I'm stepping up . . .

As always, Scott had an informative and thoughtful comment on my last post about the state PTA placing charter schools on their legislative agenda.  He shares information about the process used by the organization to complete their legislative agenda and also a link to a sight showing member priorities.  He also shares his thinking about how it became a priority through special interests at the state assembly even though it did not emerge as such in membership voting.

The thoughtful part of the comment is his personal thoughts about the decline of T in PTA.  He shares how he needs to step up, be more visible, and participate in the conversation. Yes, I agree that we should.  I also know that in our district these groups are very supportive and raise considerable amounts of money that go back into our schools to support teachers and students.  They do this while also giving hundreds of hours of volunteer time and ask nothing in return, yet we don't see large numbers of staff joining the organization.  So, an additional way to to participate would be by signing up and becoming an active PTA member; something that I know they would appreciate.  I am going to take my advice and do just that and encourage you to also consider it.

http://www.wildcatbluenation.com/2011/07/monday-six-pack-stepping-up.html

An opening for charters . . .

After many attempts by various groups and legislators charter schools have not become a part of public education in our state.  Since the 2004 vote by the public overturning legislative action there has been very little discussion until Race to the Top.  When the state made the decision to apply for this federal grant, charters once again became a topic of discussion.  Some blame the failure of our state's bid partly on the lack of charters, something that the Obama administration is pushing.  Once again, we can see how federal action, in this case millions of dollars, can have an impact on state actions.

At the recent state PTA conference charters became a topic of conversation and a part of the organization's legislative package. This Seattle Times article from last week provides information about the decision to support charters and if you check out the comments some of the concerns being expressed.

"This is an additional way of looking at schools and what we need to be doing differently," Shelley Kloba, the Washington PTA's state legislative director, said Thursday. She emphasized that the charter school issue was just another tool in a wider PTA agenda.

I'm surprised by the move and find myself wondering if it comes from the ranks or is a move by those supporting charters and also having a position of authority in the PTA hierarchy.  From some of the comments to the article it may be the latter.  I don't know the position of are our PTA officers, but would be interested to hear from them.

You can find the language for the proposal on the PTA site here. 

Missed that one . . .

I'm going to share a third post on the Harkin/Enzi Senate reauthorization of ESEA bill. Why so much focus on this? Because when it finally happens, it will drive federal education policy for years and we have learned with the last two administrations that this can have significant impact on our work. Though I believe that some positive changes were ushered in by NCLB, it also pulled us away from our focus on Classroom 10 and had a huge influence on the focus at the state level. Think charter, assessment, teacher evaluation, and common core.

In my previous post I was skeptical about the chances of the Harkin's bill getting out of committee in a short time. Well, on a 15 to 7 vote it moved from committee to the floor.  I agree with Petrilli at Education Next that this is a big deal.

This is a big deal, folks. The ESEA reauthorization process hasn’t gotten this far since–well, ever. In 2007 the House education committee floated a draft bill which then died an ignominious death. The Senate HELP committee has never produced a bill . So to have a comprehensive bill marked up and sent to the floor represents a significant milestone.


I also found this point from the article very interesting and hadn't really thought about it, but now I can see how this could very well be the current reality of the Democrat's position on reauthorization.
 
Republicans are in the driver’s seat. Yesterday’s unanimous Democratic vote might have been a display of party unity, but it also demonstrated a willingness to vote for almost anything. The Democrats want to send a bill to the President, and they will need Republican votes in order to do that. So expect GOP senators like Lamar Alexander to make their support contingent on key changes to the bill–and to get a lot of what they want. Meanwhile, the House bills (which are being put together in pieces) will surely come out to the right of the Senate. If Democrats want to get something across the finish line, they are going to have to accept something that looks a lot more like Alexander-Burr than Harkin-Enzi.


If you are interested and want to read more, additional articles on the subject are here, here, and here. 

Not smooth sailing . . .

blipfoto.com

The Harkin/Enzi bill I shared in my last post not only has detractors in the education community, it is experiencing problems in the committee debating the bill. Though it underwent revisions last weekend it is not being embraced by all senators. Senator Rand Paul used a procedural rule to force a temporary adjournment of the committee’s proceedings. It didn’t cause significant delay because the chair, Senator Harking was going to reconvene the committee and continue discussions this morning. He was, however, not pleased with Senator Paul’s action.


“We had hearings with superintendents, teachers, principals, broad input from across America,” Harkin said. “Does that mean every two years we have to start from scratch every time? The senator from Kentucky had every day since he was sworn in in January to come to me or Senator Enzi and say, ‘Here’s what I’d like to have in the bill.’ Other senators did that. Our doors are open. It was no secret that we were meeting. . . . If the senator filed 74 amendments but is objecting to our meeting to even consider his amendments, can please someone explain the logic of that?”

Senator Paul, who proposed 74 of the 144 amendments to the bill, used the words below to explain his concerns with the bill. I don’t know much about the federal legislation process, but 144 amendments seems like quite a number to process before the bill can even be considered on the Senate floor.

“This process is rotten from the top to the bottom,” said Paul, who was elected last year with support from the tea party. “I would ask that we have a hearing; let’s find out what we think of No Child Left Behind before we rush through a 868-page bill that no one has time to read. This is what’s wrong with Washington.”

This push back to the legislation is another indicator of the unlikelihood of seeing any reauthorization of IDEA emerge from this session. So, once again, the Obama waiver process appears to be the viable options for states as we get closer the 2014 100% at standard deadline. By the way, our state is one that has indicated to the federal education department an interest in seeking a waiver.

Reading deeper into my stack of RSS feeds I found an update at Education Week. It seems that Senator Paul has reached a compromise with Senate leadership.

The markup continued today after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., initially threw up hurdles, filing 74 amendments and using a rare procedural move to limit the time the committee could debate the bill. He and committee leaders reached an agreement that allowed things to move forward while assuring him of a hearing on the bill Nov. 8, before it goes to the Senate floor.


Sen. Paul eventually agreed to scale his amendments back to just a handful, including one to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act. That amendment failed.

Looking more closely at the Republican motivation for this legislation can be found in the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Enzi.

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., was more forceful. In fact, he cited the waiver process as a key reason the committee needed to get going on the bill. GOP lawmakers should "keep in mind that if they are concerned about an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy becoming a kind of national school board, they should support the legislation rather than allow the secretary's waivers to dictate the strings that come with state and local flexibility," Enzi said.

The question, however, remains the same. Is there enough bipartisan support to push through this legislation by December? Even if the Senate were successful there is still the divide between the house and senate approaches to removing NCLB as the federal education focus.

A Senate shot at reauthorization . . .

Could the Harkin/Enzi bill coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee be the second nail in the coffin for NCLB? The first would be the Obama administration’s waiver opportunity unveiled last month that I shared in this blog post. Based upon the reaction by many to the Harkin/Enzi bill, I think the waiver request has a better chance of success. Never the less, Senator Harkin in this New York Times article sees his bill as a partnership and the best that could be done given the current political climate.


“We are moving into a partnership mode with states, rather than telling states you’ve got to do this and this and this,” Senator Harkin said in a call with reporters. The bill is a product of more than 10 months of negotiations with his committee’s ranking Republican, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, Mr. Harkin said.

Others don’t see merit in the bill. In this Education Week post we see that five key education groups are asking the Senator to put the brakes on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA. The groups are the American Association of School Administrators, the National Education Association, the National School Board Association, and the National Elementary and Secondary School Principal Associations. In a letter to the Senator they share their concerns with measures of student growth, flexibility in designing school turnaround models, the requirement to revamp teacher and principal evaluation models, and the focus on high stakes summative assessments.

It sounds like this group of key constituencies would rather roll the dice on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's waiver process, and perhaps even a Republican Congress, than deal with Harkin's bill.

In the same Times article, we learn that conservatives and special interest groups see this as rolling back the gains of NCLB but find themselves in a similar position of not supporting the Senate bill. 

By eliminating the law’s central accountability provisions, the bill would represent “a significant step backward,” returning the nation to the years before No Child’s passage, when many states did a slipshod job of promoting student achievement, they said.


Under the Harkin bill, “states would not have to set measurable achievement and progress targets or even graduation rate goals,” six groups including the Education Trust, the Children’s Defense Fund and the National Council of La Raza, said in a letter to Mr. Harkin on Tuesday. “Congress, parents and taxpayers would have no meaningful mechanism by which to hold schools, districts, or states accountable for improving student outcomes.”

Mike Petrilli at FLYPAPER makes this suggestion.

“Anyone one of these would be a poison pill for conservatives. Taken in combination, it makes Republicans’ decision easy. Scrap the bill and start over – with Senator Alexander’s proposal as the jumping-off point. It’s a much stronger bill, closer in many ways to the Administration’s own blueprint, a much more serious about re-calibrating the federal role in education. And if Democrats won’t go for that – well, wait for a more favorable environment in 2013.”

I shared the Alexander proposal in this post.

Finally, here is how Kevin Carey at The Quick and The Ed summarizes the Harkin/Enzi bill.

So now we’re left with (Maybe Standards) + (No Accountability) + (Continued Teacher Injustice). No bill is better than this bill.

All of this criticism and the gap between the Senate and House process probably means there is little chance of a reauthorized ESEA this session.  That leaves states with the waiver process for relief from the accountability requirement of 100% of students at standard in reading and math by 2014.

Blog Action Day . . .

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is food.  Bloggers from around the world have signed up to post today on a topic of world concern and since it is World Food Day the choice of topic was easy.  I love to eat so it is also an easy topic for me, but instead of sharing my eating habits and favorite foods I'll share a link to The Sustainable Food Lab.  I learned about the site from LeAnne Grillo who is doing some work for us at SoL Ed.

The mission of the Sustainable Food Lab is to accelerate the shift of sustainable food from niche to mainstream.


We define a sustainable food and agriculture system as one in which the fertility of our soil is maintained and improved; the availability and quality of water are protected and enhanced; our biodiversity is protected; farmers, farm workers, and all other actors in value chains have livable incomes; the food we eat is affordable and promotes our health; sustainable businesses can thrive; and the flow of energy and the discharge of waste, including greenhouse gas emissions, are within the capacity of the earth to absorb forever.

In our country we don't always think about where our food comes from or the people involved in growing it.  This and other organizations are beginning to change that for us.  They are concerned with not only the quality and safety of the food, but also with the quality of life it provides for those involved in growing it.  Costco is one of the local businesses involved with the organization and this article from their newsletter shows what this means with a focus on egg production. 

The lab's focus on sustainable farming practices is one that we need to embrace as the farmers of the world struggle to produce safe quantities of food necessary to feed a world population that continues to grow.  Doing this while preserving the capacity of the earth to ensure future generations with safe and healthy food is the goal.

Another goof . . .

Yes, I made an error in my last post and to my embarrassment Scott pointed it out to me in his comment to the post.  In his usual way, he sandwiched it with positive feedback.  I identified Steve as a key part of our relationship with TEA and at one time he was.  Steve Pu;lkinnen was Uniserv rep. for many years and assisted in laying the foundation for our collaborative work.  But, for many years now it has been Scott Mitchell who has provided the leadership and vision for what can be achieved with a balance of advocacy for his membership and understanding of a system perspective to problem solving.

Thanks Scott for identifying my error, for the kind words, and for your leadership.