Education Updates: October 2009

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Political Landscape section is a collection of news items, updates, and essays on policy issues, state and federal legislation, academic standards, testing issues, the politics of funding, and other issues.

National Education News

Updates from the League of Women Voters’ Joan Platz:

111th Congress Returns
Assets and Opportunity Scorecard
Report on For-Profit Management Companies
Carnegie Report on Literacy
ESEA Reauthorization
Common Core Standards Released
2009 PDK/Gallup Poll Results
OECD Report on Children’s Welfare

For more education updates, see State News and Creativity and the Arts News.

111th Congress Returns

The U.S. House approved the 2010 Labor, Health, and Education Appropriations Bill on July 24, 2009 (HR 3293), and the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations approved substitute HR 3293 on August 4, 2009. The next step is for the full Senate to take action on HR 3293, and then the House and Senate will work out a compromise. The following are some of the provisions in the House and Senate versions:

Head Start: House and Senate same—$7.2 billion for early childhood services, including educational, health, nutritional, and social services, to approximately 978,000 low-income children before they enter school.
Title I Grants for Low-Income Children: House—$14.5 billion, Senate—13.8 billion for Title I grants to school districts. School districts may use any portion or all of these funds to support early childhood education activities.
School Renovation: Senate—includes $700 million for a new program to improve the condition of school facilities.
School Improvement: House—$545 million for assistance to approximately 13,000 schools across the country with chronically poor academic performance.
Teacher Incentive Fund: Senate—$300 million; House—$446 million to support school districts and states that aim to reward effective teaching through compensation systems that reward entire high-need schools for raising student achievement.
Charter Schools: House and Senate same—$256 million to support the start-up of over 1,300 new charter schools in fiscal year 2010. The bill also includes new accountability measures to ensure that new charter schools are successful.
Striving Readers: Senate—$263 million; House—$146 million to help struggling adolescents build their literacy skills, start a new early reading comprehensive initiative, and improve the integration of reading initiatives across the Department of Education.
High School Graduation Initiative: House and Senate same—$50 million for a new High School Graduation Initiative to target assistance on high schools with high dropout rates.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: Senate—$12.6 billion, House—$11.5 billion
Institute for Education Sciences: Senate—$62 million.
Adult Education: House—$628 million for Adult Basic Literacy Education State Grants. These state formula grants will enable over three million adults to acquire basic literacy skills and complete a secondary education.
Pell Grants: House and Senate same—Pell grants were increased in FY09 to $5,350. This bill maintains the discretionary portion of the maximum Pell Grant award at $4,860, which, combined with a mandatory supplement of $690, will support a $5,550 maximum Pell Grant in fiscal year 2010.
Support for Developing Institutions: House—$653 million to strengthen the capacity of historically Black and predominantly Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribal colleges and universities and Native American-serving institutions, Asian Pacific Islander, and Native American institutions. In addition, the bill provides for $178 million in new loan guarantees for historically Black college and university facilities.
TRIO and GEAR UP: House—$868 million for the TRIO programs and $333 million for GEAR UP to assist approximately 1.7 million disadvantaged and first-generation college students to prepare for, enter, and complete college.

Assets and Opportunity Scorecard

On September 21, 2009 Policy Matters Ohio and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) released he 2009-2010 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, a comprehensive assessment of family financial security in the issue areas of (1) financial assets and income; (2) business and jobs; (3) housing and homeownership; (4) health care; (5) education; and (6) community investment and accountability policies. The Scorecard ranks the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 92 outcome and policy measures related to wealth, poverty, and financial security of families, and gives grades on a curve with the 50 states divided evenly so that 10 each earn a grade of A through F.

According to this latest report, the United States as a whole does a poor job of relieving poverty, reducing debt, and ensuring health insurance and retirement. “The findings in the 2009-2010 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard give credence to the claim that in the years leading up to the financial crisis, the façade of financial prosperity was indeed built on a foundation of sand. Even as leading indicators such as net worth were still on the rise and seemingly telling a story of increasing prosperity, there was compelling evidence that Americans—especially low- and moderate-income individuals and families— were becoming more financially overextended and vulnerable.”

Ohio earned an overall grade of C for its policies and outcomes to support financial security for families. The following are the ratings for Ohio in the issue areas:

Financial assets and income: C
Business and jobs: D
Housing and homeownership: D
Health care: A
Education: C
Community investment and accountability policies:
- State Support for Community Development Financial Institutions: No
- Tax Expenditure Transparency: Biennial report online; Covers major taxes
- Impact Analysis of Tax Law Changes: Yes, multiple models
- Community Investment for State-Chartered Banks: No

The report includes the following recommendations for Ohio:

Protect Homeowners and Stabilize Communities: To address soaring foreclosure rates and protect consumers from financial services that deplete wealth, Ohio should enact stronger consumer protection laws regulating mortgage services, payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, and paid tax preparation stores.
Promote Financial Security: To address high bankruptcy and asset poverty rates and to help residents build assets, Ohio should implement a state Earned Income Tax Credit and make the Dependent Care Credit refundable, to supplement the earnings of low-income workers.
Support Early Childhood Education: To reduce the burden on family budgets from paying for decent child care, and to ensure all children have access to high-quality education from a young age, Ohio should devote sufficient funds toward developing a high-quality, and universally available, pre-K program.

According to a press release from Policy Matters Ohio, Ohio policy makers should target the following policy changes to improve the well-being of Ohio’s families:

Adopt a refundable earned income tax credit and make it available to families who have children and earn less than $45,000.
Make Ohio’s dependent care tax credit refundable.
Provide universal, high-quality early childhood care and education. Until that is in place, immediately restore access to high-quality child-care for low-income families at 200% of the federal poverty level.
Force short-term lenders to comply with the payday lending law passed by the legislature and affirmed by the voters, but currently being circumvented.
Broaden eligibility for unemployment benefits to cover part-time workers, and extend unemployment benefits for 26 weeks to those who participate in approved training programs.

Scorecard >
Companion report > (PDF)

Report on For-Profit Management Companies

The latest edition of Profiles of For-Profit Education Management Organizations was jointly released on September 14, 2009 by the Commercialism in Education and Education Policy Research Units at Arizona State University, the Education and Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Western Michigan University College of Education. The report is authored by Alex Molnar of Arizona State University and by Gary Miron and Jessica Urschel of Western Michigan University.

Education management organizations, referred to as EMOs, are private firms that manage charter schools or conventional public schools under contracts, either with charter holders or with public school districts. This industry emerged in the 1990s to reform public education, and this annual report has tracked trends in the for-profit education management industry since 1997-98.

According to the report there are 95 for-profit EMOs enrolling a total of 339,222 students across the U.S. during the 2008-2009 school year. More EMOs were identified in 2008 than in previous years, and the number of students in profiled EMO-managed schools increased by 84,809 last year. The number of states in which for-profit EMOs operated increased from 28 to 31. The following are some highlights from the report:

Many large and medium-sized EMOs are expanding into new service areas, such as supplemental education services.
Imagine Schools, Inc. has the largest number of schools (76) under management.
EdisonLearning (formerly Edison Schools) experienced a decrease in the number of fully managed schools for the second year in a row, with 62 public schools under management in 2008-2009, down from 80 in 2007-2008. However, it still enrolls the largest number of students (37,574) of any for-profit EMO.
K12 Inc., which operates 24 "virtual" schools whose students attend from home via an Internet-based curriculum and distance-learning, enrolls almost as many students, 37,543.
Since the first Profiles report was produced for the 1997-1998 school year, the number of schools managed by for-profit EMOs has increased to 733 from 131. In the past year the number of profiled schools has increased dramatically, to 733 from 533. However, the authors estimate that the actual number of EMO-managed public schools has leveled off over the past few years, and attribute the increase only to a change in their methods of collecting data.
Of the 733 schools profiled in this report, 74% are operated by large EMOs.
94% of EMO-managed schools are charter schools, and 6% are district schools. The number of district schools operated by EMOs continued to decline between 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.
For-profit virtual schools total 56, or 7.6% of all schools managed by EMOs.
The five states with the highest number of schools managed by for-profit EMOs are Michigan (191), Florida (136), Arizona (103), Ohio (95), and Pennsylvania (39).

The report profiles each EMO, and includes the names of the schools that the EMO operates in each state. Read more >

Carnegie Report on Literacy

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Vartan Gregorian president, released on September 15, 2009 a report called Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Readiness. The report analyzes years of research on literacy instruction and includes recommendations for reengineering schools for the 21st century. The recommendations support integrating literacy instruction across the curriculum and establishing a culture of literacy in schools, giving teachers literacy-focused instructional tools and formative assessments, using information about student literacy performance more efficiently, and maximizing the use of limited resources for literacy efforts in a strategic way.

Time to Act is the capstone report of the Carnegie Council for Advancing Adolescent Literacy. Since 2004, under the direction of council chairperson Catherine Snow, professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the council has gathered knowledge and ideas from experts nationwide on topics ranging from linguistics to the social science of teaching.

Time to Act is released with five corresponding reports:

Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy, by Carol D. Lee Ph.D. and Anika Spratley, Northwestern University.
Adolescent Literacy Development in Out of School Time: A Practitioner’s Guide, by Elizabeth Birr Moje and Nicole Tysvaer, University of Michigan.
Measure for Measure: A Critical Consumer’s Guide to Reading Comprehension Assessments for Adolescents, by Leila Morsey, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Michael Kieffer, Teachers College, Columbia University; Catherine Snow, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Adolescent Literacy Programs: Costs of Implementation, by Henry M. Levin, Doran Catlin, and Alex Elson, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Adolescent Literacy and Textbooks: An Annotated Bibliography, by Michael Kamil, Stanford University.

ESEA Reauthorization

According to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should drive reforms that prepare students for success in college and careers. Secretary Duncan focused on the reauthorization of ESEA in a monthly forum with education stakeholders on September 24, 2009, saying that reauthorizing ESEA is urgently needed to build a “transformative education law that offers every child the education they want and need.”

ESEA was first approved by Congress in 1965 and was reauthorized in 2002 as the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. DOE will be developing its ESEA reauthorization proposal over the next months based on President Obama’s vision for K-12 education and the comments and concerns expressed through the “Listening and Learning” tour, which Secretary Duncan is hosting in several states. According to Secretary Duncan the reauthorized law should include the following:

Recognize and reinforce the proper role of the federal government to support and drive reform at the state and local level.
Respect the honored, noble status of educators—who should be valued as skilled professionals rather than mere practitioners and compensated accordingly.
Demand real accountability tied to growth and gain both in the individual classroom and in the entire school. Rather than utopian goals, the law should encourage educators to work with children at every level, the gifted and the struggling—and not just the tiny percentage near the middle who can be lifted over a mediocre bar of proficiency with minimal effort.
Discourage a narrowing of curriculum and promote a well-rounded education that draws children into sciences and history, languages and the arts in order to build a society distinguished by both intellectual and economic prowess.
Bring equity and opportunity to those who are economically disadvantaged or challenged by disabilities or background.
Inspire a new generation of young people to go into teaching—and inspire all America to shoulder responsibility for building a new foundation of growth and possibility.

Common Core Standards Released

On September 22, 2009, the Common Core Standards Initiative released draft college- and career-readiness standards in English-language arts and mathematics. The initiative is led by the National Governors’ Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve and the College Board. The draft standards define the knowledge and skills students should have to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing, academic college courses and in workforce training programs.

The English Language Arts Standards consist of three strands: reading, writing, and speaking and listening, which are divided into two sections, Standards for Range and Content and Standards for Student Performance. The standards for mathematics consist of three interconnected parts: a Standard for Mathematical Practice, 10 Standards for Mathematical Content, and a set of Example Tasks.

The draft standards were developed based on a set of criteria and the following considerations:

Fewer, clearer, higher: The standards must cover only those areas that are critical for student success and are usable by teachers.
Evidence: This work has made unprecedented use of evidence in deciding what to include—or not includ—in the standards.
Internationally benchmarked: These standards are informed by the content, rigor, and organization of standards of high-performing countries and states.
Special populations: In the development of these standards, the inclusion of all types of learners was a priority.
Assessment: Although an assessment of the common core state standards in not currently being developed, these standards will ultimately be the basis for an assessment system that would include multiple measures of student performance.
Standards and curriculum: Standards are not curriculum. This initiative is about developing a set of standards that are common across states. The curriculum that follows will continue to be a local responsibility (or state-led, where appropriate).

The public is invited to comment on the draft standards, which are available at http://www.corestandards.org/. Feedback on the standards should be submitted by October 21, 2009.

Ohio is one of 48 states participating in the Common Core initiative. The goal of this initiative is to establish more uniform expectations for students nationwide, in contrast to the current system in which each state has adopted its own state academic content standards. Once the readiness standards are revised and in final form, participating states will be asked to approve them.

Next Step: The NGA Center and CCSSO are expected to begin developing the K-12 standards that will enable students to meet the validated college and career-readiness standards.

2009 PDK/Gallup Poll Results

Phi Delta Kappa International/Gallup released the results of their annual poll on August 26, 2009. (41st Annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools). The topics for this year’s survey were selected by a bipartisan group of education experts and include the following: grading our schools, No Child Left Behind, charter schools, teachers, dropouts, early childhood education/preschool, innovation—moving in the right direction, economic stimulus, and schools and the news media.

As in previous years most respondents gave grades of A and B to their local public schools (51%), 32% gave their local schools a C, but only 3% rated their schools failing. When asked about the quality of public schools nationally, 19% gave schools an A or B, and 55% gave schools a C. The following are other highlights from the poll results:

Biggest problems facing schools: Lack of funding (32%), followed by lack of discipline (10%), and overcrowding (9%) were cited most by respondents when asked to rate the biggest problems facing schools. Funding has been reported as the biggest problem for the past 10 years. In another question 71% of respondents cited lack of money as a factor that keeps public schools from “moving on the right track.”
No Child Left Behind: Support for NCLB declined from 2008; 24% of respondents gave NCLB an unfavorable rating compared to 15% in 2008, and 24% reported that they “don’t know enough about it.”
Testing: 66% support an annual test in grades 3-8 to track student progress, 66% also support use of a single national standardized test to track student progress rather than a test developed by their state.
Charter schools: 64% of respondents support charter schools, but respondents are unsure about how charter schools operate and whether or not charter schools are public schools, are able to teach religion, can charge tuition, or can select students on the basis of ability.
Teachers: 72% of respondents favor merit pay for teachers and support using factors such as advanced degrees, student academic achievement, and administrator evaluations to determine pay. 78% of respondents also support paying beginning teachers with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate more than $35,000 per year.
Dropouts: 89% agree that the dropout rate is the most important or one of the most important issues facing high schools. Respondents believe that contributing factors that cause students to leave school include failing too many classes (83%) and seeking a job or becoming a parent (80%). To keep students in school most respondents support “making high school classes more interesting.”
Early Childhood Education/Preschool: 81% of respondents support making Kindergarten compulsory, whereas 18% oppose it. 58% of respondents would be willing to pay more taxes to fund free preschool programs for students whose parents are unable to pay, and 42% oppose increasing taxes.
Stimulus funding: 46% of respondents support using the federal stimulus funds to prevent teacher layoffs, and 36% favor providing more support for low-performing schools.

PDK is a global association of education professionals and has conducted this poll with Gallup annually since 1969. The 2009 findings are based on telephone interviews conducted in June 2009 with a national sample of 1,003 American adults. The poll results are available at www.pdkpoll.org.

OECD Report on Children’s Welfare

On September 1, 2009 the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) released a report called Doing Better for Children. The report includes a child well-being framework and compares outcome indicators for children in OECD member countries across six dimensions: material well-being; housing and environment; education; health; risk behaviors; and quality of school life.

According to the report the U.S. has some of the industrial world’s highest rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, and child poverty. The United States spends an average of $140,000 per child, which is more than the OECD average of $125,000. But, spending in the U.S. is higher for children between the ages of 12 and 17. For children under age 6 the U.S. spends approximately $20,000 per child compared to an OEDC average of $30,000. The OECD recommends that the United States shift more of its public spending to its youngest children to improve their health and educational performance. The following are some highlights from the report:

Spending on Children: Among OECD countries, France, Germany, Britain, and Belgium spend more on children than the U.S., whereas Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, and Italy spend less.
Infant Mortality: The United States is a higher-income country with infant mortality rates above the OECD average. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. (6.8) is fourth worst after Mexico, Turkey, and Slovakia, and more than the OECD average of 5.4.
Immunization Rate: The vaccination rate for pertussis, children aged 2 (circa 2005) in the United States is 85.7%, whereas the OECD average is 93.8%.
Education Achievement: American 15-year-old students rank seventh from the bottom on the OECD’s measure of mean literacy performance, which is the average of the mathematics, reading, and science literacy scores on the PISA international test. Reading literacy data were not available for the United States in 2006, and so the results for the U.S. are averages for mathematics and science literacy only.
Child poverty rates: Child poverty rates in the U.S. are nearly double the OECD average, at 20.6% compared to 12.4%.
The rate of teen fertility: Rates of teen births are higher in Mexico, the United States, and Turkey, and three to four times the OECD average. Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have the lowest rates of teenage birth rates.

OECD was established in 1961 and is based in Paris. Thirty countries are now members, including the United States. The OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies. The report is available at www.oecd.org/els/social/childwellbeing.

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