Education Policy 101--Lesson 2: Race to the Top is NOT “Obama’s version of No Child Left Behind”

So, if NCLB is just the current name for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the “waivers” are the system the Department of Education has elected to use in order to address what are seen as shortcomings or problems with the law, what is Race to the Top (RTT) all about?

Race to the Top, while central to the reforms President Obama and his education team are trying to accomplish, is only one of the competitive grant programs the administration is using to forward their education platform, while stimulating the economy, as the initial funding for these programs was authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (you may know this as the “stimulus”).  Race to the Top currently has three sub programs:  Race to the Top (which I almost exclusively refer to as “Original Recipe”); Race to the Top, Early Learning Challenge or RTT-ELC; the Race to the Top Assessment Program, and the recently announced Race to the Top District (RTT-D).

“Original Recipe” was initially funded, as a part of ARRA, as a way to spur innovation and keep teachers and education professionals employed through the financial crisis. Subsequent funding opportunities have provided funding in three rounds to 19 states. 

Race to the Top-ELC focuses on improving early learning and development programs for young children.  There are currently nine grantees under this program.

The Race to the Top Assessment Program provides funding to consortia of States to develop assessments to measure student achievement against standards designed to ensure that all students gain the knowledge and skills needed to success in college and the workplace. These assessments are intended to play a critical role in educational systems by providing administrators, educators, parents, and students with the data and information needed to continuously improve teaching and learning. 

Everything else: the i3 grants, School Improvement Grants, Teacher Incentive Fund, RESPECT, and other acronyms you may have heard are all independent initiatives at the Department of Education.

Race to the Top (aka RTT, aka “Original Recipe”) was initially conceived as a way to infuse States with cash during the economic downturn.  It would ensure a portion of the funds made it directly to the local school districts (each state had to set aside 50 percent of the awarded funds to be dispersed to those districts and charter LEAs who elected to participate) to help keep teachers on the job and in the classroom; while funding at the State level kept State employees on the job, and provided more contracting opportunities for education business and non-profits in the State.

The program itself makes no specific requirements of grantees, in terms of how they must accomplish their goals.  In their applications, the States were asked to describe how they were currently making reforms in four areas: adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in the workplace; building data systems that measure student growth and success; recruiting developing, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals; and turning around the lowest achieving schools.  Once awarded the competitive grant, the states set their own baselines and created their own plans to implement comprehensive reforms to improve student outcomes, in line with these four reform areas.  The States have pretty wide latitude in program implementation; as long as plan changes are not deemed “substantial” the Department will review and approve changes as needed. 

One of the RTT reform areas required states to show that they had adopted standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.  This reform area is the one most often translated as: ‘The Department of Education is making all of the states adopt a mandatory curriculum and adding more standardized tests for students.’  This is simply false. 

First, curriculum and standards are two separate things.  Standards lay out the things that students should know and be able to do at each grade level.  Curriculum is the way in which a particular state, local education agency, or school chooses to meet those standards.  Two different schools in different states could adopt vastly different curricula, but as long as at the end of the first grade, the students in both schools know how to add and solve basic problems on their own, they will have met the same standard.  It doesn’t matter that School A used “new math” while School B used an abacus, as long as the students know how to add, they met the same standard.  The assessments used to determine this are not in addition to existing assessments – they are instead of those assessments.  New standards must have assessments tied to them. 

While the Department of Education was asking states to adopt standards and assessments that prepare students for their future, a consortium of states, coordinated by the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (two membership organizations with significant political clout in D.C.) began the creation and adoption of a series of standards which the department would consider high quality, and worthy of participation in Race to the Top.

Now you are ready to debate about Race to the Top!  Did Secretary Duncan show so much support for the Common Core Standards they ended up appearing to be a Department of Education program?

NAPCS Resource Roundup

• NAPCS released a new issue brief that profiles public charter schools that are meeting the diverse needs of communities across the nation. A growing number of cities—and the parents and educators in them—are welcoming public charter school models that serve both homogenous and diverse student populations for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school. This brief showcases this development in three of these cities: Denver, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.
• Relatedly, our latest Details from the Dashboard report examines race/ethnicity breakouts for public charter schools and traditional public schools at the state and the school district level. The data in this report indicate that in the large majority of states, the race/ethnicity student demographics of charter schools are almost identical to those of the surrounding school district.
• Gary W. Ritter, Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Arkansas, wrote a guest blog providing a researcher’s take on claims of charter schools and segregation. It’s basically Mythbusters, education research style.
• The Charter Blog also featured supplemental case studies of public charter schools with diversity focused school missions, including: E.L. Haynes (Washington, D.C.), Citizens of the World Charter Schools (Los Angeles metro area), Bricolage Academy (New Orleans).

National Charter Schools Week 2012

National Charter Schools Week (NCSW) was celebrated from May 7-12th. This year’s festivities featured public charter school advocates from 41 states and D.C. and over 185 meetings on Capitol Hill. We also ran a blog series featuring parent, teacher, school leader and state association commenters from Connecticut, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Federal Policy

Our Director of Intergovernmental Affairs takes us beyond the sound bites in her blog series, Education Policy 101: A primer for the national media, politicians … and people I meet at parties, featured on The Charter Blog May 29-June 1, 2012. The federal policy team also analyzed the recently announced Race to the Top District competition requirements and Obama and Romney’s statements on charter schools.

Fun Stuff on Facebook

Dr. Bill Cosby and Dr. Deborah Kenny, founder and CEO of Harlem Village Academies, will keynote the annual National Charter Schools Conference.  Check out a hilarious video of Hugh Jackman "auditioning" to be a superstar teacher at Harlem Village Academies (HVA) on our Facebook page. You can also see a video of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sharing his support for public charter schools and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Finally, you can be inspired by Lia Eggleston, an 8th grader at Snowy Range Academy—a public charter school in Laramie, Wyoming—who will be representing the charter school sector in the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week.

Education Policy 101--Lesson 1: No Child Left Behind is NOT “Bush’s education program”

This is the second post in Kristin's "Education Policy 101" series (see the intro here), which will run on The Charter Blog this week.

Yes, Virginia, there is (still) an Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). 

Historically, the ESEA had been reauthorized every five years since its enactment in 1965, until, under President George W. Bush, the 2001 reauthorization gave the legislation a new “short title,” the No Child Left Behind Act. The 2001 ESEA reauthorization made a number of significant changes, including the addition of annual standardized tests in reading and math, which would measure the achievement of each school and set a standard by which their funding and status as a school were determined.  While NCLB added a number of testing and measurement components to ESEA, that was only one element of the overall ESEA continuation.  While NCLB did add requirements for accountability for teachers and students in order to receive funding, it also provides the provisions for the implementation of all programs under Title I (Improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged), Title II (Preparing, training, and recruiting high quality teachers and principals), Title III (Language instruction for limited English proficient and immigrant students), Title IV (21st Century schools which are the programs that provide important wrap around services, like student safety and community learning), Title V (Promoting informed parental choice and innovative programs), Title VI (Flexibility and accountability for student assessments), Title VII (Indian, native Hawaiian, and Alaska native education), and Title VII (Impact aid program).

If we “got rid” of NCLB, we’d get rid of the Title II grant that provides teachers funding for professional development, the Title III funding that supports innovative ways to provide instruction to students with limited English proficiency, and the Title V funding that supports charter school creation.

So, no, we won’t be “getting rid” of NCLB any time soon.  Many in Washington, however, are working on a new and considerably delayed reauthorization of ESEA.  Laws like ESEA/NCLB are reauthorized on a regular basis in order to address flaws within the law, and to reflect the needs of the current time. 

Unfortunately, Washington is doing as Washington does, and is dragging its feet on reauthorization.  In lieu of action on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration, through the Department of Education, has offered states an opportunity to apply for flexibility under the current ESEA law, while still ensuring high quality education for the students in the state.  These “waivers” in media parlance, “flexibilities” in Department of Education parlance, must be approved by the Department of Education, and will serve as a temporary way to ensure rigorous and comprehensive plans to improve educational outcomes, until the Congress passes ESEA reauthorization. 

Now, with that basic understanding, media, politicians, and people I meet at parties:  feel free to debate whether or not the process of using waivers in lieu of full ESEA reauthorization is fair, legal, or effective.

Education Policy 101: A primer for the national media, politicians … and people I meet at parties

“My mother is a teacher.  All of her friends are teachers.  And they call me, at all hours of the day and night.  And they have an issue, a little bit, with this Race to the Top issue that has been implemented that I guess was a fix to No Child Left Behind.”  John Stewart, talking to Arne Duncan on 2/16/12

"We're watching this very closely," Rep. Kline said. "If we are, in fact, putting in a de facto national curriculum, my caucus will rebel. ~ Representative John Kilne, on the Common Core Standards in an interview with Education Week, 9/15/10

“You work in education?  You aren’t one of those Race to the Top standardized test people, are you?” ~ paraphrased – basically everyone I meet at parties.

* * *

All politics is … sound bites.  Sound bites are what politicians and the media thrive on, and on many issues, it is the only thing the public ever learns about an issue. 

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a group of students from my undergraduate university as a part of a group of alumni offering career advice.  After I had explained why all the adults in the room laughed at the lobbyist jokes, one young man raised his hand and asked: “So, when are they going to get rid of No Child Left Behind and all the standardized testing?” 

This was the final straw for me; I came home, and began drafting the following blog posts.  No longer should Americans allow themselves to be educated by sound bites alone.

Stay tuned for Kristin's "Education Policy 101" blogs, which will run as a series on The Charter Blog this week.

Romney and Obama Debate Education, but Agree on Public Charter Schools

NAPCS Encourages the Charter Sector to Comment on the New Race to the Top District Proposed Requirements

The US Department of Education has posted a draft executive summary of the draft requirements, priorities, selection criteria, and definitions for the Race to the Top District (RTT-D) competition. According to the Department, the RTT-D competition “will build on the lessons learned from the State-level competitions and support bold, locally directed improvements in teaching and learning that will directly improve student achievement and teacher effectiveness. More specifically, Race to the Top District will reward those LEAs that have the leadership and vision to implement the strategies, structures and systems of support to move beyond one-size–fits-all models of schooling, which have struggled to produce excellence and equity for all children, to personalized, student-focused approaches to teaching and learning that will use collaborative, data-based strategies and 21st century tools to deliver instruction and supports tailored to the needs and goals of each student, with the goal of enabling all students to graduate college- and career-ready.”

Applicants must be LEAs (including charter LEAs) serving at least 2,500 students. Local Education Agencies may apply as a consortium which may include LEAs across one or more states. Additionally, at least 40% of participating students across all participating schools must be from low income families (using free and reduced lunch criteria). 

Applications must meet Absolute Priority 1 and one of Absolute Priorities 2:
Absolute Priority 1, Personalized Learning Environment(s)
Absolute Priority 2, LEAs in Race to the Top States
Absolute Priority 3, Rural LEAs in Race to the Top States
Absolute Priority 4, LEAs in non-Race to the Top States
Absolute Priority 5, Rural LEAs in non-Race to the Top States

You can read more and submit your comments here: http://www.ed.gov/race-top/district-competition. And stay tuned for further NAPCS analysis.

Systemic impact: E.L. Haynes, (Washington, D.C.)

Expanding the school model: Citizens of the World Charter Schools (Los Angeles metro area)

Incubating a diversity-focused charter school: Bricolage Academy (New Orleans)

How Public Charter Schools Are Designed to Meet the Diverse Demands of Our Communities

Today, NAPCS is proud to release our newest issue brief, A Mission to Serve: How Public Charter Schools Are Designed to Meet the Diverse Demands of Our Communities. By looking at high performing public charter schools that are consciously designed to serve their students–whether in homogenous or diverse environments–this issue brief underscores that public charter schools can accommodate both models and, in the process, provide more high quality public school options to our nation’s students.

One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with missions intently focused on educating students from traditionally underserved communities. While much media attention rightly has been given to these schools, the past decade or so also has seen a noteworthy rise in high-performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve economically integrated student populations.  These schools are utilizing their autonomy to achieve a diverse student population through location-based strategies, recruitment efforts and enrollment processes.

Perhaps most notably, a growing number of cities – and the parents and educators in them – are welcoming both types of public charter school models for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school.  Our issue brief showcases this development in three such cities:  Denver, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.