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| March 30th, 2012 by Cindy in Education Nearly everyone in the education community agrees that the time has come to end, or seriously repair, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); however, the process of doing so has become drawn out and contentious. With Congress not moving quickly enough to reauthorize the law, President Obama has announced a way to help states get around NCLB’s requirements, says Benjamin Riley of the American Enterprise Institute.
- Obama’s 2011 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Flexibility plan grants certain states waivers from NCLB accountability requirements if they agree to a series of preset conditions, including adopting challenging academic standards, developing educator evaluation systems and improving the lowest-performing schools.
- Although many states are enthusiastic about obtaining this relief, the waiver plan poses several notable risks.
- Legally, it remains to be seen whether the executive branch has the authority to craft national education policy without the approval of Congress.
- Politically, support for waivers may wane as states begin to implement the administration’s favored policies, particularly upon implementing the challenging Common Core standards.
- And logistically, the creation of two wholly different federal accountability regimes — waiver states and NCLB states — poses an incredible challenge for federal oversight.
CONTINUE READING FROM NCPA…
| February 16th, 2012 by Cindy in Education
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| December 28th, 2011 by Cindy in Education There was no lack of education news in 2011. From an explosion in school choice options to the Obama Administration’s executive overreach, the top stories included the high and low lights when it came to issues affecting America’s schools.
10. Obama Administration orchestrates for-profit university witch hunt. On June 2, the Department of Education issued restrictive new regulations targeting “for-profit” higher education institutions. The new “gainful employment” regulation restricts access to student loans for students attending for-profit institutions (like Capella University or the University of Phoenix, for instance) if the school’s average debt-to-earnings ratio exceeds 12 percent of a graduate’s income. The net result? De-facto government price controls on a sector meeting the needs of students historically underserved by traditional universities. Continue reading from The Heritage…
| October 11th, 2011 by Cindy in Education The price of public universities is underwritten by subsidies received through direct government appropriations, but information on the distribution of those subsidies across schools is usually buried in obscure reports. A new study by Mark Schneider, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Jorge Klor de Alva, president of the Nexus Research and Policy Center, approximates the taxpayer subsidy for any given school, correlating this amount with the selectivity of the institution and its classification as public, for-profit private or not-for-profit private. Finally, the study compares these subsidy amounts, what might be called public cost, with the expected return in higher income taxes paid by diploma-earning students. This two-step approach allows for comprehensive analysis of the types of schools that create a net financial benefit or loss to the public.
Continue reading from NCPA…
| October 5th, 2011 by Cindy in Education The 400,000 number is included in a Tuesday White House report titled “Teacher Jobs at Risk.” It was released a few hours before President Barack Obama was scheduled to use a campaign trail speech in Texas to demand GOP support for his $447 billion “American Jobs Act” stimulus-bill.
“The president’s plan will more than offset projected layoffs, providing support for nearly 400,000 education jobs — enough for states to avoid harmful layoffs and rehire tens of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs over the past three years,” said the report. That money will support 39,000 teachers in Texas, 37,000 in California and 14,000 in Ohio, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a Tuesday press conference arranged to tout the report.
But administration officials quickly backtracked on the 400,000 number once they were quizzed by reporters during the press conference. The money would only support 400,000 teachers for one year, leaving state and local government to pick up the tab every subsequent year, admitted Katharine Abraham, a member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
When asked to explain how state and local government could afford to keep the 200,000, 280,000, 300,000 or 400,000 teachers that would be temporarily funded by the stimulus act, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest predicted “the economy will bounce back and make things easier down the road … we’re trying to cushion the blow now.”
Read more from The Daily Caller…
| August 25th, 2011 by Cindy in Education It’s a story we’ve heard before. Where President Obama can’t legislate, he will use executive branch action to accomplish his agenda. In the past, he has applied that tactic in the auto bailout, EPA regulations, and Obamacare. Now he’s using this approach to remake No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—the most significant K-12 education law—by granting states conditional waivers from the onerous provisions of NCLB in exchange for adopting a yet-to-be-specified set of executive branch education policy priorities. The news came in an announcement from the Department of Education: Continue reading from The Heritage
After a nearly three-month intensive selection and interview process, the Pine Tree ISD Board of Trustees named, Dr. Teresa J. Farler as the lone finalist for Superintendent of Pine Tree schools during a special meeting held at noon on May 19th. Continue reading…
| March 14th, 2011 by Cindy in Education While students in many developed nations have been learning more and more over time, American 15-year-olds are stuck in the middle of the pack in many fundamental areas, including reading and math.
This is according to the recently released Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment scores that measures educational achievement in 65 countries. This is despite the fact that the United States is near the top in education spending, says Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
- With the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends the most in the world on education, an average of $91,700 per student in the nine years between the ages of six and 15.
- But the results do not correlate: For instance, we spend one-third more per student than Finland, which consistently ranks near the top in science, reading and math.
Naturally, the OECD’s report has sparked calls for more spending. But throwing more money at poorly performing schools has not moved the needle on performance, says de Rugy. Continue reading from NCPA.
| December 11th, 2010 by Cindy in Education A new article in The Austin-American Statesman reports that Cynthia Dunbar, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, has introduced a new bill to the board that would nullify the Federal Board of Education’s claim to authority in Texas. The resolution posted by The Statesman reads as follows:
The resolution posted by The Statesman reads as follows:
RESOLUTION
“WHEREAS the members of the State Board of Education as elected officials. have each independently taken an oath to uphold the Constitution ofthe United States; and
“WHEREAS. preserving the integrity of our Constitution is essential to preserving both the appropriate jurisdiction of and the limitations upon our federal government; continue reading here.
| December 11th, 2010 by Cindy in Education The federal government has ballooned into the all-powerful education behemoth that the GOP long feared, says Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University.
The trouble started with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which decreed that all students, in all states, must be proficient on state tests in reading and mathematics by 2014 — a goal no state is even close to meeting. President Obama’s Race to the Top fund extends federal control well beyond NCLB. Last year, as part of the economic stimulus plan, Congress gave the Department of Education an unprecedented $5 billion in discretionary funds to promote educational reform. The Obama administration used the money to promote unproven strategies.
- To qualify for Race to the Top money, states and districts were expected to evaluate their teachers by using student test scores, even though research consistently warns of the flaws of this method.
- Similarly, the Obama administration is pressing states and districts to replace low-performing regular public schools with privately managed charter schools, even though research demonstrates that charters don’t, on average, get better academic results than regular public schools. Continue reading from NCPA.
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