good citizens."
Resources
Erin Uy, "Report: States Voluntarily Align Core Standards." Education Daily, August 1st, 2008.
