Archive for Policy

Every day 7,000 high school students drop out of school—and the American high school graduation rate hasn’t budged for almost three decades. In an effort to jump-start those rates, General Colin Powell recently announced the development of 100 dropout prevention summits across the US.

On the heels of that step comes even more hope for reducing the number of dropouts and it includes the needed spawning of more civic engagement among young people. Service learning is an educational technique that combines classroom learning with community service. What’s critical is that it is not only key to getting more students engaged in their communities, but, according to a report released last week by Civic Enterprises, it is also a powerful tool to keep students on track to graduate from high school. Read more in The Christian Science Monitor online.

Delaware public schools—which, fairly or not, have an undistinguished reputation—are making gains. But, as a growing number of educators, parents, students, business leaders, and elected officials attest, greater potential exists. They imagine a globally recognized education system that helps attract new businesses and retain talented employees, provides universal preschool opportunities, and includes classrooms where innovative teachers have freedom to experiment.

Vision 2015’s dream is of a place where minority and low-income children achieve at the same rate as their classmates, where principals receive funding for English language learners (ELLs), and where learning is valued above testing. Campuses would be safe, children disciplined and parents welcomed.

Finding the money to pay for the changes is part of the hurdle. Vision 2015’s reforms have been estimated to cost more than $100 million over several years. Read about the dream and the reality in The News Journal online.

The first year of Texas’ $100 million experiment in school reform—involving an estimated 52,000 teachers in the largest merit pay plan in the nation—produced mixed results and didn’t motivate most teachers to change their classroom techniques.

An independent study funded by the state showed that the Texas Educator Excellence Grant program drew a favorable response from teachers in the 1,148 schools where bonuses were awarded, but the study also said massive turnover of schools in the plan each year will make it difficult to achieve success over the long haul. Read about the problems and possibilities in The Dallas Morning News online.

A new study says most of the country’s 50 largest school systems, including Maryland’s Prince George’s County, have restrictive labor agreements, tying the hands of superintendents who want to pay more to top teachers and transfer them between schools according to need.

Area school systems generally fared well in the survey. But Prince George’s County, which the study said bars school leaders from retaining a skilled young teacher over one with greater seniority in the event of layoffs and requires the system to give internal job applicants priority for vacant positions, was ranked 47th and rated “highly restrictive.”

The study produced by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a District-based think tank that studies educational policy, added fuel to an ongoing debate over whether there is a need for more management-friendly contracts that allow superintendents to reward skill over seniority as school systems seek to meet the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Read the article in The Washington Post online.

Parents and students in some states aren’t getting their money’s worth from their public school system and their state legislature, a new report has found. The Center for Education Reform (CER), a Washington-based education reform advocacy group, ranked each state based on the strength of its charter school laws and found significant disparities. For example, Minnesota had the strongest charter laws in the nation, while Mississippi had the weakest. The group’s report was issued February 13, 2008. For state-by-state law rankings, visit the CER website.

Employees of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district south of Minneapolis, Minnesota, have long touted the gifts of its 600 teachers. They’re experienced, they care about students, and they strive to improve, they say. In fact, almost every teacher last year got a $2,000 bonus.

Last month the district released the results of its first full year of a merit pay system, part of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s “Q Comp” program, meant to reward quality teaching. Teachers can get up to $2,000 annually for meeting personal, classroom, and school goals.

In the last round of evaluations in the 2006-07 year, 603 teachers “exceeded standards,” six “met standards” and not a single one fell below standards. Even considering their good reputation, is it really possible that not a single teacher is falling behind? Read more about the system in The Star Tribune online.

The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don’t graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70 percent of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries.

Dismal fact after dismal fact; by now, they are hardly news. But in the 25 years since the landmark report A Nation at Risk sounded the alarm about our educational mediocrity, America’s response has been scattershot and ineffective, orchestrated mainly by some 15,000 school districts acting alone, with help more recently from the states. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories; they’d know what kinds of planes and tanks were needed, right?

When you look at what local control of education has wrought, the conclusion is inescapable: we must carry Mann’s insights to their logical end and nationalize our schools, to some degree. Read this “modest proposal to fix the schools” in The Atlantic online.

Less than 24 hours after Toronto’s public school trustees narrowly approved the creation of a black-focused school in 2009, a top board official opened the door to establishing multiple Afrocentric alternative schools—if there is sufficient demand. But questions arose about how the cash-strapped board will fund even one such school, especially with the proposal garnering little support from the provincial government.

“There’s no intention for extra funding to flow for this alternative school,” Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said in an interview Wednesday, January 30, 2008. “Alternative schools are funded in the same way that mainstream schools are. There’s no enriched funding for alternative programs.” Tuesday night’s 11-9 vote to establish a black-focused public school, in order to address a staggering dropout rate among black students in Canada’s largest school board, came after months of impassioned pleas from parents both for and against the idea. Read more in The Globe and Mail or The Toronto Star.

President Bush’s call for a $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids is the latest effort by his administration to channel tax dollars to low-income parents to help them send their children to private or religious schools.

His proposal, in his State of the Union address Monday, January 28, 2008, was denounced by some top Democratic lawmakers and teachers’ union officials as a national “voucher” program that would only drain resources from urban public schools that in many cases are in need of money.

And some critics said that the president’s call for yet another education initiative only underscored the failure of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that Bush considers a landmark achievement of his first term. Read more about his proposal in The New York Times online.

 On the eve of the sixth anniversary of his signing of the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush urged Congress to reauthorize the law before he leaves office, but pledged to veto any bill that "weakens the accountability" measures, according to an article by Maria Glod in the Washington Post.

Speaking at an elementary school in Chicago, Bush said NCLB has worked and urged its renewal. As focus shifts to the upcoming presidential election, however, chances for the act to be reauthorized this year grow dimmer. For further information, read the full article.

Guyana’s Education Minister Shaik Baksh is proposing a nationwide literacy program in schools this year that involves classes being extended in the afternoons and on weekends and holidays, in an effort to improve the quality of education. A similar program targeting adults at the community level is also planned since, according to Baksh, the literacy level is declining across the country. He said this continues to be one of the major challenges of the education sector and is something that must be addressed.

“The results of the assessments in our primary and secondary schools over the past year have sent a strong signal to us about where we are in terms of literacy in our schools and even countrywide. But in addition to the program being implemented we need our teachers to dedicate more time to the children and for them to spend more time in the classrooms,” Baksh said. Read more at the Starbroek News website.

 Depending on which presidential candidate you ask, No Child Left Behind is a costly and disastrous foray into federal control of schools or a lofty plan that needs fixing. No matter who becomes the next president, expect significant changes to President Bush’s signature education program.

It’s rare that Democrats and Republicans agree on anything in a presidential election. But No Child Left Behind, the most sweeping and test-heavy federal education reform in history, may be the uniting issue of the campaign season.

Every candidate has said the law needs some work. Some, such as Democratic long shot Bill Richardson, want it thrown out altogether. Others, while saying they support the law, have promised changes in the same breath. Read more about what candidates have to say in this article in The Palm Beach Post online.

California has done an impressive job filling schools with at least nominally qualified teachers. The next challenge—a tougher one—is to retain them by vastly changing the way they are trained, evaluated and rewarded.

In 2000, one in seven teachers (42,400 out of 310,000) in California lacked a teaching credential; by this year, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning found, that had dropped to one in 20—about 16,000. And the remaining 5% consists mainly of first– and second–year teachers who are working on credentials at night.

Despite that good news, gaps and inequities remain, and the turnover of young teachers remains high. One in five teachers quits the profession nationwide within four years; in low–income schools, it’s two out of five. Read more of what California is doing in terms of professional development in this editorial in The San Jose Mercury News.

 U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has announced that she is opening the growth model pilot to all eligible states saying, “Our work on reauthorization [of the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB)] has shown broad bipartisan support for growth models and now, many states have improved data systems so they can track individual student growth over time.” She said extending the growth model pilot for the 2007-2008 school year will allow states an effective way of measuring adequate yearly progress (AYP) by measuring individual student growth over time, and will continue to expand the flexibility available to states under NCLB. Any state that would like to take part should submit their growth model proposals to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) no later than February 1, 2008. For more information, visit the DOE website or view the letter sent to chief school officers in each state.

Maryland’s attempts to turn around its worst schools in the past several years have largely failed, according to a report by a Washington-based nonprofit education research group. Of the 76 schools labeled failing for at least five years, only 12, or 16% have improved significantly since 2004, the Center on Education Policy found. “Even in an advanced state like Maryland, that has tried to deal with these problems for a decade ... we just don't know what to do,” said Jack Jennings, president of CEP.

The most commonly tried solution—bringing in a turnaround specialist—usually doesn’t work, the report said. And a newer option, replacing the teaching staff, has caused disruption but hasn’t gotten results. Maryland is to be commended, Jennings said, for learning from what doesn’t work. The lesson for other states around the nation, he said, is “that we ought to be humble ... that it is a long, hard slog to bring about change, and it is something we just have to keep working at.” Read the article in The Baltimore Sun.

Thousands of Iraqi asylum-seekers who were denied education as a result of the turmoil in their own country will now have a chance to finish their studies: Jordan’s government has decided to launch new education projects for asylum seekers, according to officials and activists. Mohammad Ekour, director of students’ affairs at the Ministry of Education, said any student, including Iraqis, can study at home until they sit for the high school examination. The project will be implemented in early 2008. After completing the program, students are given a diploma that allows them further home schooling and a chance to enroll in vocational education programs. Target children are aged 10-18 for boys and up to 22 for girls. Read more at IRIN News.

 The 2008 Government Relations Workshop hosted by the International Reading Association on February 21–22, 2008 in Washington, D.C., will help you strengthen your advocacy efforts and actively impact legislation such as the reauthorization of NCLB. You will learn about federal and state legislative issues and have the opportunity to communicate directly with your congressional leaders or their staffs.

This is a no-cost workshop for IRA members hosted by IRA’s Washington Office and the Government Relations Committee. There is a fully refundable $50.00 registration fee. This fee is refunded upon notification of cancellation or when attending the conference. This policy is to provide an accurate meal count to IRA. We will provide a breakfast and working lunch on Friday. All other related expenses (transportation, lodging, food, and entertainment) are the responsibility of the workshop attendees. Many participants receive funding from their state councils to help pay for costs.

Feel free to call the IRA Washington office with questions regarding the workshop at 202-624-8800 or contact us via e-mail. Updates for the Workshop will be posted on the IRA website, www.reading.org. We look forward to seeing you in February 2008.

 Under pressure from the right and the left, President Bush said Tuesday, October 9, that he is open to reformulating his signature No Child Left Behind education law but stressed that he remains unwilling to surrender on its core elements of testing and accountability. “As we move forward, we will continue to welcome new ideas,” Bush said in the Rose Garden after meeting with civil rights leaders. “And I appreciate the ideas I heard today. Yet there can be no compromise on the basic principle: Every child must learn to read and do math at, or above, grade level. And there can be no compromise on the need to hold schools accountable to making sure we achieve that goal.” Read the article at washingtonpost.com.

  A new study of state achievement tests offers evidence that the No Child Left Behind law’s core mission—to push all students to score well in reading and math—is undermined by wide variations in how states define a passing score. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  The math tests students take under the No Child Left Behind law are harder than the reading exams, a study finds. The findings, in a study released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based education think tank, come a little more than a week after the federal government reported students have been making much more progress in math than in reading in recent years. Read more of this article from MSNBC.com

  Only a few months after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi convened a “national summit on America’s children,” Congress has at least three different proposals on early-childhood education to consider. Since that May event, several lawmakers have been crafting legislation that would build upon the steady growth of prekindergarten programs that has already occurred in the states. In what pre-K supporters are calling a “trickle-up” effect, three federal plans have been offered that call for tying preschool education to the No Child Left Behind Act, which primarily focuses on K–12 schools. Read more of this article from Education Week.

  In this New York Times opinion piece, Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University and the assistant secretary of education for research from 1991 to 1993, says that the main goal of NCLB—that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014—is simply unattainable. She argues that the federal government “should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.”

  The superintendents of the Washington area’s two largest school systems say national standards are needed to measure achievement among public school students, a sharp contrast to other educators who are asking that the federal government have less involvement in the schools, not more. The support for national tests from the superintendents in Fairfax and Montgomery counties, as well as the superintendent and School Board of Arlington County, is one of the most surprising messages being sent to Congress by area educators hoping to influence efforts to revise the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

A former senior Labor policy adviser has attacked the vision for school education unveiled by Australian state and territory governments as “dangerous drivel” and a “retrograde step that will dumb down school curriculum across Australia.” Ken Wiltshire, professor of public policy at the University of Queensland, told The Australian that the Future of Schooling report showed Labor education policy was still driven by the teachers’ unions. According to the report released this week, “the judgment of teachers is paramount,” with external state exams and national tests supplementing the teachers’ assessment. “External assessment should be what drives the whole national school curriculum. School-based assessment is subsidiary,” he said. Read about the controversy.

  As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?” Now he has an answer. “Childrens do learn,” he said Wednesday. The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law, No Child Left Behind. Education specialists, though, are divided on whether the federal law has succeeded in raising achievement for all students or in narrowing the historic achievement gaps between demographic groups. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  This fall, about 170 Northern Virginia children left elementary schools that fell short of academic goals for schools with better math and reading test scores. Most of their classmates stayed put. The students who transferred exercised an option under the federal No Child Left Behind law: Children in schools that struggle year after year can move to better-performing schools. But Northern Virginia’s experience mirrors the regional and national picture five years after the law took effect. Only about 1.2 percent of 5.4 million eligible children nationwide are taking advantage of the federal offer. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  Margaret Spellings, US secretary of education, is stepping up efforts to garner support among US business leaders for the No Child Left Behind Act, a series of education reforms that she said is “urgent and essential” to the future of America’s ability to remain competitive. “[The business community] absolutely gets it,” she said, in an interview with the Financial Times. “They’re almost frightened; they understand that we’re either going to improve human capital in the United States or companies are going to go elsewhere. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make their companies work in any event.” Read more of this article from the Financial Times.

  When President Bush and Congress crafted the No Child Left Behind Act, they agreed on one specific goal for academic achievement: All students would be proficient in reading and mathematics by the end of the 2013–14 school year. Once considered sacrosanct, that goal appears to be open for negotiation as House and Senate leaders consider plans to reauthorize the law. Read more of this article from Education Week.

The exam system in England is to be put in the hands of an independent watchdog to counter criticism that General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams and A–levels (exams taken in the optional final two years of secondary education) are getting easier. The body will be split from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Education Secretary Ed Balls has announced. He said he wanted to end the “old and sterile debate” about exam standards being “dumbed down.” Balls also unveiled plans to boost literacy and numeracy. “I want to end young people being told that the GCSE or A-level results they are proud of aren’t worth what they used to be.” Read about the proposed changes at BBC NEWS.

Fatima (not her real name) lives with her mother and a younger brother in Pul-e Charkhi prison, in the eastern outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. The 12–year–old was first brought to the prison four years ago, after a court sentenced her mother to 11 years for murdering her husband. “There are six women and seven children living with us in a single cell,” complained Fatima. Unlike other children in Kabul, both Fatima and her brother are deprived of an education, because there is no school in Pul-e Charkhi prison, Afghanistan’s biggest jail. “I dream of being able to go to school just like other girls,” she said. Fatima’s education prospects are grim. In the absence of a male guardian outside the prison, both children are likely to stay with their mother until she is released in 2014. Read more at IRIN News.

  Slate, the online magazine, has published an opinion piece by Robert Gordon calling for the reauthorization of NCLB. Gordon writes, “Congress should fix the unintended consequences of NCLB. But lawmakers should not undo the central consequence the law intended and the critics dislike: the demand that schools do better by the kids they fail.”

  Senator Edward M. Kennedy is hoping to get a bill reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act through Congress before the end of this year. But if that’s going to happen, he has some big stumbling blocks to overcome. The chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee must navigate a complicated political landscape, characterized by the contentious reception to a draft bill put forth by House education leaders recently and a desire by some key members of his committee to hold firm on keeping the law’s central accountability tenets. Also, Sen. Kennedy, D-Mass., must contend with having three Democratic presidential candidates on the panel: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Read more about the challenges involved in the NCLB renewal debate in this article from Education Week.

  The days of President Bush’s signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind, might be numbered—not the program, but the name. Lawmakers working on legislation to reform the program say they are considering a new moniker. One reason, said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a key sponsor of the original bill that transformed K–12 education in the country by ushering in an era of high-stakes standardized testing, is that “No Child” is inextricably linked to Bush. And Bush, he said, has become unpopular. Furthermore, he said, people simply don’t like the name. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of education, is responsible for enforcing the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which sets up an accountability system for schools. Before being appointed secretary, she served as a domestic policy adviser to President Bush and helped create No Child Left Behind. In this interview with The Indianapolis Star, Spellings answers questions about changes she would like to see to NCLB, and does not back down when asked if it is realistic to expect every child in the nation to pass state tests by the year 2014.

  State education organizations vowed earlier this week to continue using debate over reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act to remind federal legislators of some chronic concerns related to special education services—and to bring up some new ones. At a press briefing in Washington, representatives speaking on behalf of state lawmakers, special education directors, school administrators, and local school boards warned that the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act remains perennially underfunded, and that there is a continuing tension between the precepts of the federal special education law and the requirements of NCLB. Read more of this article from Education Week.

  For many schools, the most serious penalty for failing to meet federal guidelines under the No Child Left Behind Act is usually negative publicity. But for Title I schools, which receive federal money based on their poverty rates, penalties are imposed when the schools fail to make what the federal government considers adequate yearly progress (AYP) on standardized tests. Schools that fail to make such progress for two consecutive years in the same subject must offer parents the option of transferring their children to other schools. The more years a school fails to meet the targets, the more stringent the penalties. Read about a school in northern Virginia that has missed its targets for five consecutive years in this article from The Washington Post.

  After white parents in the racially mixed city of Tuscaloosa complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black—and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools. Black parents have been battling the rezoning for weeks, calling it resegregation. And in a new twist for an integration fight, they are wielding an unusual weapon: the federal No Child Left Behind law, which gives students in schools deemed failing the right to move to better ones. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

  The two national teachers’ unions have mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign to rewrite language linking teacher bonuses to student test scores and other incentive-pay provisions contained in a draft bill for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act. Read more of this article from Education Week.

Family literacy programs around the country have found their bottom lines snipped this year, leaving a vast competition for other funding. According to the U.S. Department of Education, funding for parent/child literacy programs—called Even Start—were at about $225 million in 2005, at $99 million in 2006 and about $82 million in 2007. For 2008, President Bush has recommended eliminating funding for Even Start. The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has also recommended cutting funding, though that has not gone before the full Senate. Read more of this article, and see how the funding cuts are affecting local reading programs, in this article from The News-Gazette of east central Illinois.

A draft provision for the No Child Left Behind Act that would provide more money to schools with the least experienced teachers at the expense of schools with more senior ones is likely to face stiff opposition if the proposed change becomes part of the bill that goes before Congress. Organizations representing teachers, state legislatures, and district administrators have already voiced opposition, saying such a policy would be a poor way to address the so-called teacher gap. Read more of this article from Education Week.

  Latino advocates told a House panel that the No Child Left Behind law has produced significant gains for school-age English-language learners and warned not to undermine that progress. Before the law was passed five years ago, students learning English were ignored by many schools, Delia Pompa of the National Council of La Raza told the House Committee on Education and Labor. With the law, she said, the debate has changed to: “How can schools improve the academic achievement and attainment of English-language learners?” Read more of this article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

  The head of the nation’s largest teacher’s union and a top House Democrat had a testy exchange Monday over the inclusion of merit pay in an updated version of the No Child Left Behind education law. California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, criticized National Education Association President Reg Weaver for rejecting the merit-pay proposal. Read more about their exchange in this article from Education Week.

  America’s business community was an early advocate of reform and a prime mover in the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which required the states to improve public schooling for all students. In an editorial, The New York Times supports efforts by the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives from the nation’s largest companies, to make sure Congress maintains a “transparent accountability system” in the NCLB law.

 The draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law came under sharp attack on Monday from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teachers unions, the latest sign of how difficult it may be for Congress to pass the law this fall. At a marathon hearing of the House Education Committee, legislators heard from an array of civil rights groups, including the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the National Urban League, the Center for American Progress and Achieve Inc., a group that works with states to raise academic standards. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

  With House hearings on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act beginning today, The Washington Post asked educators, lawmakers and others for their views of the legislation and what might improve it. Read the responses from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, NEA President Reg Weaver, and others.

  Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Wednesday criticized a Congressional proposal to soften provisions of President’s Bush signature education law, saying it would severely weaken the federal effort to raise achievement among poor and minority children. Ms. Spellings complained that proposals to change various provisions of the law “could be a significant retreat from accountability.” Passing no bill at all this year, she added, would be preferable to passing one that dilutes the law’s power because the current version stays in force until Congress passes a new law. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

  The release last week of a preliminary proposal for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act starts a busy fall in Congress, as both the House and the Senate try to revamp the NCLB accountability system and ramp up efforts to improve struggling schools. Read more about the preliminary proposal in this article from Education Week.

 Craig Probst, school principal in the village of Wales, population 135, is an academic jack-of-all-trades. The one school in the Inupiat Eskimo hunting and fishing community has 35 students of all ages and just four teachers. So Probst teaches reading, writing, math and social studies, full time. “We are generalists,” said Probst, who has worked in schools throughout rural Alaska for 17 years. “We have to cover all the subject areas.” But when it comes to statistics, their flexibility isn’t paying off. The federal No Child Left Behind Act docked points from the Wales/Kingikmiut School last year because most classes are taught by teachers who do not have a bachelor’s degree, a state license and proven competency in that subject. Read more of this article from the Daily Herald of Provo, Utah.

The Dubai School Agency of the Emirate of Dubai has launched the first phase of its “My Language My Identity” project that aims to encourage reading in Arabic among elementary school pupils. DSA and Scholastic, a publisher of Arabic books for children, are providing two-day workshops to train 250 teachers and librarians on using “My Arabic Library” books to support the curriculum. Fatma Al Merri, CEO of the Dubai School Agency, said: “We started the ambitious ‘My Language My Identity’ project to revive the culture of reading in Arabic among students, especially after the Internet and TV have replaced books as a means for information.”

 As the curtain opens on a new school year, the spotlight is on teachers. Off in the wings, a noisy debate ensues about how to ensure that public school teachers are well qualified—and receive enough support—to do their jobs. Stirring the current debate is the fact that Congress is expected to take up re­authorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) this fall. One part of the law requires states, districts, and schools to have 100 percent “highly qualified” teachers for key subjects. But as of last winter (the latest data available), 17 percent of US school districts did not expect to meet the June 2007 deadline for highly qualified teachers, according to a new report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) in Washington. In addition, 33 states were not on track for all teachers in their state to be “highly qualified.” Read more about the qualifications vs. performance debate in this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

The top U.S. envoy on refugees announced August 28 that the United States will increase its support to countries hosting Iraqi refugees with a $30 million grant for education. Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said the money will help pay for schooling in countries like Jordan. Jordan and Syria host the largest percentage of the more than 2 million Iraqis who have been displaced by the war and the countries have complained of the increasing burden on their health and education systems. Sauerbrey told reporters the United States expected to allow in some 2,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September but ruled out taking in large numbers. Read the article in The Seattle Times online.

  The No Child Left Behind education law is about to undergo the most intense congressional scrutiny since its passage in 2002, as lawmakers will consider whether to renew it. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings discussed the law in this interview with USA Today’s editorial board.

 What does the fall political landscape look like for reading education as Congress reconvenes? What is NCLB’s schedule? How much money will the programs get?

Join Richard Long, IRA Director of Government Relations, in a live audioconference on Wednesday, September 19 (note new date) , at 8:00 p.m. EDT, as he discusses the Congressional legislative agenda for the fall of 2007 and its impact on reading education. Dr. Long will brief callers for about 20 minutes and then answer questions.

This will be a free service, but registration is limited. Participants are asked to register by September 10 with btierney@reading.org to receive the call-in number and a PowerPoint set of slides.

Participants are asked to e-mail their questions in advance to btierney@reading.org. We cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered during the call. We will try to answer all questions by e-mail. Concise questions are encouraged.

Please be sure to include your name and affiliation when posting your questions.

  More Americans say they are knowledgeable about the No Child Left Behind Act than just last year, but familiarity appears to breed dislike, according to a poll set for release this week by Phi Delta Kappa International and the Gallup Organization. In addition, Americans remain concerned that the federal education law’s focus on testing students for their proficiency in reading and mathematics is leading to a narrowing of the curriculum, at the expense of subjects such as social studies, science, and the arts, the survey found. Read more about the poll in this article from Education Week.

 Earlier this week Representatives George Miller and Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Committee on Education and Labor, released a staff discussion draft of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This draft was developed through input received at nearly two dozen Congressional hearings and many discussions with education organizations and concerned citizens. The Committee welcomes and encourages comments on this discussion draft. Please send any comments to ESEAComments@mail.house.gov.

•   View the Miller, McKeon, Kildee, and Castle letter concerning this draft.

•   View the text of the draft (435 pages).

•   View the summary of the draft.

•   More on the Committee’s work on No Child Left Behind.

A string of government policies aimed at boosting pre–school children’s educational achievement in England has had no impact, research suggests. Children’s vocabulary, ability to count, and name shapes when they start school are no better than they were six years ago, a study of 35,000 children claims. The Durham University research covered such policies as the expansion of free part–time nursery places. Ministers say indications show the investment is leading to improvements. Read about the controversy at BBC News.

In the past seven years, a new view of reading instruction has taken hold in school districts nationwide. The issue these days isn't whether “phonics” or “whole language” is the better approach for beginning readers, but how to blend those philosophies and other elements in a reading program tailored to the individual child. Cathy H. Roller, director of research and policy for the International Reading Association, said students must have “the right things in the right amounts at the right time. Some kids need direct instruction in phonics. Other kids come to kindergarten reading fluently in a second- and third-grade text.” Read more of this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

  State-by-state data on the federal Reading First program were released with fanfare this past spring by the U.S. Department of Education as evidence that the initiative was fueling “tremendous progress” among students and teachers. The Reading First Advisory Committee, a federal panel that met for the first time this week, found that information on student achievement in participating schools far less definitive and has asked for more time and technical assistance in evaluating the data from the $1 billion-a-year program. Read more of this article from Education Week.

 With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing. Susan Goodkin, the executive director of the California Learning Strategies Center, an education think tank, and David G. Gold, a lecturer and consultant on strategic issues in negotiation, write in today’s Washington Post that NCLB has created “a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning.” Read more of their column.

The Israeli ban on deliveries of paper to Gaza is not only threatening to create a shortage of textbooks in the Strip but also shining a spotlight on what constitutes legitimate humanitarian aid. Israel is allowing in food, medicines and fuel, but not paper, even though many would see education as a vital sector. “Some 200,000 children will go into our classrooms on 1 September, and won’t have the books they need,”John Ging, the Gaza director of United Nation Relief and Works Agency, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, told IRIN. Officials in Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the state is concerned the paper might be used to print books with Hamas ideology imbedded within them. Read more at IRIN News.

  A 5 ½-year-old federal requirement that calls for staffing most classrooms with “highly qualified” teachers doesn’t appear to be doing much to improve student achievement or make teachers more effective, according to a recent survey by the Center on Education Policy. While administrators in 83 percent of the districts said their school systems fully complied with the law, states appeared to be facing more of a challenge. At the time of the survey—late fall of last year and early winter of this one—only three states could boast that “highly qualified” teachers staffed 100 percent of the classrooms that the law targets, most likely because states have so many more schools than any given district does. Read more about the survey in this article from Education Week.

 When Maribel Heredia’s son told her that his first-grade teacher was “going to college” and that there would be a substitute in the classroom two days a week, she started asking questions. Only then did she learn that the teacher the Hayward Unified School District labeled “highly qualified” was still a student herself. Calling the teacher highly qualified allows the district to meet the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind education law, which requires that all students be taught by skilled teachers in core subjects such as English and math. The district’s classification is legal. Heredia said she believes such classifications are misleading and allow districts to place unqualified teachers in classrooms. On Tuesday, August 21, she was among a group of parents and education advocates who sued the U.S. Department of Education over its interpretation of what makes a highly qualified teacher. Read more of this article from The Boston Globe.

A long-awaited review of beginning-reading programs by the federal What Works Clearinghouse found few comprehensive or supplemental programs that have evidence of effectiveness in raising student achievement. But what is missing from the review may be even more telling: None of the most popular commercial reading programs on the market had sufficiently rigorous studies to be included in the review by the Clearinghouse. Get details in Katherine Kennedy Manzo’s article in Education Week.

While the words “merit pay” drew hisses and boos at a recent teachers’ union convention, educators are endorsing contracts that pay bonuses for boosting students’ test scores. The 2002 No Child Left Behind law has placed a greater emphasis on using objective data in schools. The law requires annual math and reading tests. The scores of students in certain grades are compared year to year. Some lawmakers want to change the law, which is up for renewal, to encourage schools to measure individual student progress over time instead of using snapshot comparisons of certain grade levels. Once schools track that, they could look at which teachers consistently are moving students along. Read more of this article from USA Today.

  In the third and final installment of NewsHour’s series on No Child Left Behind, education special correspondent John Merrow looks at how some of the country’s best teachers are dealing with the law. Read the transcript from Merrow’s report and visit NewsHour’s NCLB website, with links to education blogs, forums, interactive maps, and podcasts.

  A number of failing schools in the San Diego area are adjusting their practices to meet standards under the No Child Left Behind law. In the second of a three-part series, the PBS program NewHour conitinues its look at the law and how it is affecting U.S. education. Read a transcript of the report by NewsHour’s special correspondent for education, John Merrow.

Vision 2015 in Delaware has selected four school districts and two charter schools to take part in a program to pilot educational reforms that group leaders hope will ripple throughout the state. Each district picked two of its schools to participate, for 10 total schools involved in the program sponsored by Vision 2015, a coalition of education, community and business leaders that is looking to make the state's school system one of the best in the world by 2015. This school year will focus solely on training; next year on implementation. Read about the program at delawareonline.com.

Business leaders in England feel educational standards have not improved since 1997, despite official data showing record exam and test results, a report says. More than half of those surveyed thought education and skills had not improved, the Institute of Directors (IoD), a business lobby, found in a survey of 500 members. The IoD report also claimed record investment had not led to exam results improving any faster than before. The government said record investment had improved standards in schools. Read about the debate at BBC News.

  A majority of states won’t be able to put aside enough federal Title I funding to help schools struggling to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act in the 2007–08 school year, according to a report released today by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. Read more about Title I funding in this article from Education Week.

 The PBS program NewsHour has begun a three-part series on the impact of the federal No child Left Behind law. In the first part, correspondent for education John Merrow examined how some schools are dealing with, and trying to avoid, requirements of the law. Read the transcript from Merrow’s report on the NewsHour website.

New teachers are being blamed for the decline in reading scores in Connecticut. Elaine Zimmerman, executive director of the state Commission on Children, says new teachers either don’t know or haven’t followed proven techniques for teaching reading. Doris J. Kurtz, New Britain superintendent of schools, decries new teachers’ lack of preparedness in literacy skills as “disgraceful.” A quick glance at third–grade reading scores, however, shows that higher scores come from wealthy towns and lower ones from poor cities. Poverty has long been associated with low scores across academic disciplines. Leaders ignore greater societal ills as they point their fingers at those who lack the protection of tenure. Read more of this opinion piece at courant.com.

  Since 2002, Congress has provided about $16 billion under the No Child Left Behind law to help states and school systems improve the caliber of the teaching workforce, the biggest federal investment ever in teacher quality. But some education experts argue that funding across the country has been frittered away on programs that are not specially tailored to closing achievement gaps between rich and poor students or ensuring that teachers are prepared to help students meet ever-tightening academic standards. Read more about this debate in this article from The Washington Post.

  U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told state legislators Congress would seek a major overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, which states have protested as an unfunded mandate and unprecedented federal intrusion into schools. “So different will this bill be from the original No Child Left Behind, that we're thinking of changing it’s name,” Pelosi said Wednesday (Aug. 8) addressing the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Read more about Pelosi’s speech in this article from Stateline.org.

 Since 2002, when No Child Left Behind became law, states have spent millions of dollars giving standardized reading and math tests; one estimate puts the total cost above $5 billion through 2008. Linda Perlstein, a former Washington Post reporter, wanted to see the effects firsthand, so she spent an academic year inside a high-poverty elementary school in Annapolis, Md. The result is Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade. Read an interview with Perstein, and an excerpt from her book, in USA Today.

Should cash be used to spur children to do better on reading and math tests? New York City’s Department of Education is implementing a pilot program that will reward fourth and seventh graders with $100 to $500, depending on how well they perform on 10 tests in the next year. Read more about the program in this article from The New York Times.

 After nearly a year of debate, the education committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures failed to reach a unanimous decision on where the panel stands on national standards—setting up a debate and likely vote by the national group’s entire legislative body. The more-than-100-member education committee had been poised to endorse a policy taking a firm stand against any national standards, mirroring the group’s opposition to some parts of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But not all states participating in the committee meeting agreed with such a stance. Read more about the debate in this article from Education Week.

 Proponents of educational technology for years have been saying that schools need to focus more on teaching so-called “21st-century skills,” such as problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Now, it appears that momentum is finally building on Capitol Hill to encourage just such reforms: The chairman of the House education committee says he hopes to push legislation renewing the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) through Congress this fall, and one of the key changes to the law he plans to propose is incentives for states to develop more rigorous standards that reflect the needs of 21st-century learners. Read more about the proposed changes in this article from eSchool News.

Ministers are overestimating the number of exceptionally bright pupils in Britain’s schools, the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children will be told this week. Research shows that teachers charged with picking out the top pupils feel that far too many are labeled as “gifted and talented” and that the government was wrong to recommend that 10% should be picked out in each school, a total of 800,000 across the country. Instead, between 2% and 5% of children should be classified as “gifted learners,” cutting hundreds of thousands of pupils already placed in the top group. Read why at the Guardian Unlimited.

  Dozens of states accept any improvement in high school graduation rates as adequate progress, and several set a goal of graduating fewer than 60 percent of their students, according to a study by the Education Trust in Washington. While the No Child Left Behind law has created a national focus on reading and math proficiencies, it has done little to raise expectations for the number of students graduating from high school, the report said. Read more about the report in this article from The Washington Post.

Education in Africa will come under the spotlight as education ministers from African Union countries meet for a five-day conference this week in Johannesburg, South Africa. Issues relating to the Second Decade of Education for Africa will be discussed at the Third Ordinary Session of the Conference of the Ministers of Education, set to begin Monday, August 6, 2007. The initiative was launched by the African Union in 2006 and is aimed at moving the continent closer to attaining the international target of primary education for all by 2015. Read about the conference at allAfrica.com.

A federal judge affirmed Texas’ bilingual education programs for its 712,000 students with limited English skills, rejecting arguments by leading Hispanic groups that those students are receiving an inferior education in the public schools. The court concluded that the Texas Education Agency’s education theory is sound, and its implementation and enforcement of the bilingual/ESL program is adequate under federal law. Read more about the ruling in this article from The Dallas Morning News.

 Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, test-score improvement among 4th graders in 12 states has fallen off in reading and slowed in math, according to a new study. The paper also cites National Assessment of Educational Progress scores reflecting a virtual halt to progress in closing racial achievement gaps in reading since the federal law was signed in 2002. Read more about the study in this article from Education Week.

Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year for the next six years to make legal and illegal adult immigrants proficient in skills crucial to their assimilation and the economic future of a country whose population is increasingly foreign-born, a new national report says. In the first nationwide study of its kind, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that an additional $200 million a year is needed to improve legal immigrants’ English skills enough for them to pass a citizenship test and “fully participate in the country’s civic life.“ An additional $2.9 billion a year is required for illegal immigrants to meet those standards, the report says. Read more about the report in this article from The Washington Post.

 The chairman of the House education committee, an original architect of the federal No Child Left Behind law, said Monday that he wanted to change the law so that annual reading and math tests would not be the sole measure of school performance, but that other indicators like high school graduation rates and test scores in other subjects would also be taken into account. “Our legislation will continue to place strong emphasis on reading and math skills,” the chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said at the National Press Club. “But it will allow states to use more than their reading and math test results to determine how well schools and students are doing.” Read more about Miller’s speech in this article from The New York Times.

 Congress has delayed any significant action on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act until it returns from its summer recess after Labor Day. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, announced that his committee would not consider an NCLB bill before lawmakers take their August break. Read more of this article from Education Week.

To promote reading, first lady Laura Bush brought Curious George for show and tell Tuesday at Driggs Elementary School in Connecticut. She left the other George at home. Bush and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who once clashed with Connecticut officials over President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, used the school as a backdrop to announce $18 million in library grants awarded Tuesday to 300 schools in 28 states. Read more of this article from The Hartford Courant.

 Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday. The report, by the Center on Education Policy, said that about 44 percent of districts have cut time from one or more subjects or activities in elementary schools to extend time for longer daily math and reading lessons. The report, based on a survey of nearly 350 of the nation’s 15,000 districts, said 62 percent of school districts had increased daily class time in reading and math since the law took effect. Read more of this article from The New York Times. In addition, read the report Making Every Moment Count: Maximizing Quality Instructional Time, a collaborative project of IRA and the American Association of School Librarians, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Council for Geographic Education, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Education Association, the National Geographic Education Foundation, and the National Science Teachers Association.

 Thousands of Central Florida students can switch schools this year, thanks to state and federal laws that