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News Clips
– STATE NATIONAL STATE Average folks get no budget specifics "This budget
has tried to not make any of the hard decisions," said Rep.
Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth. "For people who
want to know, 'How's this going to help my children's education?'
'How's this going to help me get a job?' and 'How's
this going to get my roads built?' the answer, sadly, is that it
won't much." Among Blagojevich's
proposals were a $400 million increase in education funding, the
consolidation of several state agencies, an end to "willy
nilly" tax breaks and job creation
through the Opportunity Returns program. Sen. Dale Risinger,
R-Peoria, however, said the governor's plan to target tax loopholes
for businesses could prevent new jobs from being formed. Blagojevich proposed
closing $223 million in what he called corporate-tax loopholes in
the name of honest Illinoisans. "They're an
affront to the 7.8 million people in "He's striking
out against business and the people that create the jobs,"
Risinger said. "Loopholes to one
person are incentives to another." Blagojevich did
not provide the details some lawmakers craved in parts of his proposal.
For example, he did not spell out how he wanted to spend the additional
education dollars. Typically, governors specify certain programs
they'd like to see funded or improved, such as an increase in per
pupil spending, in their annual budgets. Applauding the education
increase, Sen. George Shadid, D-Peoria,
also praised the governor's prison strategy. Blagojevich suggested
closing older prisons and transferring inmates to newer, vacant
facilities. "They're dangerous
for the employees to work in, and they're very costly to operate,"
Shadid said of the aging jails. Rep. Gary Hannig,
D-Litchfield, said he thought Blagojevich made several solid commitments
to the average Illinoisan, despite leaving some specifics to the
Legislature. "For the average
citizen, they can be assured that their sales tax and their income
tax will remain the same and that their schools should see some
improvement," Hannig said. Throughout his speech,
Blagojevich asked legislators to work for average citizens. The biggest difference
they might see could be an increased fine for driving under the
influence. The governor also
proposed reorganizing the Illinois State Police to bring 400 more
troopers to the "front lines" over the next four years. Blagojevich mostly
avoided new or expanded taxes and fees on average citizens. However,
he proposed a 75-cent tax on taxi rides to or from either major
airport in School reform and politics go hand in hand in Education is likely
to be the most volatile battleground as the Legislature and Gov.
Rod Blagojevich wrangle over the Fiscal Year 2005 budget -- not
to mention the state-level administrative structure of elementary
and secondary education in This is a diverse
state, where some legislative districts are rural and others are
urbanized. Some have an industrial base, others rely on agriculture
and many are primarily residential. But every district
has schools. Every lawmaker has constituents affected by education
-- whether they have children or grandchildren in school, hire workers
who are the products of our school systems or are concerned about
increased property taxes they must pay to support education. Blagojevich is proposing
$400 million in new money for K-12 education, as he did last year.
But he isn't saying where the money should go. Instead, the governor
says he will work with the Legislature to determine its distribution. That's a promising
development. But it also could be a way for Blagojevich to share
the heat for those who don't like how the money will be doled out. For example, raising
the per-pupil "foundation" funding level just $250 --
to $5,060 -- would eat up nearly all of the $400 million. That would provide
little help to districts already at or above the foundation level.
And those districts could be harmed by the resulting lack in available
funds to boost state support for so-called "categorical"
programs, such as special education and transportation, that all districts must support. The State Board
of Education says a $139 million increase in funding for categorical
programs is needed to keep pace with costs. The closer working
relationship with the Legislature on education also could be a strategic
way for Blagojevich to court lawmakers' support for his desired
changes in educational bureaucracy -- namely, creation of a Department
of Education under the governor's control and, essentially, doing
away with the Illinois State Board of Education. Blagojevich has
argued that such a change would save money, improve accountability
and lessen paperwork for local districts. In demanding greater
accountability in exchange for more money for schools, Blagojevich
echoed the feelings of many Illinoisans in saying, "Reforming
schools and funding schools go hand in hand." But in 'No Child' act should be left behind You may not have
heard it, since it happened in And eventually the
entire house of cards known as the No Child Left Behind
Act will also collapse on itself. Then you'll hear another sound
— applause from the public education sector. Recently, the Utah
House of Representatives voted to order its state education officials
to not spend one Utah penny on NCLB, the federal education plan
which requires all students to meet high educational standards and
measures their progress through state-level standardized testing. But of course, the
federal money to support NCLB falls far short of its high — and
highly political — rhetoric. Last year, for example,
The rest of the
money, if it comes at all, comes from the states and local school
districts, already desperately strapped for cash. Things are about
the same for public education everywhere, including So the Utah House,
similar to what "We'll spend
the federal money we get, and that's as much as we'll be able to
do. And then we'll be subject to the consequences that come when
we're not able to meet our moral obligation to help all students
meet arising standard," said Dr. Steven O. Laing, Laing is right on the mark. And the mark covers much more
than just the state of Indeed, it covers
all of public education nationwide, which, if you believe in conspiracy
theories, has had a "bull's-eye" drawn on it from the
dark and dreary day Dubbya took office. Some people contend
that the NCLB act is little more than a conspiracy to put public
education in the worst possible light, by creating irrationally
high expectations. Then, the president will have the ammo he needs
to push for a national, privatized "voucher" system for
education. Now, I have no idea
where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, I never watched a minute of the "X-Files"
and I don't care if Elvis is still alive. But this idea makes
sense. Like many Republicans,
Dubbya is known to favor private education. But the education
unions hold such sway over politicians, most especially Democrats,
that the only way to convince the Congress to see things his way
would be to show that public education doesn't work. To accomplish that,
Bush pushed NCLB — which requires that all students meet high education
standards. Certainly
a great goal that any reasonable parent and taxpayer can support. But the problem is, NCLB relies
on standardized testing to measure students' progress in meeting
those learning objectives — which change from state to state, by
the way. Standardized testing
assumes that all students learn the same things, the same way, and
at the same pace. "All students" includes several exceptionally
challenging subgroups like special-education students, who, by definition
do not learn the same things at the same pace and in the same way
as other students. Under NCLB, if even
one subgroup fails to meet standards, then the entire school is
deemed to have failed. But all students
do not learn the same things, the same way, at the same pace. To
test them based on that assumption is to create the framework for
failure. On top of that,
the bill is so incredibly complex and the rhetoric so logical —
who doesn't want all children to do well in school? — that
the average person cannot possibly know enough about NCLB to know
how bad NCLB really is. I can almost hear Dubbya
giggling over the political brilliance of it all. So what does this
have to do with This district is
taking in thousands of new children each year, most from outside
this area, many who have not been held to similar learning standards
or expectations. This district is
forced to hire dozens of young, inexperienced teachers each year
to try to keep class sizes at a controllable level and ensure that
real learning happens for all students. Should these teachers
be blamed when all of their students do not meet the federal government's
ridiculously arbitrary definition of learning? Likewise, should
the entire school district, with 19,000 students and 20 schools,
be penalized — actually lose funds and resources — because a few
hundred or even a few dozen students do not learn the same things
the same way or at the same pace? Or should additional
resources be committed to ensure equal learning for all? With any luck, That means that
it will take action by local school districts to effect any meaningful
change by showing how NCLB is hurting real children right now. Most likely, such
action will come from large urban districts like But who knows? Maybe
a few Plainfields and Joliets and Elgins will also join in the fight — districts struggling
to meet the challenge of educating all students regardless of their
socioeconomic condition. Either way, it's
a fight that must be fought, because it really is about the moral
obligation to provide our kids equal educational opportunity. NCLB doesn't do
that, because it doesn't want to. District 202 staff airs concerns about year-round education Teachers probably
would be the first to tell you they don't have all the answers. Plenty of questions
remain for Some students from
A survey taken after
staff members watched a video produced by the task force drew 737
responses before last week's task force meeting, slightly less than
one-third of the district's total paid work force. Some surveys
were returned after the data was compiled for the task force; the
numbers in the report represented the first 639 surveys turned in.
Teachers made up 82 percent of the respondents. The opinions varied
a bit from one staff position to another. Sixty-four percent of
the middle school teachers said it would be a bad idea for the district
to continue looking into year-round school, while just one of the
15 administrators polled said so. Six administrators, or 41 percent,
called it a good idea to study it further, but only 7 percent of
the elementary school teachers agreed with them. Attendance at the
presentations was not mandatory. Participation varied, from one
individual at Asked to elaborate
on their concerns, many participants wondered how year-round education
would target populations such as special education and honors students,
as well as those in vocational programs conducted outside the district.
Some also named the need for curriculum changes and the potential
impact on such things as classroom sizes and standardized testing.
Ten respondents specified the system's impact on extracurricular
programs. Other topics — some
of them positives — that were named at least a half-dozen times
were concerns that many teachers would leave and work elsewhere;
the need for employees to coordinate their off-school tracks with
their children; concerns about delays in learning and retention;
the impact on summer income for support staff and teachers; and
the differences between implementing a year-round schedule in high
school, where there are numerous obstacles, and at the elementary
level, where task force members have found fewer logistical challenges. Numerous staff members
also said they want other alternatives scrutinized. Some noted the
likely added costs in staffing and other outlays. Six urged consideration
of splitting the 64-square-mile district into more than one unit.
Questions abound The task force could
provide few answers to the questions posed. "There are
lots of people seeking guarantees — parents wanting guarantees that
they'll be on the same track with their children — but there are
no guarantees in this district, is what I told them," said
Karie Beck, president of the Association
of Plainfield Teachers and a task force member, who attended 15
of the presentations. Other issues identified
included the possibility of "ghettoization"
arising from the clustering of neighborhoods on specific scheduling
tracks and doubts about whether the administration is equipped to
manage a switch to the 12-month calendar. Many of those involved
have noted that accomplishing the change would be a gargantuan administrative
task. The school presentation
team also reported that some staff members said the approach would
be in contrast to the district's policy of "putting students
first" and inconsistent with the middle school philosophy,
which includes team teaching and planning coordination. The visiting teams
made a point of gathering all input, which proved wide-ranging.
But while many issues came up — including assorted ones the task
force had not considered — there were recurring themes. "The most common
comment of teachers related to the lack of benefit to learning,"
said Beck, who has said she plans to quit as union head if the district
goes year-round. Task force members
emphasized that their charge is simply a preliminary study of the
issue. Their report to the Board of Education, expected in the spring,
will contain no recommendations. It will be up to the board to determine
whether to continue looking at the possibility. Members of the group
also stressed that no decisions are imminent and the matter is not
a "done deal," as many residents have asserted. "That's a fact.
If it weren't, none of us would probably be here. ... The facts
indicate there are more questions than answers, more negatives than
positives," said Jim Waldorf, a task force member who also
is a They also noted
that there are other possibilities for dealing with the district's
rapid growth in the absence of sufficient funds. Two of those are
overlap scheduling and split shifts. Revisiting past
remedies Plainfield High
School Central Campus followed an overlap schedule in 1998-99, the
year before its freshman center was finished. Juniors and seniors
had a school day that went from Central high school
also followed split shifts in the year after the August 1990 tornado
that destroyed the building — when students attended the substantially
less roomy building that had housed Beck said split
shifts are seen as a short-term, "get-us-over-the-hump"
solution to crowding, but it's not regarded as a particularly appealing
option. Ron Kazmar,
task force head and president of the school board, suggested that
the two alternatives be incorporated into the presentations at three
town meetings next month, included as possibilities along with year-round
school that could be adopted "potentially, if referendums don't
pass." Although several
task force members strongly denied allegations they have heard in
the community that the district is threatening to initiate year-round
education if voters don't approve future tax increases, there was
acknowledgment that the issue inevitably relates to funding. "The safe assumption
is that as long as the district is able to pass referendums and
build schools, we're going to be able to keep things the way they
are," said Jon Balke, retired District 202 assistant superintendent and a
participant in the task force. The town meetings
are scheduled for
All 15 committee
members recommended the proposal be tabled. "The committee
recommends (the proposal) be put on the back burner and revisited
in three to five years," Superintendent Leonard Bogle
told the board, speaking for the committee. "It's not right
for our schools at this time." Though there are
elements of a balanced schedule the committee thought could be used
in Some of the hoped-for
benefits of a year-round schedule were improved test scores and
improved attendance, he said. But after studying the issue, visiting
two community, the committee decided now is not the time to try it
in "The committee
had a hard job, and until tonight got a lot of bad comments from
the public," said board member Terry Curran. "They didn't
deserve that." The time spent researching
and considering a balanced schedule wasn't wasted, said board President
T.J. Shambaugh IV, who was a member of the committee. Some of the
ideas, such as Saturday tutoring sessions for struggling students,
are already being tried in "Some staff
displayed a lack of professional behavior," he said. "That
doesn't bode well for some of our teachers." The board did not
vote on the balanced schedule proposal on Thursday. That vote will
be March 18. Brenda Gaitros,
who presented the board with a petition from Save Our Summer, a
parents group fighting the balanced schedule, said she was relieved
at the committee's recommendation. "I'm very happy,"
she said. "Don't spend extra money on a program that has absolutely
no guaranteed benefits. It was going to play havoc with everyone's
lives and mess up the schedule during the summer and also make it
more difficult for students to participate in sports and other activities."
Another parent applauded
the board and the committee for taking the community's feelings
into consideration. "I've seen
a lot of boards who pushed things on the community," said Cathy
Mitchell, whose three children attend NASBE
Gives Support To State Board Of Education NASBE director of
governmental and public affairs David Griffith said the governor's
claims the state board is failing the Illinois school system is
misleading in light of national test scores, which show Illinois
students making "impressive gains" compared with other
states. Blagojevich announced
his intentions to replace the state board with a new department
of education during his State of the State address in January. "We think it's
the way to go," Every state in the
Donovan said the
system went unchallenged until 1995, when then-Republican governor
Tommy Thompson moved to dismantle the department of instruction
and form a department of education, overseen by the state superintendent
and an 11-member commission. The initiative never
became law, Donovan said, and the education system has remained
unchallenged. "The reality
is when you bring it all under a single person, there is less accountability,"
he said. "The state board isn't out there doing nothing.
The governor might want to take a look at the policies in place."
As the The governor's "We did not
model our department of education off anything, only that the governor
thought it was time a governor start taking responsibility for education,"
Rausch said. Since "The important
thing is local schools have a voice in this process," Rausch
said. Rausch said the
governor's administration has not been discussing anything of the
proposed transition with state superintendent Robert Schiller. However, Rep. Brandon
Phelps, "I think if
you ask a lot of teachers and administrators in our area, which
I have done, they all say something needs to change," Phelps
said. Despite Patty Sullivan,
a spokeswoman with the Council of Chief State School Officers in
"It's very
difficult to measure effectiveness," Sullivan said. She said it's not
uncommon for states to perform reorganization, or in some cases,
a complete overhaul, on its education system. "Different
governors' offices want to try different patterns," Sullivan
said. "For better or worse, kids get educated in all 50 states."
Education
task force won't get involved with funding By Jessica L. Aberle, About 80 percent
of But despite the
hopes of some area school chiefs, the governor's newly appointed
Education Accountability Task Force won't touch the funding issue,
according to Chairman Michael Bakalis. "I know they
all want that," Bakalis, a former state superintendent of schools,
said of expanding the focus to include funding issues. "But
I don't think that's what our task is. "Certainly
I think that's an important issue," Bakalis said. "But
I don't think that's going to be the focus." In fact, Bakalis
said the 39-member group has a very narrow focus. Gov. Rod Blagojevich
has proposed legislation to create a new State Department of Education
under his authority and leave the current Illinois State Board of
Education with little power. "Our task is
to say if it passes, and it looks as if it will, how's the thing
actually going to work," Bakalis said of a new department of
education. Bakalis has taught
at the junior and senior high school levels and was a professor
at He has joined Blagojevich
in calling for reform. "Back in 1970,
I thought it was in the best interest of the state to have an independent
board of education. But over the years, that independence has allowed
the board to grow into a sizable bureaucracy that answers to no
one," Bakalis said at the time of his appointment to the task
force. "With something
as critical as education - an issue that directly impacts our state's
social and economic success - it's imperative that we establish
a clear line of responsibility." Area educators appointed The governor also
named four central Illinois superintendents to the task force: Bruce
Dennison, regional superintendent for Bureau-Henry-Stark Country
Regional Office of Education and president of the Illinois Association
of Regional Superintendents of Schools; Ralph Grimm, superintendent
of Canton Union School District 66; Frances Karanovich, superintendent of Macomb Unit School District
185; and Bruce Nielsen, superintendent of Bloomington School District
87. Task force members
bring varying personalities, interests, local needs and beliefs
to the table, said Dennison, who believes a healthy debate will
be a crucial part of the process. "I think it's
always good to take a look at what we're doing and why we're doing
it," he said. "This is a pretty narrow focus for this
group. ... I'm going to trust that it's (the financial crisis) not
going to be left out." Superintendent Grimm
heads up a school district that already has cut programs in an attempt
to balance its budget. However, if voters don't approve a tax increase
on March 16, the unit district ultimately will lose all extracurricular
programming, including all band, chorus, sports, vocational programs,
art, music and physical education. All electives at the high school
level and all specialists at the elementary and middle school levels
also will be lost by 2005 - the same time the new Department of
Education is slated to take the reins. "I think to
accomplish what the governor wants, we have to address the funding
issues," Grimm said. "I hope we can broaden the focus
of this task force to include the funding issue, because it is part
and parcel the main issue affecting public education today. "If it came
down to more money or eliminating the state board of education,
I'd say show me the money." Shifting the focus Some cynics say
the governor formed the task force to take the focus off of school
funding. Grimm and others say it all is related. Grimm may not agree
with everything the governor has proposed, but he is pleased Blagojevich
reached out to the educators to help deal with issues affecting
education. "I'm willing to serve with an open mind. "As a superintendent,
if change is going to be made, I'm not against that. All I ever
asked is to have a seat at the table," Grimm said. On the table will
be three objectives: - Help reduce non-instruction
related costs and focus more resources directly to education. - Improve communication
and responsiveness between a Department of Education and local school
districts. - Reduce existing
mandates, bureaucracy and rules that tie the hands of school districts. Bakalis has divided
the state into five regions and will begin meeting with the task
force members in those regions Wednesday. The first meeting will
be in The meetings will
continue through the end of the year, with the groups convening
possibly every month, Bakalis said. During the first
round of meetings Bakalis said the group will identify problems
with the current State Board of Education; separate problems with
the board members from problems of the office; review the educational
governing structures of other states; brainstorm what responsibilities
should be levied to the state, regional or local bodies; and discuss
what process the task force will use to form its final recommendation
to the governor. "Education
is the major ingredient for economic growth in this country today,"
Bakalis said. "The governor wants to have a Department of Education
under his control and I support that." Time to develop While the Legislature
likely will address the governor's bill in the spring session, Bakalis
said there is no urgency for the task force to rush together a proposal
by then. If the group quickly agrees to one or two things, that
information could be passed along to lawmakers, the chairman said.
The task force is
operating under the assumption the governor's proposal will pass.
But that doesn't mean local representatives serving on the Education
Accountability Task Force believe the State Board of Education should
be stripped of all its authority. Dennison said he
believes the State Board put forth a very fiscally responsible budget
and the state superintendent has shown a willingness to look at
the rules and regulations already in place. "We look at
all the accountability being talked about at the state level,"
Dennison said, "I think the State Board of Education has advanced
a very reasonable budget. "I caution
that when they're talking about all the accountability, not to lose
sight of the fiscal side of things." Dennison said he
believes the State Board was "cut off at the knees" with
funding reductions in the past year. With multiple staff reductions
and lack of funding, the board has been very limited in what services
it can offer, Dennison said, adding that there is no regional superintendent
or regional services for the "We can talk
about restructuring, but if we don't have the people and you don't
have the people with the skills, then you can't have the services,"
Dennison said. And ultimately it
all comes down to money. Superintendent Nielsen
of "And I think
it's all related," Nielsen said, adding his district already
has suspended full-day kindergarten and is having to make other
cuts just to stay above water. Nielsen said he
has formed no opinion yet on the governor's plan, "good, bad
or neutral." However, he is glad to have the opportunity to
give his input. "I don't know
where all this will end up. And I don't know how it's going to turn
out," he said. "We're in a crisis in education and funding
all of those things are of critical importance." Questions remain Macomb Superintendent
Karanovich has worked a great deal with the State Board on
facilities development and curriculum instruction issues. She is
serving on a State Board committee that studies school funding,
finance and fiscal management. Karanovich understands the group's mission to develop specific
proposals to help maximize the total money spent on instruction
and to develop a new State Department of Education. "I think it's
important that I represent not only my voice but that of educators
across the west central Grimm also will
bring specific questions to the meetings, including: "Are we
exchanging one bureaucracy for another?" Ultimately the local
leaders agree the accountability issues to be addressed are just
one piece of the educational puzzle. And Bakalis, too, said this
task force is just the first step to developing a coordinated educational
system throughout the state. "The governor
has made some pretty strong campaign pledges," Grimm said of
Blagojevich's refusal to raise income or sales taxes. "Hopefully
the task force will be able to help him maintain these pledges,
but raise the issue of how important funding is to solving the issues
confronting public education." Said
Dennison: "There's a Chinese proverb, or maybe it's a curse,
but it says that we live in interesting times, and this is they." School
reform and politics go hand in hand in Education is likely
to be the most volatile battleground as the Legislature and Gov.
Rod Blagojevich wrangle over the Fiscal Year 2005 budget -- not
to mention the state-level administrative structure of elementary
and secondary education in This is a diverse
state, where some legislative districts are rural and others are
urbanized. Some have an industrial base, others rely on agriculture
and many are primarily residential. But every district
has schools. Every lawmaker has constituents affected by education
-- whether they have children or grandchildren in school, hire workers
who are the products of our school systems or are concerned about
increased property taxes they must pay to support education. Blagojevich is proposing
$400 million in new money for K-12 education, as he did last year.
But he isn't saying where the money should go. Instead, the governor
says he will work with the Legislature to determine its distribution. That's a promising
development. But it also could be a way for Blagojevich to share
the heat for those who don't like how the money will be doled out. For example, raising
the per-pupil "foundation" funding level just $250 --
to $5,060 -- would eat up nearly all of the $400 million. That would provide
little help to districts already at or above the foundation level.
And those districts could be harmed by the resulting lack in available
funds to boost state support for so-called "categorical"
programs, such as special education and transportation, that all districts must support. The State Board
of Education says a $139 million increase in funding for categorical
programs is needed to keep pace with costs. The closer working
relationship with the Legislature on education also could be a strategic
way for Blagojevich to court lawmakers' support for his desired
changes in educational bureaucracy -- namely, creation of a Department
of Education under the governor's control and, essentially, doing
away with the Illinois State Board of Education. Blagojevich has
argued that such a change would save money, improve accountability
and lessen paperwork for local districts. In demanding greater
accountability in exchange for more money for schools, Blagojevich
echoed the feelings of many Illinoisans in saying, "Reforming
schools and funding schools go hand in hand." But in Schools
anticipate policies of new Department of Education After attacking
the Illinois State Board of Education as a bloated bureaucratic
burden and proposing plans to transfer administrative responsibilities
from the Illinois State Board of Education to a new Department of
Education that will be directly accountable to the governor, Gov.
Rod Blagojevich appointed a transition task force to help restructure
and improve Yet "The main issue
in Jessup claims the
governor's plans will actually add to governmental bureaucracy. "He is trying
to streamline and regulate a number of programs, such as keeping
sugar out of schools, that while well-intentioned, must be administered,"
Jessup said. Blagojevich, in
his State of the State address, complained that only 46 percent
of that money is spent on classroom instruction with the remainder
going to administration, transportation and various other expenses. The new department
will seek to keep the governor's promise to cut $1 billion of wasteful
spending, said state Rep. Renee Kosel
(D-Mokena), a co-sponsor of the bill. The department will
also attempt to save money on non-instructional costs that have
caused the state to rank 40th in the nation in classroom instructional
spending despite ranking 16th in total educational spending. The 39-member task
force of school administrators will help guide the structuring of
the new agency and develop policies for improving service to schools.
It is chaired by former State Superintendent of Schools, Michael
J. Bakalis. The task force's
appointment comes in the wake of bipartisan sponsorship of the governor-initiated
legislation. The Department of
Education will require the buck to stop at the governor, according
to Rep. Jim Watson (R-Jacksonville), a member of the House Elementary
and Secondary Education committee. "If (the governor)
doesn't reduce wasteful spending, then everyone will know where
to point their finger," Watson said. "For too long
the State Board of Education has been accountable to no one, leading
to periods of chaos and confusion," said Anne Davis, president
of the Illinois Education Association. Appointed by the
governor, board members serve a six-year term — two years longer
than the term of the governor that appointed them. "It doesn't
make much sense to have a governor come in with appointments to
the State Board of Education that are not
his," Watson said. "Getting some cohesion into the process
makes sense." Jessup and other
critics of the legislation cite a 1970 constitutional amendment
that prohibits the integration of politics and education. "Politics should
not be involved in educational decision-making," said Carolyn
Berry, spokeswoman for Treasurer Judy Baar
Topinka, head of the Illinois Republican
Party. Robert Schiller,
state superintendent of schools, has also denied the need for change. The Illinois Board
of Education has posted "Fact vs. Fiction: The real facts about
the Illinois State Board of Education" on its Web site. Other
governors, most recently Republican Jim Edgar in 1988, have tried
but failed to gain more control of the educational bureaucracy. The governor's plan
differs from that of Edgar's because rather than eliminating the
Board of Education, Blagojevich seeks to reduce their responsibilities,
eliminating the necessity for amending the state constitution. Smith's
committee to distribute education money "Education
is one of the most important services that we provide for the children
of this state," Smith said. "I am glad that there is a
place in the budget for this much-needed increase, and I look forward
to working with my fellow committee members on a fair way to distribute
the funding." The governor's proposed
budget for the next fiscal year includes a $400 million increase
in education funding, nearly identical to the increase enacted in
Fiscal Year 2004. The Elementary and Secondary Education section
of the Governor's budget proposal intentionally lacked specific
line item suggestions for distribution of new funds. According to
the published budget proposal, priorities were outlined instead,
with the hope of working closely with members of the General Assembly
to allocate new resources. Also included in
the governor's budget proposal are measures to fix the teacher certification
and retirement systems. His plan calls for removing the certification
and professional development functions from the State Board of Education
and placing them with a new Professional Teacher Standards Board.
Smith added that this would reduce the headaches and confusion involved
in teacher recertification. In addition, the budget would fully
fund in FY 2005 the Teachers' Retirement System, keeping the pensions
of over 300,000 downstate members secure. Other priorities
of the governor include physical fitness, in-house reading specialists,
food inspection, and a free book per month for children through
age five. "Overall, I
think this is a very well-intentioned budget proposal," Smith
added. "As the state's chief executive, Gov. Blagojevich has
a moral responsibility to provide direction and leadership for education,
and this is reflected in his priorities." Smith's Appropriations
Committee has already heard testimony from the State Board of Education
and will begin hearing from the governor's staff next week. Regular
committee hearings will be held to analyze the feasibility of these
new proposals, while re-examining the success or failure of ongoing
programs. Evanston
school may quit `No Child' As many educators
struggle to meet federal No Child Left Behind requirements, The district, which
could become the first in School officials
say they will decide in coming weeks whether accepting the Title
I money--directed to schools with low-income students to pay for
more teachers, professional development and other programs --is
worth the staff time and other costs to comply with the law's record
keeping and arguably stiff penalties. If they reject the
federal aid, school officials would avoid having to offer private
tutoring or to allow students to transfer to higher-achieving districts
if the school does not reach state testing goals. They still would
have to test all students in 11th grade, be held accountable for
their progress and face the state's less stringent penalties if
students do not meet standards. "It is important
to look at this issue soon so we don't get immersed in trying to
comply with it if it is something we think is not conducive to the
way we educate children," said School District 202 board member
Ross Friedman, who raised the issue at a board meeting earlier this
month. The debate at Several school districts
in Funds vital to some
districts Ron Tomalis,
senior adviser with the Department of Education, said it would be
foolish for Schools are turning
down Title I funding for the first time because of unprecedented
accountability for test scores, dropout rates and teacher credentials,
he said. "You are talking
about turning down resources to help children read or do math problems
because of a discomfort," Tomalis
said. The program is well-funded,
he said, with Experts say the
discussion at Evanston, one of the state's most academically successful
and racially diverse schools, is a reflection of the frustration
felt by teachers, parents and students affected by the increased
focus on high-stakes testing--and the stigma test results can put
on even the best schools. The law's requirements
also mean that for the first time, schools have to track down and
test special education students who study off-campus, send letters
to parents whose children are taught by an uncertified teacher and
train for new test procedures. "The frustration
is spreading across the nation as districts have a better awareness
of the operational impact of the law," said Reggie Felton,
director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association,
based in The Utah House of
Representatives voted this month not to contribute money to comply
with parts of the law where they believe the federal government
has not supplied enough funds. In Besides arguing
that the law's mandates are underfunded,
some officials say the requirements--most notably having every student
learning at grade level by 2014--are unrealistic. But many schools
that struggle the most with No Child Left Behind penalties have
more low-income students than Xavier Botana,
director of "It certainly
would be a statement [if Districts that leave
the program also risk losing other funds associated with Title I,
including grants for safe and drug-free schools and educational
technology, Tomalis said. Although many "There are
an awful number of people who rumble about [No Child Left Behind],"
said Dave Turner, executive director of the Springfield-based Illinois
Principals Association. "But sometimes that's simply a catharsis,
when you get a group of principals and superintendents together
who say I'm going to take this law and shove it, sometimes more
professionally than that and sometimes not." Leaving no option
for some Other local school
districts have looked into pulling out of No Child Left Behind but
decided against it. "We've considered
the question, but at this time it's not a direction in which we're
going to head," said Philip Prale,
director of instruction at With an annual budget
of about $46 million, This was the first
year the district didn't make adequate progress because not enough
African-American and low-income students passed reading and math
tests, according to the 2003 state report card. Under No Child Left
Behind, sanctions involving school choice and private tutoring start
to kick in when a district doesn't meet standards two years in a
row. School officials
say the data are inaccurate, and they are appealing. Costs are at issue "On paper the
goals are certainly admirable. Who would object to them?" school
board president Margaret Lurie said, noting
that the district worked to close the achievement gap between minority
students and their white peers long before the government made it
a priority. Yet, "like
so many of the mandates that we get, there's just no money behind
it," she said. "And there's the whole concept of having
to worry about test scores when we feel we're constantly working
on student achievement." She and other board
members asked school administrators to provide an analysis of the
costs associated with the law before they discuss--and eventually
vote on--whether to forgo the Title I money. The seven-member
board hasn't set a timetable but plans to take up the issue before
the end of the school year. Three members reached by the Tribune
last week would not commit themselves one way or the other. "Politically,
I'm not sure it's a good idea," Lurie
said. "It would have to be a strong case to present to the
taxpayers. There are a lot of programs that the money goes to." Board member Jane
Colleton said it's an important issue to debate, because "it
is not a lot of money for all the hoops we are jumping through." In the meantime,
she proposed a bake sale. "There are
so many people who don't like No Child Left Behind, we can get a
lot of teachers to bake and buy," she said with a laugh. "We
might be able to make up that money." Education
plan is more smoke and mirrors Dear Editor:
Does Governor Rod Blagojevich really think that the legislature
will support his plan to “gut” the Illinois State Board of Education
only to allow him the opportunity (when his education plan fails)
to point the finger and blame them for lack of funding? In his tirade belittlement
of the ISBE, not once did the governor mention that only school
districts, school boards and the legislature (and not the ISBE)
control education spending in We are truly living
in an “alternative reality” if we believe the $1 billion savings
claimed by the governor will be devoted to classroom instructions. The ISBE issue is
simple: The governor wants control of the money and positions.
His admission that he has not determined how the “savings” will
be divided among schools should be an indication that he has no
real follow-up plan. The last thing
we need are new “smoke and mirror” programs that will become separate
and costly “bureaucracies” (all of which will most likely be located
in Creating a legacy
for Gov. Blagojevich is not a good reason for the change. Voice
Of The Southern: Blagojevich, A Governor Who Fits No Stereotypes Gov. Rod Blagojevich
continues to defy convention. As a Democrat spawned from the The one thing that
can be said of Blagojevich with certainty is that when he vowed
"no more business as usual" in That was shown once
again during his budget address Wednesday. Blagojevich continued
his crusade to deconstruct state government. Under his revamping
proposals, There are no sacred
cows. A proponent of public safety, he still is calling for major
structural changes at the Illinois State Police. A chief ally of
education, he previous announced he'll gut the Illinois State Board
of Education. A man whom state employees' unions helped deliver
into office, he wants to eliminate 2,000 jobs and send an equal
number of workersinto retirement. Blagojevich is convinced
that a "more with less" government is imperative as he
hacks away at a $1.7 billion deficit. These aren't likely
to be qualities that will endear him to state employees, lawmakers
and agency chiefs, but they resound with most Illinoisans who believe
government has grown to become an 800-pound gorilla. The question
that remains to be answered, though, is
can government continue to provide the services taxpayers expect
with this much leaner model. The governor didn't
drop as many bombshells Wednesday as he has in past speeches; certainly
nothing of the magnitude of January's State of the State address
where he described the ISBE as a "Soviet-style" bureaucracy.
But, as in the past, he did find some whipping boys. Those in his sights
were corporations doing business in "In 1980, one
in every five income tax dollars in Such words will
certainly play in Legislators, whose
relationship with Blagojevich is tepid, weren't excluded from sacrifices.
The governor announced a Balanced Budget Act that simply means for
any new law to be introduced that costs Finally, the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest
state workers' union, was put on notice that they'd best be flexible
as negotiations over their labor contract, which expires June 30,
continue. "We have to
make sure that what's a fair deal for state employees must be weighed
against the interests of the people they serve," he said. "State
government doesn't exist for the benefit of state employees."
In all, the Blagojevich
continued his theme of turning state government inside out in effort
to streamline it. It is not something many expected him to do when
he took office, but something that needed to be done. Even if some
of these changes don't bear fruit, no one can say the governor didn't
try. No
Child Left Behind affects districts' jobs When state tests
arrive by truck at the The tests are individually
labeled, checked and counted to ensure integrity. Students take
the tests and the exams are recounted. The exams then are sent to
the Illinois State Board of Education for scoring. All of the information
for more than 13,000 students, including 11 subgroups of demographic
information and student test scores, will be recorded. At least
16 boxes of pages filled with data are returned to the district. School officials
then check the state's data for mistakes, and then analyze the data.
Each fall, the information is packaged into individual school and
district report cards for the public. Each step in the
lengthy process demands hours of paperwork and data entry into computers. This has increased
dramatically under the No Child Left Behind Act and is set to exponentially
increase in the coming years as schools begin to test more grades,
said Rae Barton, St. Charles school district assessment resource
teacher. "Lots of paperwork
comes from the state, but that is mandated by the federal law,"
Barton said. "I am not upset about the NCLB law. I am fine
with accountability. ... The paperwork is difficult. The possibility
of mistakes scare me." Barton and administrators
with similar positions in other districts increasingly find themselves
deluged with heaps of data that they must report and record to meet
federal and state standards because of the act. The data explains
student performance on state exams and demographic details of each
student, such as ethnicity and age. The federal law mandates that
this information be reported. The amount of data
reported has increased at least 11-fold since the passage of the
act, she said. But Barton said the information still is valuable. "It is not
a drudge. It truly is important to analyze student achievement and
learning and report that out to all stake holders," she said.
"It is valuable information, but it is a lot of work." To handle the workload,
Barton's nine-month contract has been extended by four weeks each
of the last two years. Other school districts
also face problems with the growing amount of paperwork duties under
the two-year-old federal law and the rules the state has written
to meet the law's requirements. The workload has
meant more use of computers to report and record data, said Jan
Wright, "A lot of time
to read the regulations and to understand them and to send in the
reports," Wright said. "Is spending that time improving
student learning? I would have to say no." Much of the paperwork
is the result of the state board of education's interpretation of
the federal law's requirements, said Clem Mejia, Mejia said that
while "the feds tend to blame the state, and the state blames
the feds," much of the fault lies with the state board of education,
which Gov. Rod Blagojevich has targeted as "Soviet-style"
bureaucracy. "I think it
is pretty clear the state of "They are making
it more stringent so they can meet the standards. Interpretation
of the definitions is where you find some of the difficulties." Mejia points to
testing of special education students. He said the state interpreted
the act as requiring all such students need to be tested and now
the federal government is saying that is not true. In addition, he
said the issuance of new teacher certificates after the approval
of the act also has bogged up his office. With recent staff cuts,
his office has seen a 25 percent rise in paperwork because of NCLB-related
requirements by the state, he said. However, Karen Craven,
state board of education spokeswoman, said the board is not to blame
for the rise in paperwork. She said a paper trail is needed for
all of the programs the board oversees each year. "Most of this
is done electronically, so it is efficient, as well cost-effective,"
she said. "You have 100
state, federal programs and you can't just sign blank checks. You
have to file quarterly reports and annual reports." The NCLB act and
state laws will require more testing of students in the next year. More tests means
more data that Barton said will increase the amount of data that
has to be reported by about 11 times because of the subgroup information
for each test. The data growth
could mean the truckload of boxes that arrives each year also could
increase by at least that amount. Entire
Senate meeting on governor's education reform plan The entire Senate
will meet as a committee March 3 to discuss Blagojevich's proposal
to eliminate the State Board of Education and replace it with a
department under the governor's control. Senate President
Emil Jones, D-Chicago, said Monday that the magnitude of the issue
and tremendous interest by his members led to the decision to meet
as a "Committee of the Whole." The hearing will
be only the fifth time since 1983 that the entire Senate has convened
for a committee. Previous meetings have covered issues such as tax
increases and riverboat gambling. Jones says the Senate
Education Committee also will hold hearings on the measure in suburban
"Our goal is
to provide a fair and balanced roster of individuals, groups and
organizations who can provide their insight into this far-reaching
proposal," said Sen. Miguel del Valle, D-Chicago, chairman of the Education Committee. Also Monday, Senate
Republicans pledged to work with Blagojevich to streamline 2,800
pages of administrative rules imposed on state schools that the
governor says have created a bureaucratic nightmare for local officials. Voters
rejecting Blagojevich school plan The negative reaction
to the cornerstone of Blagojevich's legislative agenda comes as
the poll shows the governor's popularity, while strong, appears
to have plateaued. The governor's approval
rating has remained near 55 percent over several Tribune polls since
June, while the ranks of voters who disapprove of his performance
in office have risen since then from 16 percent to 27 percent. The school issue
represents uncharted political territory for Blagojevich, who has
spent much of his first year in office engaged in a series of high-profile
battles over spending, ethics reform and other matters with legislators,
state officials and corporate interests. He has prevailed in most
of those conflicts by successfully painting them in black-and-white
terms that portray him as a champion of change and his opponents
as obstructionists. Taking on the state
board is far more complicated and involves questions about whether
it would impinge on local control of schools. Despite the governor's
attempt to portray the independent agency as a bloated and inefficient
"Soviet-style bureaucracy," the poll results suggest he
has far more work to do to sway voters. In the survey, 53
percent of Furthermore, the
poll shows, 61 percent of voters said Blagojevich's plans would
make public education worse or make no difference at all, while
only 22 percent thought it would improve education. The findings are
based on a survey of 600 registered Blagojevich's plan
calls for dismantling the board and shifting its duties to a new
Department of Education under the governor's direct control. The
proposal would do an end-run around a provision in the state constitution
that establishes the board, allowing it to exist but relegating
its function to that of a think tank. Voters also gave
an unenthusiastic response to another aspect of Blagojevich's school-takeover
plan that would consolidate under his control some school functions
now run at the local district level, such as the purchasing of supplies
and employee health insurance. The governor says the combined purchasing
power could save districts money and allow them to use the savings
in the classroom, while many local officials contend they can do
things more efficiently than the state. Nearly 60 percent
said control of these services should remain in the hands of local
school districts, while only 24 percent said the state should take
control. The rest percent had no opinion. During his State
of the State address last month, Blagojevich blasted the board,
blaming its red tape for scores of problems in public education
from the inability of many schoolchildren to read well to tainted
cafeteria lunches. Since then, he has gone around the state trumpeting
his plan, saying it will free up money for districts to spend on
classroom instruction, improving education statewide. But critics have
argued that Blagojevich is oversimplifying the situation without
addressing the real problem, which is the state's failure to overhaul
an education-funding system that has created widespread inequities
and has led to heavy reliance on the property tax. One reason Blagojevich
hasn't dealt with that situation is because he has vowed not to
raise income or sales taxes--something that would be almost inevitable
to offset decreased property taxes in any comprehensive revamp of
school funding. Indeed, voters in
the survey were very supportive of that position. Slightly more
than half said Blagojevich should continue to keep his pledge not
to raise general taxes, while 32 percent said he should not and
16 percent had no opinion. The controversy
swirling around Blagojevich's proposal led Senate President Emil
Jones (D-Chicago) to announce Monday that the Senate will meet March
3 in a rare Committee of the Whole to discuss the matter. The committee
will hear testimony from both sides on the governor's plan. The poll showed
voters across The strongest support
for Blagojevich on the issue came from suburban That Blagojevich's
plan is getting its coldest reception Downstate is hardly surprising,
given the fact that the governor has been frequently criticized
by officials from that part of the state for being too Chicago-focusedand
ignoring their needs. Blagojevich's job approval ratings are also
softest among Downstate voters, with 44 percent support and 37 percent
opposition. Blagojevich has
seen his statewide disapproval rating climb repeatedly in Tribune/WGN-TV
surveys since June, while his approval rating has remained static.
The ranks of those who have no opinion about the governor's performance
have thinned, with those making up their minds in recent months
tilting toward a negative impression. Even so, Blagojevich
still gets generally high marks from voters in How voters view
school plan More than half of
SCHOOLS Q: Blagojevich says
he should control school oversight because the board is inefficient,
lacks accountability and has done a poor job of running public schools.
Critics of the governor say such a change would leave school policy
subject to political manipulation. After considering
these arguments, do you think oversight of public schools should
be turned over to the governor, or should the state board remain
in charge? State board: 53% Blagojevich: 26% No opinion: 22% Q: Blagojevich also
wants to consolidate and control some school-district functions,
such as purchasing supplies and health insurance for teachers and
other school employees. He says this would save money. Many local
school officials disagree that the state could run these services
more efficiently. After considering
these arguments, do you think the state should take control of these
services or should control remain with local district officials? Remain locally controlled:
57% State should control:
24% No opinion: 19% JOB APPROVAL While the governor's
approval rating has been steady, an increasing share of voters disapprove
of the way he's doing his job Q: Do you approve
or disapprove of the job Rod Blagojevich is doing? June Approve: 58% No opinion: 26% Disapprove: 16% February Approve: 55% No opinion: 18% Disapprove: 27% Note: Percentages
may not add to 100 due to rounding. Margin of error
is +/-4 percentage points. Source: Market Shares
Corp. poll of 600 Experts debate school
funding The omnipresent
frustration with the way schools are funded in A group of "All of us
agree that this is an important issue," Munson said. Munson and Schmitz
have co-sponsored a bill that would speed up state funding allocations
for high-growth school districts experiencing lags in state aid,
but a comprehensive solution is yet to come from "The main problem
is a poorly designed revenue system," said panelist Ralph Martire,
executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability,
a bipartisan state think tank. Martire argued that the state's current fiscal system is to
blame for the education funding crisis. He said it could be remedied
by tapping new revenue sources like income tax increases as well
an expansion of the state's sales tax base to include the service
sector. Martire says incorporating both of those resources into the
state revenue system would bring tax relief to homeowners and businesses
and provide education the funding it's
due. "At the end
of the day, we have enough money for schools to be funded at 51
percent (of the state budget)," Martire
said. Jeffery Mays, president
of the Illinois Business Roundtable, disagreed that changes to the
state's revenue system would fix the system. Mays said that an examination
of spending must be done at the same time. "You can't
look at it in isolation, especially when spending far exceeds the
capacity to support it," Mays said. The bottom line
for Mays is achieving a sustainable balancing act between spending
and revenues to support education. And as businesses have done,
he says school districts can help out by cutting back in areas like
teacher pensions, health care and salaries. For Ron Gidwitz,
a member of the Illinois State Board of Education and head of Student
First, an advocacy group, repairing the school funding crisis lies
in the state's lap. He quoted the Illinois Constitution, saying
the state's primary responsibility is to finance public education.
Gidwitz feels education should be funded before any other expense
at the state level and emphasized Monday that having the state fulfill
its legal obligation will reap benefits. "Public education
is a major driver in the new economy and world marketplace that
we need to foster," he said. Monday's panelists
also heard from some students about the state funding crisis, including
Corrine Brantner, a senior at Brantner told the panel how the crisis has cut teaching jobs
and forced 45 students into her Advanced Placement history class,
adding administrative pressures on the teachers left. "It is unacceptable
(for this) to fall on the children's back," she said Study:
Graduate rate is inflated Illinois' largest
school districts "seriously inflate" their high school
graduation rates, particularly for minority students, a finding
that points to an accountability problem across the state, a national
study released Wednesday suggests. The researchers
argue that school districts nationwide are misleading the public
with self-serving statistics that hide this reality: Only about
half of all African-American, Latino and Native American students
nationwide are graduating from high school with regular diplomas
in four years. The report, "Losing our Future," was conducted
by the Civil Rights Project at Although the authors
praise The Chicago Public
Schools system has long been the target for inaccurate reporting
of graduation rates, but this study revealed serious problems in
"It's just
devastating," said state Sen. Miguel del
Valle (D-Chicago), Senate Education Committee chairman. "We've
been complaining about this issue for a long time." But the districts
are allowed plenty of wiggle room in how they define their "transfer"
students. Some districts assume that students who leave school have
transferred, even if they have not received any documents suggesting
this has happened. Del Valle has proposed legislation that would
close the loophole and force districts to report the kids as dropouts. The graduation rate
has become increasingly visible under federal education reforms
that require that school systems be held accountable for graduation
rates as well as performance on academic assessments. "When there
is a spotlight placed on this issue, you find situations where school
districts report [graduation rates] in a way that's most favorable
to them," said Illinois School Supt. Robert Schiller. "The
data collection may not be as accurate as we'd like." Carpentersville-based
District 300's official graduation rate is almost identical to the
rate reported in the study--83.4 percent compared with 82.3 percent--but
the gap between its white and black students is 43 percentage points. "These numbers
are alarming," said District 300 Supt. Ken Arndt. "Forty-three
percent is totally unacceptable. It needs to be addressed and will
be addressed." Elgin-based District
U-46, the second largest in the state, reported to the state that
95 percent of its students and 90 percent of its black students
graduate. The study's analysis said the rates are closer to 77 percent
overall and just 53 percent for African-American students. The study indicates
Waukegan District 60's graduation rate is as low as Officials from The analysis suggested
that the graduation rate for Rockford District 205, the third-largest
school system in "I don't believe
that's happening here at all," said Linda Hernandez, assistant
superintendent for the For Chicago Public
Schools, the national analysis indicated a graduation rate of only
49 percent--compared with 70 percent the system reports to the state. Yet "Before students
make a drastic decision that will change their lives, they need
to know the consequences," said schools chief
Arne Duncan. Sky Clark, a 17-year-old
sophomore at the "I know there
are days I don't want to go to school," said Clark, who said
thinking about how little work there is without a high school diploma
and college degree helps him remain motivated to stay in school. P.E.
waivers a problem, but not a major priority For Illinois to
bask in the praise it receives for "requiring" daily physical
education classes, then grant waivers and "modifications"
to that requirement to nearly a quarter of its school districts,
is somewhat deceiving. However, considering
the financial and academic problems facing many school districts,
it's understandable why many districts would seek relief from that
burden. There is no need
to repeat here the statistics regarding the increase in obesity
and weight-related health problems among children today. Schools
-- and parents -- need to emphasize the importance of eating right
and being active. A well-run, daily physical education program can
help in that area. But the waivers
can't be blamed for the abundance of overweight, unfit children. Furthermore, when
the state has school districts that can't even afford foreign language
teachers, it's hard to say they must have P.E. classes every day
for every student. In some cases, lack
of space rather than lack of staff is the problem. Unless we're
going to have students doing jumping jacks in their classrooms and
handstands on their desks, there may be no room to accommodate daily
gym class. House Minority Leader
Tom Cross, R-Oswego, has submitted a bill that would end the practice
of unlimited waivers of up to five years. House Bill 3970 would
permit only a single two-year waiver. That is supposed to give district's
enough time to remedy the problem of inadequate facilities or staffing. But with at least
one-third of It's also worth
noting that under the procedures for obtaining waivers from the
P.E. requirement, final approval is given by the Legislature. The Legislature
has approved 141 of the waivers in effect and denied only four applications,
according to figures from the Illinois State Board of Education. If the Legislature
thinks school districts have been receiving too many waivers for
too many years, lawmakers don't need to pass another law. They can
just stop virtually rubber stamping the waiver applications they
receive. But that would be
likely to cause an uproar. It's far easier
to pass a blanket law that limits waivers to two years than to tell
a particular district it has to follow the rules, even if there
is no room for P.E. classes, no money for P.E. teachers and no chance
a proposal for higher taxes can gain approval. Until the state
does a better job of providing its share of the cost of education
and until the state stops piling mandate after unfunded mandate
on top of school officials, it should back away from limiting waivers
for laws that are almost impossible to follow. Meanwhile, the state
should stop bragging about its "daily" physical education
requirement. =========================================================================== NATIONAL Bush Education Officials Find New Law a Tough Sell SALT A former math teacher
was at a microphone, arguing that it would cost $1 billion for the
state to carry out the law's requirements, while the federal government
gives "That's like
sending a child for $10 worth of groceries and giving him just $1
to buy them," the former teacher said. "Let me correct
that," Mr. Meyer interrupted wearily, wading in as if with
a fire extinguisher, spraying official statistics on behalf of the
Department of Education, where he is a deputy assistant secretary.
"Believe me, I've traveled to 40 states to talk about this
law, and I've done the math. It's very well funded." As he campaigns
for re-election, President Bush hopes to capitalize on the law,
known as No Child Left Behind, as one of the pillars of his domestic
agenda. But the Democratic presidential candidates have made it
a frequent target of criticism and ridicule. And things are not
going that well even in this, one of the most Republican of states. Not only the law's
financing, but provisions that expand standardized testing
to raise achievement and that label schools as underperforming when
even small groups of students miss proficiency targets have stirred
discontent nationwide among educators and local politicians. So
Mr. Meyer's job is to barnstorm the country, part good-will diplomat,
part flak-catcher, calming emotions and clarifying misunderstandings. He is one of many
Bush administration officials traveling to explain the 700-page
law. Since Feb. 8, at least 10 other department and White House
officials have spoken in nine states, although Susan Aspey,
a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the pace of
travel had been consistent for the last year. "I've been
in some, I don't want to say hostile, but very contentious environments"
in recent months, Mr. Meyer said. "Places where I wondered
whether I'd get out of there with my skin intact. This law is largely
misunderstood by the public because of its enormity, so people get
emotional about it, and you've got pent-up frustrations." Mr. Meyer's trip
this week was the second Bush administration mission in two weeks
to Senator Dave Gladwell, a Republican who is the "We don't want
to embarrass President Bush or his administration, and yet we're
kind of sensitive to our state sovereignty," he said. Gov. Olene
S. Walker, a Republican, said in an interview that she expected
"heated discussion" of the bill in the Senate. She declined
to say whether she would sign it if approved. The Feb. 10 vote
by the Utah House was the strongest action by any state legislature
to date, but more than a dozen other states have passed or introduced
laws or resolutions challenging the federal law or commissioning
studies of the costs of carrying it out. Last month, the
Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates passed a resolution,
98 to 1, urging Congress to exempt "Six of us
met with Paige," Mr. Dillard, a Republican, said. "He
looked us in the eye and said, `It's fully funded.' We looked him
back in the eye and said, `We don't think so.' " "We got platitudes
and stonewalls, but no corrective action," he said. Secretary Paige
took action on one part of the law on Thursday, announcing that
test scores of recent immigrants who did not speak English would
no longer be considered in determining
whether a school was meeting annual targets for academic progress.
By Michael Dobbs,
"The idea of
a big white guy hitting an 80-pound black girl because she talked
back to the teacher did not sit well with me," said McLaney,
who resigned his assistant principal's post soon after the school
year began rather than carry out his superior's instructions. "I
decided I did not get my master's degree in education to spend my
time paddling students." A decision last
month by the Canadian Supreme Court to outlaw the use of the strap
by teachers has left the Here in the nation's
top paddling state, nearly 10 percent of students are paddled every
year, according to statistics collected by the federal Department
of Education. In poorer parts of the state, where a higher proportion
of children are from minority and single-parent families, the use
of corporal punishment is even more frequent. "The point
is to get the students' attention, not to inflict pain," said
Although child psychologists
say corporal punishment risks reinforcing negative behavior, many
And then there is
the religious argument. "Are we going
to believe man's report or God's report?" asked Cherry Moore,
a special education teacher at Carver and co-pastor of a local church.
She believes that Old Testament references to "spoiling the
child by sparing the rod" should outweigh the allegedly negative
effects of corporal punishment cited by child development experts.
The debate over
corporal punishment at Opponents of paddling
argue that corporal punishment perpetuates a cycle of poverty and
violence. Supporters contend that paddling undergirds
orderly and disciplined schools, which represent a child's best
hope for social and academic advancement. Although McLaney
had taught in other "In other When McLaney
was appointed assistant principal of According to written
notes kept by McLaney, he received repeated
admonishments from Ward, the principal, including comments such
as, "These kids are different, all they understand is the paddle,"
and "walk the halls and, if the kids are out of line, burn their
butts." McLaney says he resigned
as assistant principal on Sept. 30 when it became clear to him that
the alternative was to be fired for insubordination. Ward refuses to
discuss his conversations with McLaney
and describes the resignation as a private personnel matter. He
points out that corporal punishment at Carver is carried out in
strict accordance with policies laid down by the school's board
of trustees. The punishment must be carried out by an administrator,
in his office, in the presence of a witness, and advance parental
consent is required. Typically, paddlings are administered for fairly minor offenses such
as disrespect to a teacher, disturbing the class, profanity or tardiness.
More serious infractions, such as fighting with other students,
are punished by suspension. According to federal
statistics, the use of corporal punishment has been in sharp decline
since the early 1970s, when states began to outlaw the practice.
In 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available from
the Department of Education, 342,038 public school students were
paddled, down from 1.5 million in 1976. The figures do not include
paddlings in private and religious schools.
"Under In some states,
such as Corporal punishment
in schools is illegal in most of the rest of the world and has been
banned in most of In its most recent
ruling on paddling, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1977 that the
Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment,
applied to convicted criminals but not to students. It also ruled
that teachers could punish children without parental permission.
Most school districts
that allow paddling now stipulate that it must be done with the
permission of parents, a requirement that has sharply reduced the
number of legal complaints. There are, however, school districts
in Jean Merrill, who
lives in the northern "I told the
principal they were not to touch my child without calling me,"
she said. "When he still refused to call, I pulled her out
of there." School Superintendent Michael Smith said paddling
is legal in Like other "When my son
got spanked, he didn't act up anymore," said Patricia Moody,
a Carver parent and security guard in a local hospital, who had
come to the school to retrieve her daughter after a classroom brawl.
"Three licks on the butt, and they get more control."
McLaney, who came to teaching from a civilian job in the Navy,
was loath to give up his assistant principal's post, which paid
$53,000, "good money for "In the end,
I resigned because they made it very clear they were going to fire
me otherwise," said McLaney, who
is still looking for another education job. Panel
challenges No Child Act Like many education
advocates, attorney Alice O'Brien dislikes the No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB), signed into law by President Bush in 2002. So when asked
Sunday at a Law School panel what Congress should do to improve
the federal policy, O'Brien put her feelings in no uncertain terms. "Revisit the
whole thing," she said. Other members of
the "No Child Left Behind: No School Left Standing?" panel
-- held as part of the A bipartisan initiative,
NCLB requires states to implement stricter performance standards
for their public schools in order to maintain federal funding. By
demanding annual evaluations of school districts based on student
testing, the act aims to have all students reach 100 percent proficiency
in reading and math within 12 years. But Daniel Losen, a research associate at Harvard's Civil Rights Project,
said there is no evidence that high stakes testing improves the
education system. An onslaught of tests, Losen
said, is not the cure for failing schools. "It's like
buying more thermometers for your sick patient instead of investing
in the rest and medicine that you know would make them better,"
he said. Not only does more
testing not work, Losen said, but it creates
"perverse incentives" for schools to take destructive
measures in order to keep test scores high. For example, he said,
many schools boost scores by encouraging students who are already
behind -- disproportionately minority and special education students
-- to "voluntarily" drop out. Districts can do this, Losen
said, because while NCLB provisions require schools to improve graduation
rates, these provisions are not as rigorously enforced as those
demanding improvement in test scores. Panelist Elisa Hyman,
deputy director of the nonprofit Advocates for Children of New York,
said the "discharging" of low-performing students who
could harm test scores is a widespread problem in During her presentation,
Hyman described some of the discharged students who have asked her
organization to help them gain readmittance
to their schools. "It's sad,"
she said. "A lot of the kids had all of their credits and all
of their exit exams but one. Most of the other kids are struggling
with literacy, and they're being moved nowhere or to a GED program
where they have no chance of getting a GED." All of the panelists
said schools felt forced to take such desperate measures by NCLB's
coupling of overzealous -- though well-intentioned -- goals with
insufficient funding. They said districts simply cannot afford to
meet these goals, meaning that many already-underfunded
schools are set up for failure. "NCLB has brought
up issues of race-consciousness, a focus on improving teacher quality,
the idea that all children can be held to high standards,"
Losen said. "I think that's an important
starting place, but they're not putting money behind it to make
it successful." After the presentations,
an audience member asked the panelists how to raise awareness among
policy-makers about NCLB's insufficient
funding. In response, Hyman suggested encouraging officials to view
funding in relative terms. "In Critics
say the 'No Child' program is a setup for public school failure
There may be widespread
disagreement about the virtues and vices of President Bush's landmark
education-reform law, but all sides agree on one thing: Naming it
No Child Left Behind was politically brilliant. "They came
up with a clever name," says Karyn
Storey, a Certainly
not congressional members, who overwhelmingly passed No Child Left
Behind in 2001. But
2 1/2 years later, that bipartisan support is turning into bipartisan
opposition as political perceptions about the law give way to practical
frustrations of implementing it. Call it the Chalkboard
Rebellion. The chorus of critics from the left and the right --
which keeps growing in voices and volume -- includes stalwart Bush
backers such as "If the act's
regulations were tea, we could have our own tea party right here
in the middle of Popular rebellion:
That spirit of insurrection still lives in If [Education Secretary
Rod Paige] doesn't want to make the necessary changes, let's find
someone else to run the ship and he can go fishing with his grandkids,"
says Bob Green, who heads the Republican Town Committee and serves
on the school board in Paige's department
responded last week, loosening the testing rules for students learning
English. The feds are determined to make No Child Left Behind work.
For several months, "There is a
lot of misunderstanding," says Ronald Tomalis,
a top Paige aide, during a trip to Smoke
and mirrors? Critics
charge that the Bush administration's public-relations blitz is
merely meant to dupe the masses. "No Child Left
Behind was prompted by the same belief that has prompted so many
Bush initiatives -- that the American people are too stupid to look
at the specifics of legislation and will be taken in by names,"
writes Sheila Kennedy, a Republican and a professor of law and public
policy at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental
Affairs, in an e-mail to The Salt Lake Tribune. Some argue that
No Child Left Behind is seeking a shrouded, sinister goal: the ultimate
privatization of public schools. "The way NCLB
judges schools creates the impression of widespread systemic failure
in the public system," says Stan Karp, a teacher in 200 This year, more
than 200 Education Department
spokeswoman Susan Aspey scoffs at such
conspiracy talk, calling it "ridiculous
and special-interest hyperbole." "The only so-called
agenda this president and this secretary have is implementing a
bipartisan law that, simply put, ensures accountability for all
children being able to read and do math on grade level," Aspey
says in an e-mail. No Child Left Behind
requires, in essence, that public schools meet annual benchmarks
toward 100 percent proficiency by 2014 in reading and math among
four key groups: English learners, ethnic groups, low-income students
and students with disabilities. Minority support:
Minority groups have been among the law's strongest supporters because
they see it as a powerful motivator for schools to make changes that will
raise their children's academic perform- ance.
In academic measure. The law finally will compel schools to close
that gap, said Carla Knight-Cantsee, director
of education and truancy intervention for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
in southeastern Incompetence vs.
conspiracy: A few critics say the act is not so much nefarious as
it is simply bad law. "I always say
you have to dismiss incompetence before conspiracy," says Gary
Orfield, professor of education and social
policy at Karyn Storey, the "My concern
as a mother is that the whole No Child Left Behind concept might
actually make a child be left behind," Storey says. Respect and reason:
Orfield says driving the Bush administration's implementation
approach is a kind of fundamentalism that pervades the Education
Department. "They don't have a lot of respect for the public
education community," he says. "They think public education
people are lazy, that they just want money." Bill Fullmer
worries about that perception. They think we just
pass [the students] on," says the Farmington Junior High principal.
"It's a worthy goal to make sure kids aren't left behind. I
think we've always tried to do that. I'm just concerned that the
mandate is not reasonable. To expect schools to improve every year
is not reasonable. Of course, there's going to be a dip sometimes." Accountability
Looms for Special Education With a new report
revealing a large achievement gap between disabled and non-disabled
students, increased media attention has been focused on how best
to achieve accountability for special education students in traditional
public schools and in charter schools under the No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act. In January 2004,
for example, CNN headlines announced, “Special education students
skew test results,” leading schools to be labeled failing. A January
2004 New York Times editorial suggested “critics of No Child Left
Behind want to abandon disabled children by counting them out of
the push for higher standards.” Prompting much of
this interest was a new report from Education Week and the Pew Charitable
Trust, titled “Quality Counts 2004: Count Me In: Special Education
in an Era of Standards.” The Quality Counts
report examines special education and accountability, pointing out
that “within a decade, federal law requires that all students--including
those with disabilities--be performing at the ‘proficient’ level
on state tests.” The report reveals a sizeable achievement gap between
disabled and non-disabled students. Specifically: On fourth-grade
reading tests, 30 of the 39 states with complete data had achievement
gaps of 30 percentage points or more between special and general
education students. In Gaps in eighth-grade
reading tended to be even wider. Only five of the 39 states-- On high school reading
exams, 32 of 36 states reported achievement gaps larger than 30
percentage points. The Quality Counts
report also noted no state had linked special education funding
to student achievement or any other performance measures for special
education students. Charter Challenge Charter schools
face unique challenges serving special education students. Last
year, about 2,700 charter schools served approximately 700,000 children.
If special education students make up between 7 and 10 percent of
charter school enrollment, this represents between 49,000 and 70,000
special education students enrolled in charter schools. Special education
accountability has played a role in the closure of a few charter
schools nationwide. For example, in 2003 the Illinois State Board
of Education revoked the Thomas Jefferson Charter School’s charter
when it failed to achieve compliance with federal special education
law; in Ohio, the state Department of Education cited the Summit
Academy of Canton for special education failures; and the Arizona
Department of Education reported charter schools receive more special
education complaints than do traditional public schools. Much of the charter
school movement’s difficulty with special education is caused by
the funding model for special education students. In most cases,
special education funding does not follow the child into the charter
school. The most common model for special education funding is that
the sponsoring district keeps the special education funding and
provides special education services to the charter school. The largest drawback
to accepting special education services from a school district is
that charter schools must then accept the same quality of service
the district provides to all special education students and lose
the flexibility and funding to test innovative special education
models. Another drawback
is that school districts do not always meet their contractual obligation
to provide services to special education students in charter schools.
For example, in November 2003, the U.S. Department of Education’s
Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its audit of how In Taking the Money Charter schools
may legally have the option to take the per-pupil special education
funding for themselves instead of receiving special education services
from the sponsoring district. Yet charter schools usually opt for
the services because of the potential cost of special education
and the risk to the charter school’s limited finances if the charter
school enrolled a high-cost special education student. In addition, if
a charter school receives its special education dollars directly,
the authorizing district may still try to charge special education
fees to the charter school. Under “This is totally
discriminating against special education kids in charter schools,”
Vaughn principal Yvonne Chan told the Daily News. “This is destroying
a special education program that has worked in the last 10 years.” An emerging strategy
for charter schools is the pooling of resources among schools in
a state to achieve collective purchasing power. Charter schools
in Charter school advocates
have argued the schools can serve special education students better
than public schools do because of the charters’ mainstreaming approach,
small classrooms, and individualized instruction. In testimony before
the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education in
2002, Elizabeth Giovanetti, managing director of special education services
for New American Schools, noted, “Parents of children with mild
to moderate learning disabilities often find that their child performs
best in a charter environment, given the student-centered focus,
small scale, and the emphasis on achievement and accountability.” Little Data to Analyze It is difficult
to test whether the charter school model leads to better outcomes
for special education students. While NCLB requires test scores
to be disaggregated by subgroup, schools with small sample sizes
are not required to report test score data. Therefore, only very
large charter schools and public schools are required to report
their special education data. This makes it difficult for education
researchers to understand the effect of charter school innovation
on student achievement. In addition, the
unintended consequence of the current law is that it discriminates
against large schools that seek out and serve students with disabilities.
A school with high academic growth but a large special education
population may be designated as failing, while a school with lower
overall academic achievement but a smaller special education subgroup
may not be penalized because the special education data are not
scrutinized. This discourages charter schools and other public schools
from working to effectively serve special education students. The ability of researchers
to test innovative special education models would be improved if
schools were required to report the test score data for these small
groups for research purposes, while continuing to suspend NCLB penalties
for small sample sizes. 50 years after Brown
v. Board of Education, most schools segregated Students lined up
like dominos in the hall outside the At this school,
the hallways teem with students of various shapes, sizes and — unlike
many others around This year marks
the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision,
which declared the end of separate but equal in schools nationwide.
But many of One of the exceptions
in "I just think
Tarrant is a slice of the way life really is when you grow up and
leave school," said Martha Rizzuto,
superintendent of Tarrant City Schools. "This is the way the
world is." During the 2001-02
school year, just more than 50 percent of the school's 580 students
were white, and 35 percent were black. Hispanic students made up
1.6 percent of the school's population while the rest were either
mixed race, other races or not reported, according to the In 2000, about 57
percent of the 662,000 Many parents who
picked up their children outside "It's a good
thing," said Andrew McCloud, whose son is in second grade.
"Everybody needs to mix. If you mix, then you can get along."
McCloud, who is
black, said his son has white friends and he is learning not to
look at color first. "It's happening
here," McCloud said of the school's integration. "It's
got to start somewhere." McCloud said he
didn't want his son attending a school where all the children were
one color. He wanted diversity, he said. But diverse schools
aren't always easy to find. Most area school
systems are white or black. More than 89 percent of the students
in the Many over-the-mountain,
suburban systems have populations that are heavily white. The The All of the systems
also have students of other racial and ethnic categories, including
Hispanics and Asians. Joanne Cain, principal
of "That's a strength and a challenge," Cain said. School leaders acknowledge
that Tarrant students aren't living in perfect harmony. Especially
at the middle and high schools, lunch room tables can sometimes
be filled with groups of whites or groups of blacks. But at other
times, the schools' dining tables are much more integrated, Rizzuto
said. "I think the
children of Tarrant are closer to living the dream than many places
are," Rizzuto said. According to a study
by the Civil Rights Project at If a school has
a minority population greater than 90 percent, it has a nine out
of 10 chance of its students being from low-income families, said
Gary Orfield, founding co-director of
the civil rights project and co-author of the study. Easing pressure
from the federal courts and shifting housing patterns are causing
much of the progress which states saw in the 1970s and '80s to be
undone, Orfield said. Many suburban districts
are also seeing rapid racial change as members of the black middle
class exit the inner city, he said. Five decades after
the Brown ruling, Orfield said people
should examine the racial changes in public schools and realize
that society is only going to grow more diverse in coming years.
"We have got
to figure out how to make this work," he said. Many educators argue
diversity in the classroom helps bring different perspectives to
discussions and learning as well as helping bridge any societal
gaps. Theresa Thomas,
program specialist for social studies in Birmingham City Schools,
said "I think it's
better if you have diversity," Thomas said. "Even in your
discussions, you're more sensitive about other people's backgrounds
and beliefs (if you have diversity)." But in the fight
for equality, Thomas said there's still much work to be done. "At the same
time, the law does protect people who are doing the right thing,"
she said. Tarrant parent Brian
Hamilton said he thinks he's doing the right thing by sending his
son to a diverse school. "It helps him
to get along with others," said Hamilton, who is black. "It's good
for all of them to get along." Still, there is
some resistance to an influx of black students into Tarrant schools.
At least one white Tarrant Elementary parent said she would prefer
separate school systems for whites and blacks. Others said many
white parents are leaving the system because of the changes. Less than a decade
ago, black students made up about 30 percent of the system's enrollment.
Shifting levels of enrollment for blacks and whites in the system
has pushed black enrollment to 42.3 percent. Kristie Henderson is president of the Tarrant Elementary Parent
Teacher Organization and has spent much of her life in Tarrant.
While she favors the diversity in the schools, many longtime Tarrant
residents do not, said Henderson, who is white. "You hear the
comments," she said. From a baseball
diamond to birthday parties, "As the kids
grow up, they're not going to see color or nationality," she
said. "You've got to know how to interact with everybody."
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell announced 11 proposed changes
in what was already a federally approved blueprint for how the state
implements the education law. The Bush administration's
education reform includes far-reaching testing and accountability
requirements -- and requires that each state come up with its own
implementation plan to reach the federally set goals. Most of O'Connell's
proposed changes are technical and generally determine the formula
for whether a school meets the nationally required measurement of
"adequate yearly progress." The superintendent
said the changes are needed to make the implementation fair and
"more workable." District and school
officials across the state and the country have complained that
the federal law, passed in 2001, is too onerous, inflexible and
underfunded. "No Child Left
Behind presents a one-size-fits-all solution that fails to recognize
diversity," O'Connell said. For example, the
superintendent said, But the federal
law punishes schools that fail to test at least 95 percent of students.
Those schools are then deemed failures in meeting adequate yearly
progress -- which could ultimately result in sanctions or loss of
federal funding. About 25 percent
of the state's schools did not meet adequate yearly progress because
they didn't test enough students -- not because the students didn't
perform well enough, O'Connell said. One of the changes
proposed Wednesday would allow schools to count students who opt
out of testing as "not proficient" instead of as a non-test
taker. By doing so, schools would still have incentive to encourage
students to take the test, but they wouldn't be punished in the
head count if the parents decide to opt out. O'Connell, flanked
by business and state education officials at a morning teleconference,
said the improvements were needed to "paint a more accurate
portrayal of improvements public education is making." "This is not
an effort to gut No Child Left Behind," he added. "This
is not an effort to repeal." O'Connell's proposed
changes would have to be approved by both the state Board of Education
and federal education officials. School reform ballot measure gets key support Key state House
Democrats have agreed to push forward with a ballot question in
November that would let voters decide whether to create local school
boards, sending the measure to the full House for a vote today. Democratic leaders
on three House committees agreed yesterday to advance a bill backed
by Gov. Linda Lingle to split apart the state Department of Education into
local school districts with locally elected school boards. The bill
also would replace the state Board of Education with an appointed
standards and accountability commission. Lawmakers first
stripped out Lingle's preference for seven school boards and a seven-member
commission, arguing that the specifics should remain open for debate. The close votes
by the House committees on education, the judiciary, and labor and
public employment reflected the deep skepticism many Democrats still
have about local school boards. Republican lawmakers
praised the decision, and Lingle called
it an important step forward. Last session, the
majority Democrats killed a similar bill in committee. The Republican
governor credited the public's interest in reform as the difference
this session. "There are
a lot of steps in the process — this was an important one that we
had to get over to get to the next step," Lingle
told reporters. "But we're a long way from putting this on
the ballot." Committee lawmakers
also advanced competing proposals favored by Democrats. One bill
would expand the BOE from 13 to 17 voting members to make the state
board more geographically representative. The other would establish
elected school boards at every public school. These would be expanded
versions of the existing School Community Based Management councils,
and likely chosen by the school community, not the public at large. Lingle and Democrats also are considering a new student spending
formula that would direct money to schools based on students' individual
needs instead of school enrollment. Next week, state schools superintendent
Pat Hamamoto, BOE members and key lawmakers
will travel separately to Apparent agreement
on the new spending formula has been overshadowed, however, by the
conflict over school governance. Lingle has said local boards are critical to implementation
of the new spending formula, because the local boards, rather than
a centralized DOE, would oversee performance, leading to greater
student achievement. But several Democrats have said there is no
concrete link between local boards and student achievement. State House Majority
Leader Scott Saiki, D-22nd (McCully-Pawa'a),
said he expected the House debate today to illustrate divisions
among Democrats about the best approach. If House lawmakers
approve the bill today, it will go to the House Finance Committee
for review, then back to the House for final passage. It will then
go to the state Senate. "It's going
to be close," Saiki said. State Rep. Brian
Blundell, R-10th ( The threshold for
Lingle and the Republicans remains high: The school board
change, like the Democrats' alternatives,
is a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote in the
House and Senate before it reaches voters in November. State Rep. Roy Takumi,
D-36th ( "In the end,
this whole governance issue is far less important than the other
things that focus on what works in the classroom," Takumi said. He and other House
committee leaders also successfully moved several other constitutional
amendments related to education yesterday: • To give the BOE
more autonomy through greater control over the internal structure,
management and operation of public schools. • To allow 16-year-olds
to serve on the BOE. The teenagers would not be able to vote in
an election, but if elected would have full voting rights on the
board, which would continue also to have a non-voting student member. • To remove the
governor's line-item veto power over school spending. Several Republicans
objected vigorously to the veto amendment, accusing Democrats of
attempting to weaken the governor's power. Democrats have said
the governor still could restrict the release of education money,
just not through the line-item veto. "I think this
particular measure is shameful," said state Rep. Barbara Marumoto,
R-19th (Kaimuki, Kahala,
Wai'alae Iki). Is this any way to pay for public education? BROOKLAWN - Yes,
Bruce Darrow insisted, he really is contemplating peddling the naming
rights to the district's only school on eBay. You see, piped in
John Kellmayer, superintendent of the tiny pre-K-through-8 district,
something has got to be done to protect the values of an old-fashioned
education. "We understand
what's going on in the educational marketplace," Kellmayer
said. "In 10 years, this is going to be a fact of life. We're
aggressive enough to start this now." Aggressive, creative
or crazy: Take your pick. Kellmayer and
Darrow, school board president and "director of corporate
development," preside over a district that is banking not just
on government aid but on selling naming rights, snagging sponsorships,
and launching other money-generating ventures to fund its future. "We're working
people," Darrow said. "But we've
got to get our kids on equal footing, and we have to be innovative." On one side of the
ledger is flat basic state aid, soaring insurance costs, and a small
community unwilling to shoulder more tax burden - New Jersey classifies
Brooklawn as one of its poorer districts. On the other is
what the district has managed to do - slash class sizes, hire teachers,
buy equipment, build facilities, improve test scores, and record
a five-year streak of not asking residents for more money. Striding through
the halls of While other districts
banish soda, Brooklawn welcomes it - and
the money it brings. Students may not buy carbonated beverages during
school hours, but the contract is still a moneymaker at 40 cents
per drink, bringing in about $3,000 annually. Pepsi is just a
start. Darrow's half-joking motto is Nothing is Sacred; he bought
sons Brett and Austin T-shirts that say "Rent this Space,"
a nod to one of his favorite ideas - instituting a school uniform
policy and selling ads on the uniforms. "John always
says, 'Will you buy a used school from this man?' "
Darrow said, swinging open the door to the gym and
pointing to a hoop a dozen yards away. "You could put a 'For
Sale' sign on that net." The eBay bid is
still on the table, too, although Kellmayer
thinks Brooklawn could make more money by directly appealing to corporations.
No target price has been set. Brooklawn set itself on its current path in 2001, when it attracted
international headlines for selling the naming rights to the new
gym to the only supermarket in town for $100,000. Children used to
play basketball in a cramped multipurpose room until the spacious
$3.3 million ShopRite of Brooklawn Center was
built. The supermarket is paying the debt service on the bond. There was no library
until a local family of businesspeople gave $100,000 toward the
construction of the Flowers Library and Bulky with shoulder-length
brown hair and mustache, Kellmayer, 53,
roams the halls in loose sweaters and rumpled khakis, not suits.
People often comment on the resemblance he bears to Mick Foley,
the former World Wrestling Entertainment superstar. But he holds an
MBA as well as a doctorate in education, and he thinks Brooklawn,
where he has worked since 2000, should shoot way beyond sponsorship.
The district should function like a private corporation, he says. With the advent
of No Child Left Behind and President Bush's push for educational
choice, there are opportunities aplenty, he says. Brooklawn took another major step by becoming There are a limited
number of spots in the program, and the state pays the full cost
of educating School Choice pupils. The district has
sold itself hard to parents in other districts, offering specialized
instruction in music and technology and promising parents, "We
Guarantee Your Child's Success!" The program has
proved popular with sending parents, most of whom
live in nearby The $515,000 the
state paid Brooklawn last year in School Choice made it possible to cut
class size and hire new teachers. Elsewhere in In the coming years,
Kellmayer hopes Brooklawn can open
a virtual school, a technology center to train businesspeople from
around the country, and other profit-making ventures. It has already secured
state approval to be a "supplemental learning provider,"
competing with firms such as "Why should
the public education industry be cannibalized by the private
sector?" he said. He paused in the
middle of a hallway bright with crayon drawings and spelling tests,
looking around for a second and answering a question about Brooklawn's
new business ventures that no one had asked. "Do I think
it's a wonderful idea?" Kellmayer
asked. "No, but it's going to happen, and we might as well grab a piece
of it." "We want to
turn a profit and reinvest it in education." To those who fight
against commercialization in education, Brooklawn's
current path is a sacrilege, a body blow to the last bastion of
unblemished public space. Gary Ruskin, executive
director of Commercial Alert, a national anti-commercialism group,
says the path the school district is taking is foolish and dangerous. "There's no
doubt that thousands of school districts around the country are
desperately short on funds, but the answer is not to put our kids
up for sale," said Ruskin, who believes that Brooklawn
administrators could better spend their time lobbying to reverse
federal tax cuts to fund education. "Compulsory
education laws exist to teach kids to read and write and add and
think, not to shop," he said. "Their
model is to turn the school into an amphitheater of commercialism.
Ultimately, that's a bad deal." Even though the
architects of Brooklawn's new direction
see why they are subject to criticism, they are quick to defend
their position. "You don't
raise the amount of money we need by a bake sale," Kellmayer
said. "Look, we're not going to do anything that will embarrass
the community. I won't let that happen." In the early days
of his career at Alice Costello, Bob Lee, who teaches music and
technology and is copresident of the teachers' union, pieced together the district's
ragtag computer lab. "We came in
on a Saturday morning and pulled wires through the ceiling just
to get something going," said Lee, a 10-year teacher. "We
had no money, no resources." Sure, he heard the
talk when the new gym was built. But all Lee knows
now is while other districts cut their budgets to make ends meet,
he's got a brand-new classroom, another teacher to help with the
music program, and a cluster of sophisticated computers. "The way I
see it is, teachers get benefits from all this," he said. Doreen Wentzell
has two boys in Alice Costello - the school was named after a teacher
and principal from the 1950s - and serves as PTA president. She
has no qualms with Brooklawn's new direction, and she loves the district's close-knit
feel. "People don't
realize how much it takes to run a school system. You just pay your
taxes every quarter, but anymore, that doesn't cover it," she
said. And while there
was some community resistance at first, the chatter has largely
stopped, Wentzell said. Kellmayer admits his plans are lofty. His ultimate goal - dubbed
"The Lexington Project," after the battles of But even if he never
gets there, Kellmayer feels certain his
way is the way of the future and someday, Brooklawn
will be known as much more than the home of the original Ponzio's
Diner and one of the country's largest Wiffle
ball tournaments. "Someday,"
he said, "someone will ask, 'Where did this all start?' and
someone else will say, 'A little school in
The Lawyers for the
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed the amended
pleading in response to a lawsuit by more than 200 districts that
characterize public schools as underfunded.
"Without more
funding, and more equal funding, our districts cannot compete
with more wealthy districts, and we cannot provide the high-quality
education we want to provide," Joe Berra,
a MALDEF lawyer, told the San Antonio Express-News. Joining the Gov. Rick Perry
has said he will call a spring special session on education if Republican
leaders reach a consensus on funding and educational quality incentives.
Latest Proposal For D.C. Schools Would Diminish Board's
Control A group of 17 District
business leaders and former public officials has joined the debate
on who should oversee the city's public school system, pushing a
plan that would strip the school board of its power and create a
new governing authority. In a letter sent
last week to D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp
(D), the group proposed that the responsibility for hiring and overseeing
the schools superintendent be given to a seven-member committee.
The committee would include two school board members, the mayor,
the city administrator, two council members and a representative
of the private sector whom the mayor would select. The school board,
which currently appoints and oversees the superintendent, would
become an advisory panel. Among those signing
the letter were Togo D. West Jr., chairman of the Greater Washington
Board of Trade; Franklin D. Raines, chairman and chief executive
of the Federal National Mortgage Association; Jim Kimsey,
the founding chief executive of America Online; Terence Golden,
chairman of the Federal City Council; former council members John
Ray, H.R. Crawford and Charlene In interviews yesterday,
however, several council members and a spokesman for Mayor Anthony
A. Williams (D) said they would not support the plan. Williams instead
has proposed legislation that would give the mayor direct control
over the superintendent and make the school board advisory. The
bill, on which the council's education committee will hold a hearing
next week, so far has not attracted much support among council members.
Several council
members said yesterday that they were uniting behind a plan Cropp
is developing. They said that Cropp's
proposal, still in a draft stage, would create a committee of representatives
from the school board, council and mayor's office that would play
a role in hiring and firing the superintendent, while the school
board would keep most of its powers. Cropp declined to comment on the plan, saying she is working
to gain support. Tony Bullock, a
mayoral spokesman, said the mayor does not support the business
leaders' proposal or the Cropp plan because
neither would create clear lines of authority over school policy.
In their letter
to Cropp, the 17 business and former political and school leaders
said the school system suffers from "piecemeal, start-and-stop
reform efforts and a lack of focus" because of "fragmentation
of accountability" and lack of continuity. The letter noted
that there have been four superintendents in the past seven years,
operating under three different governance structures. Wilkins, a former
mayoral appointee to the school board, said that the group's plan
would "streamline the process and make it easier for the superintendent
to do his or her job without a whole bunch of people fluttering
around, getting in the way and posturing for the public and generally
making the leadership of the schools not just a hard task but an
almost impossible one." The plan says that
the superintendent selected by the new oversight body -- called
the Education Reform Oversight Committee -- would need to be approved
by the council. The superintendent would be appointed to a five-year
term and could be dismissed only by a majority vote of the council.
The proposal calls
for the school board to give up its powers voluntarily so that a
change to the city's charter would not be needed. But several council
and board members said the plan is unworkable. "I do not believe
that the board can abdicate its responsibilities when they've been
elected by, in my case, over 100,000 people," board President
Peggy Cooper Cafritz said. The board consists
of five elected members and four members appointed by the mayor.
To replace Paul L. Vance, who resigned as superintendent in November,
the board has created a search committee that includes the mayor
and members of the school board and D.C. Council. Cafritz noted that policies adopted last week by the board seek
to give more independence to the superintendent and make clear that
board members are to focus on policy issues and not day-to-day management.
She said those revisions should speed the pace of improvement. Critical of Public Schools, and Poised to Take Action As Tom Vander "Are you running
for governor?'' is one of the questions Mr. Vander No, no, Mr. Vander
As the education
director for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Vander Ark
is shaping what is easily the most aggressive infusion of private
money into the nation's public schools today, if not ever. In the last five
years, the foundation has committed more than $1 billion for new
and existing public schools, with no intentions of slowing down,
giving Mr. Vander Ark, 44, one of the loudest megaphones around. He is anything but
shy about using it. Since joining the foundation in 1999, he has
been unflinchingly critical of how the public schools have "failed
and forgotten" poor and minority students, a consequence of
what he calls a deep-seated "institutionalized racism"
rife with low expectations and a rush of dropouts. His counterattack
has come through investments in about 1,900 public schools, most
of them high schools, with the aim of creating small institutions
that do not merely hope their students will go on to college, but
demand nothing less of them. Philanthropists
had rarely plunged into the business of creating new high schools,
and the choice gave the foundation relatively untrodden
terrain on which to make a very public imprint. Mr. Gates and his
wife, Melinda, give Mr. Vander "Tom is central
to our efforts in education," Mr. Gates said. "We depend
on him to keep us up to date on the latest thinking and issues facing
our work in this area." But don't expect
him to entertain just any idea. The foundation does not take unsolicited
proposals. Rather, it is Mr. Vander "Tom's hugely
influential," said Arne Duncan, chief executive officer of
the The dance with school
districts sometimes involves clashing. But Thomas W. Payzant,
superintendent of schools in "The conversation
is never about Gates's money," Mr.
Payzant said, "but the work, and what it's going to take
to get it done." Despite Mr. Vander
"I was clearly
quite inept,'' said Mr. Vander Ark, adding that by the end of his
five years as superintendent of Federal Way, Wash., "I was
in more trouble than when I started. The best thing I did was ask
a lot of dumb questions." Before going to
the Gates Foundation, where he is paid $280,000 a year, Mr. Vander
And there was also
something personal at stake for Mr. Vander Mr. Vander How does he know
they are the right people to finance? That is as much art as science,
Mr. Vander "When you're
a superintendent and you go home on Friday night, you know whether
you moved the needle or not. You know whether you're winning or
losing and why," he said. "You win and lose from a distance
here." He was not always
so concerned. His father, a neurosurgeon
and preacher, used to drag him on weekends to the poorest parts
of town - in "No, it used
to drive my sister and I crazy," he
said. In fact, it sent
him in the opposite direction. By the time he left high school,
Mr. Vander When he entered
professional life, first as a mining engineer and then as a retailer,
Mr. Vander found himself consumed by what he calls the "typical
executive rat race," chasing promotions, a better car, a
bigger house. "I think he
was rebelling by becoming a cold-hearted financial whiz," said
Barbara O'Brien, one of the people Mr. Vander It came as a total
surprise, to him most of all. While an executive at PACE Membership
Warehouse, he was required to help a local charity. So he picked
the Colorado Children's Campaign, a group run by Ms. O'Brien, explicitly
because he thought he would have no direct contact with children.
Even so, the deeper he looked at the obstacles facing poor minority
children, the more it infuriated him. Taking over the
But there was progress,
too, especially with the district's finances and its lower grades,
he said. The only truly baffling task was improving the high schools. So, why did the
Gates Foundation choose him to lead its education efforts? True,
they had come to know his name through Microsoft, with which he
worked to bring laptops into his schools, but he was hardly a veteran
with a track record of victories. "I liked the
way that he was a continuous learner," said Patty Stonesifer,
the foundation's president. Which
is largely what he remains.
The riddle of fundamentally repairing the nation's high schools
still plagues Mr. Vander "It's what
wakes me up in the morning," he said. Bill would outlaw bullying at schools Amid emotional stories
from parents of bullied children, lawmakers took the first step
Wednesday to outlaw bullying at Parents like Robin
from "Why did this
happen to my child? Because bullying and harassment is tolerated,
and this is unacceptable," Robin said. "I'm standing here
to seek help for all children, including bullies. We have a responsibility
to provide children protection from bullying and abuse, but I also
believe we are doing a great disservice to the bullies by not making
them accountable for this harmful behavior." The committee passed
the bill 11-1. It must also get by the Judiciary Committee to get
a full House debate. • Allow students
to report incidents confidentially. • Require school
officials to report any incidents they see. • Mandate that school
officials investigate all reports of bullying. • Discipline students
who admit to or are found guilty of bullying. Brenda High, an
anti-bullying activist from She said older boys
began harassing her son every day during an after-school baseball
program in 1998. One of the boys, who High said had a violent past,
took the bullying to another level when he severely beat Jared for
nearly 10 minutes in front of the other boys. High said Jared immediately
became depressed and eventually took his own life. "We need to
start teaching them at kindergarten before things get out of hand,"
said High, who started a nationwide organization, Bullypolice.org.
"In the case of the kid who bullied my son, he was throwing
bricks at kids in the third grade. Every time I see a bully in the
higher grades, they are victims too. They are victims of schools
that didn't do anything about it." School officials
noted that But the Arizona
School Boards Association is supporting the bill to make sure every
school in the state has strong policies to deal with bullies. "It heightens
the issues that bullying is a problem that does need to be taken
seriously," said Janice Palmer, an ASBA lobbyist. "The
policy would be very similar to the harassment and intimidation
polices we already have, but would specifically stipulate bullying." Rep. John Allen,
R-Phoenix, was the only Education Committee member to oppose the
bill. He said he felt for the parents who testified, but he said
existing laws should be enough to deal with the problem. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TEACHING AND NCTAF News
Digest for • Report: Losing
Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation
Rate Crisis •
• Teachers’ Groups
Blast Alternative Certification • Poll: Most Parents
Raise, Spend Money For Schools • Report: Investing
in Learning – School Funding Policies To
Foster High Performance • Law Aims To
Lure Teachers To Low-Performing Schools • Georgia Panel
Eases Path To Becoming A Teacher • Education Chief
Calls Union 'Terrorist,' Then Recants • Paige Responds
In Person To Democrats’ Criticism ====================================================== Report: Who Graduates?
Who Doesn’t? Excerpt: Half or
more of Black, Hispanic and Native American youth in the United
States are getting left behind before high school graduation in
a “hidden crisis” that is obscured by U.S. Department of Education
regulations issued under the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Act that
“allow schools, districts, and states to all but eliminate graduation
rate accountability for minority subgroups,” according to a new
report from two nonpartisan groups, The Civil Rights Project at
Harvard and The Urban Institute. The new report,
“Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by
the Graduation Rate Crisis,” exposes inaccurate and misleading official
data now in use and suggests sounder statistical methods for accurate
calculation of actual high school graduation rates. Study co-author
Dr. Christopher Swanson of The Urban Institute calculated the graduation
rates using what he refers to as a “Cumulative Promotion Index”
(CPI), a method developed and tested independently to provide more
accurate graduation rate estimates. The report combines the findings
of a comprehensive review of state graduation rate accountability
standards and interviews with state education officials. The Civil Rights
Project at Harvard/Urban Institute report finds: “The national (graduation
rate) gap for Blacks is 25 percent; for Hispanics 22 percent; for
Native Americans 24 percent. Despite wide ranges within some states,
nearly every state shows a large and negative gap between Whites
and at least one minority group.” According to the data, the 10
worst states overall for Black and Hispanic minority graduation
rates are: New York; Wisconsin; Pennsylvania; Michigan; Iowa; Massachusetts;
Nebraska; Ohio; Illinois; and Connecticut. The report defines the
“graduation rate gap” as the difference between its calculations
for graduation rates of Whites and minorities. The Civil Rights
Project of Harvard Co-Director Christopher Edley,
Jr. said: “We have a tragic situation today under which high school graduation
in The report also
recommends six action steps, including a reversal of the U.S. Department
of Education regulation under NCLB that permits schools, districts
and states to obscure the minority graduation rate crisis. For the
full text of the report and executive summary, go to http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/call_dropout04.php
on The Civil Rights Project's web site. A different version (heavier
focus on data) of the report can also be found at the Urban Institute’s
site at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410934_WhoGraduates.pdf Christian Science Monitor [ ====================================================== Excerpt: State evaluators
who oversee "These are
important pieces that are part of these schools that perhaps can't
be measured under traditional measures of accountability,"
says Luis Huerta, a professor at After seeing their
children off, a handful of parents paused to talk. Some were disheartened:
Wary of traditional public schools, they say they can't afford private
or parochial alternatives. "It's like a punch in the stomach,"
says Tiffany Foster, whose daughter Briah
is in second grade. "All schools in http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0224/p11s01-legn.html ====================================================== Teachers' Groups
Blast Alternative Certification Excerpt: The teacher
shortage in "The problem
is retention, not supply," said Richard Kouri
of the Texas State Teachers Association. "The real problem
is our new teachers don't stay in our classrooms for very long,
and individuals who do not come through traditional certification
programs leave sooner than those who do."
According to a 1989 study of teachers in Of traditionally
trained and certified teachers, 72 percent planned to stay in the
field, said Jennifer Jackson of the http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2420877 CNN [School Funding] ====================================================== Poll: Most Parents
Raise, Spend Money For Schools Excerpt: The three-campus
Capitol Hill Cluster School needed it all: paper, paint, ink cartridges,
locker parts and those little metal glides to fix wobbly chairs.
Who raised the money? Parents, mainly.
Most of the $105,000 raised by the school's PTA this school year
is going for classroom basics, a trend playing out nationwide, according
to a poll of public school parents commissioned by the 6.2-million
member National PTA. Beyond fund-raising,
the poll found, many parents are spending their money for teacher
salaries, sports equipment, art supplies and other items schools
used to cover. "I don't recall my parents ever having to purchase
what I consider essential items just to make a school run,"
said Suzanne Wells, vice president of the PTA at "This is not
the answer," she said. "Every school won't have parents
who can do this." The
PTA hopes the poll will help propel its election-year drive for
greater education spending by elected leaders at all levels. More
than nine in 10 parents in the poll said that their political support
is influenced by candidates' education stands. And more parents
chose spending as their top education concern over any other issue,
including such choices as school crowding and teacher quality. http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/25/parents.school.supplies.ap/index.html Committee for Economic
Development [School Funding] ====================================================== Report: Investing
in Learning – School Funding Policies To
Foster High Performance February 2004 Excerpt: Every year
the The Committee for
Economic Development (CED) calls for transforming education finance
so that funding policies are aligned with standards-based reform
efforts to improve the nation’s public schools. Money is a powerful
motivator of behavior. Harnessing spending to school improvement
strategies can help spur the systemic change needed to raise academic
achievement. Redesigning funding policies—to use resources more
effectively, to make teacher pay more reflective of labor market
realities, to create incentives for improved performance, and to
link funding levels to the costs of meeting educational standards—is
an essential step in the process of transforming schools into high
performance organizations. Over the past two
decades, Reformers recognized
that many children enter kindergarten already at risk of future
educational problems and pushed for wider preschool access to increase
school readiness. CED has urged such reforms in earlier reports
and continues to support the “steady work” required to improve the
massive enterprise of public education along many dimensions. http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report_educfinance.pdf ====================================================== Law Aims To
Lure Teachers To Low-Performing Schools Excerpt: The law, passed
last year, requires a new four-step career ladder for teachers and
prohibits poor and high-minority schools from having more first-year
and out-of-field teachers than a school district's overall average.
How school officials accomplish that feat is up to them, and the
laws bans them from signing teacher work contracts that don't include
the new rules. Chancellor Jim Warford, who is in charge of kindergarten through 12th grade,
told state board of education members last week he will do whatever
it takes to enforce the law and is ready to battle teacher unions
that may oppose a status quo change. The language targets high-minority,
poor and D- and F-graded schools, and it means schools like Westward
Elementary in The
average years of experience for teachers in In fact, just six
of the 27 elementary schools targeted this year as needing extra
academic assistance had average teacher experience levels last year
of more than 14 years. During the past
two years, Superintendent Art Johnson has tried to entice experienced
teachers into low-performing schools with a $10,000 bonus. Last
year, just 10 teachers accepted the offer. This year, 11 teachers
took the bait. Four school districts, including Education Week [Licensure] ====================================================== Georgia Panel Eases
Path To Becoming A Teacher Excerpt: "We feel like
we ... opened the door for a lot of qualified individuals,"
said F.D. Toth, the executive secretary of the standards commission.
The changes were bitterly fought by the state's teacher-preparation
institutions, but supported by the state's largest teachers' group.
University officials argued that the new rules are a harmful quick
fix to teacher shortages, which especially plague high-poverty schools.
"What they
are doing is creating a revolving door of untrained teachers,"
said Ron Colarusso, the dean of the college of education at Once in the classroom
on a full five-year, nonrenewable license, the teacher must be mentored
for a year in a way determined by the district. After five years,
the teachers with this new certification will need a district recommendation
for a renewable license. http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=24Georgia.h23 New York Times [Sec.
Paige] ====================================================== Education Chief
Calls Union 'Terrorist,' Then Recants Excerpt: Education
Secretary Rod Paige said Monday that the National Education Association,
one of the nation's largest labor unions, was like "a terrorist
organization" because of the way it was resisting many provisions
of a school improvement law pushed through Congress by President
Bush in 2001. Mr. Paige made the comment in a private meeting with
governors at the White House, just hours before the president stepped
up the tempo of his re-election campaign with a speech attacking
his Democratic opponents. The secretary later
apologized for a poor choice of words, but repeated his criticism
of the teachers' union as a group of obstructionists. His initial
remark was described by four governors and confirmed by the Education
Department. "The secretary was responding to a question,"
said Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for Mr.
Paige. "He said he considered the N.E.A. to be a terrorist
organization." The governors who recounted Mr. Paige's remarks
were two Democrats, Jennifer M. Granholm
of Ms. Granholm
said the governors were "all a little bit stunned" to
hear the union described that way. Mr. Huckabee
said Secretary Paige "was trying to point out that one reason
it's been so difficult to execute real reform is that a lot of people
in teachers' unions are trying to protect the status quo."
And Governor Lingle said, "He's frustrated"
by the N.E.A.'s "lack of support
for a law that's clearly aimed at helping all children." She
said Mr. Paige had complained that the union seemed concerned more
about its 2.7 million members than about children. In an interview,
Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association,
said: "Secretary Paige's comments were pathetic and morally
repugnant. They are no laughing matter. When our members learn of
his comments, they will be outraged, and even more determined to
make changes in the law." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/education/24GOVS.html Education Daily
[NCLB – Sec. Paige] ====================================================== Paige Responds In Person to Democrats’ Criticism Excerpt: Education
Secretary Rod Paige and other senior Education Department officials
met yesterday with congressional Democrats to respond to their concerns
about the agency’s implementation of the No Child Left Behind
Act. But the lawmakers—Sens. Ted Kennedy
of Massachusetts, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Tom Harkin of Iowa,
Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Hillary
Clinton of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. George Miller
of On several issues—including
civil rights protections in tutoring services, guidance on adequate
yearly progress rules, and states’ compliance with requirements
for highly qualified teachers—Paige “promised to get back to the
members,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Kennedy. The meeting
was closed to reporters, but Paige also issued a letter yesterday
that outlines many of the points he made during the discussion,
according to Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman
for the department. Addressing the Democrats’ claims that delays
in issuing guidance and rules on key provisions of the law resulted
in “misinformation and speculation” among school districts (ED,
Jan. 12), Paige stated it would have been
a mistake to rush the regulatory process. It “takes thoughtful
deliberation, conversations with the field, discussions with members
of Congress and their staff, and careful promulgation of regulations
and guidance,” he wrote. “The opposite tack—to promulgate rules
and regulations, in a desire for speed, closeted in “Considering that
there are 50 different state educational standards and assessment
systems in place and 50 different state governance systems overseeing
more than 15,000 school districts, these negotiations were challenging,”
he wrote. Paige also pointed out that ED has made regulatory changes
sought by states in the testing of limited-English-proficient students
and disabled students. Illinois State Board of Education |
