The U.S. Department of Education has granted waivers to eight additional states, bringing to 19 the total number of states that will become exempt from various provisions of the nation's major education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The latest additions to the list of waivers-receiving states are: Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. 

The waivers will free states and local public school districts from provisions of the law requiring all students to demonstrate proficiency in reading and math by 2014, and from the "corrective action" alternatives faced by schools and districts that fail to meet existing student achievement growth targets.  In return, states receiving waivers have committed to put in place a variety of reforms favored by the Obama Administration.
 
California has decided to pursue an alternate route to the (hoped for) issuance of waivers by committing to a "state defined" application in which some, but not all of the elements offered in the Administration's "package deal" will be sought, and some, but not all of the reforms will be promised.

Writing in Education Week's Politics K-12 blog, Alyson Klein offers an interesting observation regarding the latest batch of waivers recipients:  "Except for Connecticut and Louisiana, all of the waiver recipients were among the dozen states that won a slice of the $4 billion Race to the Top fund."  Such a pattern will, undoubtedly, provide additional fuel to those complaining that the waivers represent a questionable means of leveraging various reforms via administrative decisions in lieu of legislative action.  (Congress is now more than three years behind schedule with respect to reauthorizing ESEA.)
 
While the law, itself, grants the Secretary of Education the authority to issue waivers, some have argued that certain elements of the Administration's package may not be waived.  For example, attorneys Julia Martin and Leigh Manasevit point to one provision of the waivers package that will allow school districts to use a school's graduation rate as a criterion for the allocation of Title I dollars rather than its poverty ranking.  (Elementary and middle schools would also be affected by the new policy.)  The attorneys write:
 
 
One of the reform commitments whose implementation will be of considerable interest requires states and school districts to "develop, adopt, pilot, and implement...teacher and principal evaluation and support systems that...meaningfully differentiate performance using at least three performance levels... [and] use multiple valid measures in determining performance levels, including as a significant factor data on student growth for all students (including English Learners and students with disabilities)."  States and school districts are supposed to establish such practices "with the involvement of teachers and principals."  This means that teachers unions will be involved in the formulation and implementation of practices to which they have voiced strong opposition.  To obtain approval of their applications, states have, presumably, demonstrated support from the unions.
 
It remains to be seen whether or not the U.S. Department of Education will insist that California become subject to the above-mentioned teacher evaluation requirements.  At present, there is already marked contentiousness over the issue, as the Los Angeles Times reported just a few days ago:
 
 
When the new school year begins, the status of waiver-recipients' efforts to put promised reforms in place may generate an education policy presidential campaign issue by highlighting the tensions between local control and federal policy.

Stay tuned!

The California Private School Advisory Committee is pleased to present a new, two-day workshop for nonprofit, private school instructional staff working with students enrolled in grades K-8.  The workshop, which is funded in part by ESEA, Title II, Part A, in cooperation with the California Department of Education will be offered in both Southern and Northern California locations.


Northern California Dates and Locations

July 31 & August 1, 2012          August 6 & 7, 2012
The King's Academy                 Rancho Cordova City Hall
562 N. Britton Avenue               2729 Prospect Park Dr.
Sunnyvale, 94085                     Rancho Cordova, 95670



Southern California Dates and Locations

August 2 & 3, 2012       August 8 & 9, 2012       August 15 & 16, 2012
Vista Del Mar               St. Therese Academy    Harvest Christian Sch.
3200 Motor Ave.           6046 Camino Rico         6115 Arlington Ave.
Los Angeles, 90034      San Diego, 92120          Riverside, 92504

Read/Print Registration Form for Southern California Locations


Per-Person Registration

Early Bird Rate: $50.00 (if received on or before June 29, 2012)
                        $70.00 (if received after June 29, 2012)

The registration fee covers both days of the program and includes materials, continental breakfast and lunch each day.

Program Hours:  8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., each day.

                          

Space is limited.  Registration will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis!   

  

About the Workshop

  

Turn teaching minutes into learning moments. See how students can picture their thinking and double their learning. Discover six levels of engaged imagination and three levels of active reading comprehension. Explore practical ways to integrate reading, writing, and drawing across the curriculum to help students learn anything faster and retain it longer. See how students can turn words into pictures, books into mental movies, and classroom listening into an art. Energize your teaching and transform your students' learning with techniques that have worked with more than one million students around the world.  (Additional information accompanies the registration form.)

 

All participants will receive a copy of Mr. Pearson's book, Drawing On The Inventive Mind, and DVD, Draw Power, as well as a set of Drawing Out The Best In Your Students handouts.

 

Participants will learn:

• Specific ways to teach creatively in a world of standards and objectives
• A visual-kinesthetic way students may learn all their times tables in minutes
• Ways to use drawing to get, keep, and direct attention anytime
• How to turn daydreaming into reading comprehension
• How to overcome the two greatest blocks to motivation
• A unique SEE-IT, SAY-IT, WRITE-IT, READ-IT method that works with students of all backgrounds and language abilities
• Simple language and memory tools that differentiate learning naturally
• Rapid ways anyone may use drawing to learn vocabulary, foreign languages, spelling
• How students and teachers may overcome their fear of drawing (and their sense of it only being an "art" tool)---to use drawing across the curriculum as a note-taking, idea-generating, memory-enhancing, language-building brain tool.
• Ten (more like fifty) reality-tested ways to use drawing to learn anything faster and retain it longer---ways that will work with specific standards and objectives
• How to tailor what they learn to their specific teaching challenges

About the Presenter

 

USDE Announces Grants

The U. S. Department of Education has announced the award of $24.4 million in the form of 73 grants to institutions of higher education that are partnering with local school districts or state departments of education to provide a host of professional development activities for teachers and other education personnel who work in elementary and secondary classrooms containing English learners.  The grants are funded for five years.  Most programs are intended to benefit teachers of math and science with English learners in their classrooms.

All grant recipients will be notified that the awards are subject to the equitability provisions found in Title IX of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  This means that services funded with the grant money are to be offered on an equitable basis to private school teachers and administrators.  The Title IX guidance can be found, here.  (Item C-1 on Page 2 of the document notes that Title III, Part A, English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement is subject to the equitability provisions.  The grants are funded under Title III, Part A.)

California is home to 11 recipients of the grants.  The recipient institutions are listed below, together with the names and email addresses of contact persons, and the respective amounts awarded. 

• California State University, Chico, Esther Larocco, elarocco@csuchico.edu, $384,401.
• California State University, East Bay, Dr. Lettie Ramirez, lettie.ramirez@csueastbay.edu, $375,208.
• University of California, Irvine, Dr. Carol Booth Olson, cbolson@uci.edu, $400,000.
• National University, La Jolla, Dr. Linda Ventriglia-Navarrette, lventrig@nu.edu, $382,041.
• Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, Dr. Magaly Lavadenz, mlavaden@lmu.edu, $365,296.
• Sonoma State University, Sonoma, Dr. Kelly M. Estrada, kelly.estrada@sonoma.edu, $194,250.
• San Diego State University, San Diego, Anne Graves, graves2@mail.sdsu.edu, $190,432.
• San Diego State University, San Diego, Dr. Valerie J. Cook-Morales, vcmorale@mail.sdsu.edu, $400,000.
• San Jose State University, San Jose, Mark Felton; Katya Karathanos, mark.felton@sjsu.edu; kkaratha@email.sjsu.edu, $400,000.
• California State University, San Marcos, Dr. Annette M. Daoud, adaoud@csusm.edu, $337,652.
• Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto, Dr. Susan O'Hara, sohara@stanford.edu, $374,338.

A complete listing of grant recipients can be found, here.


Romney Releases Education Plan

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has released a 35-page education policy document titled, "A Chance for Every Child."  The document can be accessed, here. Most notable among Mr. Romney's proposals is the position that federal Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act dollars should follow students to the schools of their choosing, whether public or private.  Mr. Romney writes:


As would be expected, the document has generated contrary responses.  The American Enterprise Institute's Frederick M. Hess characterizes the Romney plan as "a promising start," here.  Mike Hall, a writer affiliated with the AFL-CIO, argues that the document "centers on failed policies of the past while attacking teachers," here. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Michael J. Petrilli offers a mixed review, here.

Also of interest is Mr. Romney's naming of a panel of advisors on education issues.  Co-chairing the assemblage of K-12 education advisors are Nina S. Rees and Martin R. West.  Ms. Rees has formerly served as an assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, where she oversaw the Office of Non-Public Education.  More information about Mr. Romney's education advisors can be found, here.  One familiar name that no longer appears on the list is that of former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who removed herself for unspecified reasons.  It is thought that Ms. Spellings is disappointed that Mr. Romney appears to be abandoning some of the No Child Left Behind Act's key principles.


Read the CAPE Outlook

This month's edition of the CAPE Outlook newsletter, published by the Council for American Public Education, contains a brief review of Worth It: The 15,000 Hour Decision, a new book authored by Dr. Brian S. Simmons, President of the Association of Christian Schools International.  You'll also find a lead article describing Newark Mayor Cory Booker's "stirring and dramatic defense of school choice" at a recent conference, reports on breaking developments in Arizona, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Washington, D.C., information about the National Center for Education Statistics' The Condition of Education, and more.  You can read the CAPE Outlook, here.

Last month, the New York Times ran a lengthy feature drawing attention to questionable practices and instances of abuse associated with various education tax credit arrangements.  The article, "Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools," authored by Stephanie Saul, may be found, here (registration may be required).
 
The arrangements in question permit individuals and/or corporations to receive credits against their state tax liability for donations made to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations that distribute the funds they receive to private schools in the form of scholarships.  Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the arrangement does not involve an expenditure of funds by government, a holding that largely pulls the rug out from under objections arising from church-state separation concerns.  (While it is true that the majority of scholarships are awarded to students attending schools with religious orientations, it is also the case that such schools account for 80 percent of the nation's total private school enrollment.) 

Critics of the arrangement characterize it as a clever constitutional "end-run" designed to divert public funds to private schools.  The NYT article notes that such arrangements are already operational in eight states, and are currently being considered by legislators in nine others.
The laws governing such programs are often written in a manner that restricts the receipt of scholarships to children from families in demonstrable financial need, and/or to students who will either be attending a private school for the first time, or transferring from a public to a private school.

Although the article made note of the fact that "...the scholarship programs have helped many children whose parents would have to scrimp or work several jobs to send them to private schools," its focus was upon a shopping list of abuses associated with various tax credit arrangements: parents making donations are receiving scholarships for their own children; scholarship money is being used to recruit star athletes; operators of nonprofit scholarship organizations are making tidy profits; scholarship money is received by schools teaching fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and more.
 
Those sympathetic to education tax credit arrangements should acknowledge the fact that hastily conceived and/or poorly crafted legislation are open invitations to abuse.  Articles such as that appearing in the New York Times do a service by shining the harsh light of public scrutiny upon weaknesses in the legal architecture underpinning various programs.  Rather than reject such criticism, proponents of education tax credits should welcome the identification of shortcomings as opportunities for improvement. That being said, it's important to place the reported abuses in a broader context.

In 2003, I had the opportunity to serve on a national Task Force on the Prevention of Waste, Fraud and Abuse charged with making recommendations for strengthening the "E-Rate" telecommunications discounts program.  In 2011, total disbursements awarded by the program amounted to nearly $2.23 billion.  Needless to say, had instances of fraud and abuse been insignificant, I would have served on the "Task Force on the Prevention of Waste."  The experience was among the most interesting in my professional career. Working with an exceptional facilitator and a diverse team of smart and serious representatives of various stakeholder groups, we worked hard and diligently to fashion recommendations for improving the program.  I make mention of my experience because not once was it suggested that the presence of abuse warranted the termination of the program.
 
If every last cent of the $350 million currently provided in the form of education tax credits was being used for fraudulent purposes, it would represent less than half the amount of food stamp fraud estimated to occur, annually.  And while many (on both sides of the political aisle) rightfully favor a tightening of the rules governing the program, few call for its elimination.  (More about this, shortly.)
 
It also happens to be the case that the office of the Los Angeles County Tax Assessor is currently under investigation "...amid allegations [the] office lowered property taxes for campaign contributors."  Would anyone argue that eliminating property taxes would prove the surest way of preventing similar future abuse?
 
To the credit of the New York Times author, no similarly harsh prescriptions are proffered with respect to education tax credit legislation.  It would be foolish to conclude that, human nature being what it is, the very existence of fraud should constitute sufficient grounds for either opposing or terminating programs giving rise to abuse.  It is, instead, far more profitable to ask how the incidence of fraud and abuse can be minimized.  While "We the People" are being swindled out of a hefty $750 million via food stamp abuse, that amount represents but one percent of the program's total expenditures.  There is no reason to be any less diligent when it comes to tax credits.

Supporters of education tax credits can express justifiable criticism of articles penned by authors such as Ms. Saul, and here's a good example of one who does.  At the end of the proverbial day, however, tax credit proponents are likely to better advance their cause by inviting additional scrutiny of the programs they champion, facilitating the investigation of alleged instances of fraud and abuse, owning real problems however big or small, and taking appropriate action to minimize unintended benefits.  While there's truth to the proposition that the best is the enemy of the better, there should be no excuses for failing to seek improvement. 

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published on June 27, 2012.