Congress returned to town last week, and the debate on health care reform heated up, with the president making his views known on some controversial issues. Tempers appeared rather short as senators started lining up in the "for" and "against" column for the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, as she began meetings with individual members.

Even Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran into unexpected criticism during his first day of appearances on the Hill defending the administration's FY 2010 budget proposal. He spent a long day answering questions from appropriators about the president's plan for education spending. In his appearances before the House and Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittees, the overall tone was friendly, but without exception, members offered complaints and concerns. They also peppered him with questions about the distribution of the $100 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds flowing out of federal coffers. Again, there were concerns and fears that the massive amount of money would not adequately make up for losses in education budgets in all but a handful of states. Duncan held up well under the scrutiny, but it was a tough lesson in governing under the legislative "three-party system." The president might set the agenda and recommend a budget, but where the rubber meets the road on spending is Capitol Hill. Members of Congress do not willingly give up the driver's seat when money is concerned.

An expected step forward in the annual appropriations process did not take place last week. Appropriators failed to hand out the 302B allocations; these are the numbers that signal to subcommittee chairs just how much money they can spend for the federal agencies. Even so, the House Appropriations Committee began holding and scheduling bill mark-ups, still hoping to meet a July 4 target date for approval of all 12 spending bills.

On June 4, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to examine how success at high-performing charter schools can be replicated or inform education reform efforts, including the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The FY 2010 budget request from the Obama administration includes an increased investment in charter schools, and recent comments from Arne Duncan suggest he sees the model as an effective one in education reform.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), committee chair, opened the hearing with a statement supportive and complimentary of high-performing charter schools and pointed to a number of exemplary charter schools and charter school models and their results, characterizing charter schools as "laboratories of innovation" in education that yield lessons that can and should be replicated. Pointing to the successes of charter schools in successfully intervening in failing schools, improving achievement among hard-to-serve populations and in fostering an entrepreneurial spirit around addressing the failures of public education, Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the Department of Education, said, "Improving our education system by expanding high-quality public charter schools is one of this administration's highest priorities." John King, managing director of the Excellence Preparatory Network for Uncommon Schools in New York, discussed the successes of Roxbury Preparatory Charter school in Boston, which he co-founded before joining Uncommon Schools. According to King, Roxbury has been the highest performing urban middle school in Massachusetts for five years and has successfully closed the racial achievement gap on state exams. In his testimony, King explained how Roxbury achieved these results, saying that the school established a compelling mission to prepare its students to enter, succeed in and graduate from college. Leadership also created a small school community - one in which every adult knows every student.

Before adjourning the hearing, Miller spoke about the importance of providing strong public education for all young people and leveraging the lessons learned at charters to produce more widespread results. His colleagues agreed.

NTP Releases New Report on Teacher Effectiveness: On June 1, the New Teacher Project (NTP) held an event at the National Press Club and a webinar to release its new report, "The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness." The report studied teacher evaluation and dismissal in four states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio. Tim Daly from the New Teacher Project noted that the report illustrates school districts fail to acknowledge or act on differences in teacher performance. He stated, "When it comes to officially appraising performance and supporting improvement, a culture of indifference about the quality of instruction in each classroom dominates. At the heart of the matter are teacher evaluation systems, which in theory should serve as the primary mechanism for assessing such variations, but in practice tell us little about how one teacher differs from any other, except teachers whose performance is so egregiously poor as to warrant dismissal." Daly stated that the failure of evaluation systems to provide accurate and credible information about individual teachers' instructional performance reinforces the idea of the "widget effect." The widget effect describes the tendency of school districts to assume classroom effectiveness is the same from teacher to teacher. The report makes four policy recommendations for school districts: 1) adopt a comprehensive performance evaluation system; 2) differentiate teachers based on their effectiveness in promoting student achievement and provide targeted professional development to help them improve; 3) train administrators and other evaluators in the teacher performance evaluation system and hold them accountable for using it fairly and effectively and integrate the performance evaluation system with critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher assignment, professional development, compensation, retention and dismissal; and 4) address ineffective teaching through dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due process that is fair but efficient. View the full report.

NCTM Release Guiding Principles for Math Curriculum and Assessment: Last week, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) released, "Guiding Principles for Mathematics Curriculum and Assessment" to influence ongoing and future development of uniform curriculum expectations or national standards for mathematics education. Related to the release, Henry Kepner Jr., NCTM president, said, "The continuing discussions about common core standards or a national curriculum should be based on the work that has already been done. Since any discussion of true national standards relates to the fundamental issue of local control in education, effective policy should be formed by the best current information on mathematics teaching and learning. The development of any curriculum or standards should take advantage of what has already been carefully crafted by a consensus of mathematics teachers, teacher leaders, mathematics educators, mathematicians and researchers." NCTM first developed content standards and a guiding framework for curriculum development in 1989 with its publication of "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics," which was updated in 2000 as "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics." NCTM will also be releasing this year, "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" which will address mathematics education in high school. View the report.

Common Core Holds Briefing on International Assessments: Common Core held a briefing on June 2 to release its new report, "Why We're Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don't." The report examined the content of education in nine high-performing nations that consistently outperform the United States on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Researchers focused on Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands and Switzerland. Lynn Munson, president and executive director of Common Core, stated, "Each of the nations that consistently outrank the U.S. on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences. These nations differ greatly with regard to how they accomplish this goal. Some have a national curriculum and standards but no tests, others have both, and some leave everything up to the states." Martin West, assistant professor of education, political science and public policy at Brown University, spoke about the findings in the report and noted that on the 2006 PISA, 15-year old American students ranked 21st in science and 25th in math among the 30 industrialized nations comprising the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to West, these results show American students lag behind their peers in top-scoring Finland by two grade levels in both subjects. West argued that the implementation of No Child Left Behind prompted students to improve skills in tested subjects, but at the price of performance in untested subjects that often go untaught, such as art and music. View the full report.

ETS Holds Briefing on Assessing ELLs: On June 3, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) held a briefing to discuss the fairness and validity of educational assessments for English language learners (ELLs). During the briefing, Maria Martiniello, ETS associate research scientist, discussed some of the issues in the assessment of mathematical knowledge of ELLs. Martiniello discussed how linguistic complexity in math instruction causes problems for ELLs, specifically, how these students do not necessarily struggle with mathematical concepts but with the complex ways in which math word problems are phrased. Mary Pitoniak, ETS lead program administrator, explained that when developing assessments for K-12 students, it is important to consider the special needs of ELLs. Pitoniak urged the assessment authors to consider ELLs when designing tests and to ensure the test is clearly written using accessible language. "Some students may need a change to the standardized testing conditions to make the test more fair and accessible without changing the construct," Pitoniak said. More info.

Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Research: The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) held a briefing on June 3 to discuss its recently published book, "Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Research: Fostering Excellence and Enhancing the Impact." One of the book's co-editors Mary Boyd, Ph.D., dean of arts and sciences at the University of San Diego, explained that the book was written to make a case for why undergraduate research needs to be broadened to include more women and underrepresented minority groups. "Broadening participation in undergraduate research is about maximizing potential - the potential of students, research and institutions - and expanding our understanding of the world," Boyd said. Daryl Chubin, one of the book's authors and director of the Center for Advancing Science and Engineering Capacity at AAAS, noted that undergraduate research opportunities often play an integral role in preparing undergraduate students for further higher education and careers in the 21st century. Panelists at the briefing agreed that while working with the administration at higher education institutions to improve undergraduate research opportunities, it can be almost more important to impress the importance of undergraduate research on the faculty of these institutions. More info.

New American Foundation Hosts Discussion on Child Well-Being Index: On June 3, the New America Foundation hosted a discussion titled, "The 2009 Child Well-Being Index: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Children." The purpose of the event was to release the 2009 Child and Youth Well-Being Index report, along with a Special Focus Report titled, "Anticipating Impacts of a 2008-2010 Recession." Dr. Kenneth Land, project coordinator for the Child and Youth Well-Being Index, presented the 2009 CWI report, which is the composite measure of trends in the well-being of U.S. children. The report provides the answers to whether children's overall well-being has improved or deteriorated over the last two decades. Land emphasized that despite a predicted uptick in the economy in the third or fourth quarter of this year, the effects of the recession will most likely directly affect child-well being at least into 2010. Major predictions of the 2009 CWI Report include: a drop in economic well-being being the major cause in the total drop in child well-being; the child obesity and mortality rates (of children 12 to 19) will increase as a result of this decrease in economic well-being; and cuts in public sector spending in after-school programs and early childhood education will have a major effect on the long-term economic success of poor children. View the full report.