Santa Fe/ Public Forums Set For SFPS Input
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 8, 2012
Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd can expect to get an earful of dissonance when he meets with staff members for a series of forums this month, but he's willing to face the music.
Boyd and his transition advisory team struck a sour note with teachers when a report summarizing the team's initial findings during Boyd's first 100 days as schools chief was released last week.
Though it was just one sentence accompanied by a small chart in a 40-page report, the finding that absenteeism among staff members in SFPS - an average of 17 days out of a 180-day school year - was nearly twice the national average generated a lot of discussion among school board members and teachers.
The head of the local teachers' union spoke out, saying the data put teachers in a bad light and that she felt an apology was in order.
Boyd said earlier this week that he was surprised by the outcry.
- "People seem to have latched on to that one data point," Boyd said, adding that the report revealed other important findings that haven't gotten nearly the amount of attention. "It's a big number and it does seem implausible, and that's why people jumped on it."
Bernice García Baca, president of the National Education Association in Santa Fe, said the numbers didn't accurately reflect absenteeism among teachers alone and included time off taken for professional development, long-term sick leave and other legitimate reasons for being out of the classroom.
In an effort to clarify the findings, Boyd sent out a district-wide email explaining where the numbers came from and announced a schedule for five staff forums, the first of which will be held today from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Santa Fe High School.
Boyd said during an interview Tuesday that the forums were planned in advance and weren't in response to the feedback about the absenteeism numbers. He also said that he wasn't too proud to admit when he's wrong.
- "I own the part that the information is clarified," he said. "If people were offended or distracted, I and the organization as a whole, need to apologize."
While he noted that it was the transition team, not him, that wrote the report, he acknowledged he did receive a preliminary draft and reviewed the information before it was released. And he second-guessed himself a little bit.
"What I have to own is prior to anything being released publicly, I have to be clear about it," he said, adding that perhaps he should have had that data point removed from the report for further vetting.
Boyd also related the story of his now-deceased mother, who was a schoolteacher. He said he could imagine how she would have reacted to that kind of information.
"With that background, I should have known better," he said.
While he's sure to get more backlash from teachers during the forums, Boyd said there are other things contained in the report that deserve attention.
- For instance, the report cited problems with Individual Education Plans and
- re-evaluations not meeting time lines mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act;
- black, Latino and American Indian students being underrepresented in gifted programs; and
- deficiencies in providing services to English-language learners.
He said the district also has issues with the data collection, which may be to blame for causing the stir over absenteeism in the first place.
- "We have to get beyond the distraction and dig into it, so we can get to a better place," he said.
Boyd said what's getting lost in the controversy over absenteeism is that the district employs a lot of hard-working people who are getting results.
While he may have to face the music during the upcoming staff forums, Boyd said the report achieved what it set out to accomplish - that being bringing issues to the surface so they can be dealt with.
"Discussion is what we want to have happen," he said.
Santa Fe Public Schools staff forums:
- Today: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Santa Fe High School
- Friday: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Capital High School
- Nov. 14: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Salazar Elementary
- Nov. 16: 4 to 6 p.m., Gonzales Community School
- Nov. 19: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., E.J. Martinez Elementary
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Santa Fe/ Absentee Report, Pay Discussion Test Tempers at Santa Fe School Board Meeting
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
November 7, 2012
Superintendent Joel Boyd said Wednesday night that he wants to turn the page on the much-publicized issue of teacher absences, so the Santa Fe school district can move forward in identifying and addressing challenges.
- "We have to stop fighting each other and start fighting together," he said.
Still, that page didn't get turned during a school board meeting at which Boyd, board members and others discussed the importance of teacher absences - as well as union bargaining and pay raises - in sometimes testy exchanges.
Some teachers responded with dismay or anger after news reports last week that a 40-page report spotlighting successes and challenges within Santa Fe's public schools noted that instructional staff - teachers, educational assistants and counselors - are absent some 17 days out of a 180-day school year. That figure is almost twice the national rate, according to some studies.
Critics argued that the newly installed administration hasn't yet analyzed the reasons for those absences in an effort to explain why the number is so high. The district has about 20 different types of leave, including paid, unpaid, jury duty, Medical and Family Leave Act days and personal/sick days.
Boyd has acknowledged that the district could have researched more deeply before releasing the information, but he stands by the data.
During Wednesday's meeting, Boyd's chief accountability and strategy officer, Richard Bowman, said the absentee figure was calculated in response to a question regarding how classroom instruction is disrupted by absences. Bowman said the district looked at the number of days that instructional staff took leave and divided it by the number of instructional staff involved (about 945 people, roughly 850 of whom are teachers).
Bowman said he plans to present a preliminary report with more specific data by the end of November to help clarify the various reasons for the absences. Among other goals, the district wants to know how many of those absentee days are due to central office functions and requirements, such as professional development. The district intends to do the same type of absentee inquiry with non-instructional staff, Boyd said.
But National Education Association-Santa Fe President Bernice Garcia-Baca said the initial number demoralized teachers by creating the perception that teachers are taking a lot of sick days or are not in their classrooms as often as they should be. "It did hit our staff hard," she said.
Board President Frank Montaño said in the eight years he has served on the board, he has heard from at least four superintendents that teacher absences are high.
When the evening's discussion segued into union bargaining and possible raises for teachers and other personnel, both Boyd and board member Steven Carrillo voiced frustration with the perception that they are not doing what they can to offer pay raises.
- "We are doing everything we can," Carrillo said. "We want to find the money." Montaño seconded that thought, adding that it seems pretty certain the district will be able to offer raises for some staff in fiscal year 2013-14.
Boyd went further, clearly losing his temper and telling a member of the Santa Fe Federation of School Employees Union - which represents custodians and maintenance workers - that as a representative who does not work for the district, he could not come to a school board meeting and give the district grief over the matter.
- He said it's time for people to support the district's efforts for educational reform: "It's got to happen today. That's the end of this discussion."
The transition report was compiled and written by six advisers who did not initially work for the district, although Boyd has since hired one of them, Almudena (Almi) Abeyta, as his chief academic officer.
Boyd has said the report reveals more serious concerns than employee absentee rates, including:
- the fact that about 885 English-language students at the elementary-school level aren't being served with high-quality teaching and that
- more than 400 Individual Education Plans and re-evaluations for special education students weren't filed in time to meet federal deadlines last year. (The district wants 100 percent of those reports up to date by Dec. 1.)
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Texico/ Texico High School's ProStart Culinary Program offers Career Basics
By Benna Sayyed, Staff Writer
Clovis News Journal
November 7, 2012
Learning about the unhealthy effects of cross contamination is just one bit of knowledge Pieratt is picking up at Texico High School's ProStart culinary program.
The program is in its second year at Texico High and according to Texico High family and consumer science teacher Kye Thomas, it's not only teaching students valuable cooking skills but also how to operate a restaurant.
- "To have this nice a facility for such a rural school is wonderful," said Thomas, of her year-old classroom and adjacent culinary kitchen she designed.
- "This is where our future in family consumer science is going. It's not going toward the traditional; it's going toward the career aspect of culinary arts."
ProStart is a two-year high school restaurant and food service management curriculum that blends classroom learning with mentored work experience.
- According to a ProStart news release, the program has approximately 60,000 students enrolled nationwide.
- The 24 ProStart students at Texico High learn restaurant management, business, advertising, marketing and finance skills in the classroom.
Students learn knife handling, safety and sanitation, industrial kitchen equipment usage and cooking, baking and grilling methods in the kitchen.
Dressed in crisp white chef uniforms and chef hats, students move briskly around the kitchen tossing salads, icing cupcakes and preparing other baked goods and stovetop dishes during class.
Students cook for the school's concession stand. Goods are usually sold at basketball tournaments.
- Kylie Pieratt, a Texico High freshman, said she started baking sweets with her grandmother Jerine around age 5. She said she joined the class to learn more about baking.
"Taking this class has really opened my eyes to everything culinary," said Pieratt, whose career goal is to become a paramedic and open a bakery.
"I would recommend it to any high school student wanting to become a chef and just to learn how to cook better."
- Abigail Garcia, a Texico High junior who is taking the class for the second year, said her cooking began at age 8 by turning steaks and helping her grandfather Daniel grill outdoors.
Garcia said she joined the class because she has a strong passion for cooking and an interest in the food service industry.
"I'm learning a lot of things I really didn't know before," said Garcia, who is considering becoming a restaurant manager among other career plans.
"I've learned the proper way to stock things, the different types of (culinary) words like "poaching" and to not cross contaminate."
Thomas said her ProStart class focuses on cooking for quality, not quantity, and minimizes food waste.
"The class is hands-on," said Thomas, who has taught at Texico High for 13 years.
"We do bookwork but we also do a lot of cooking. They (students) really enjoy that but I've heard kids say it's not easy."
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Socorro/ Anti-Bullying Policy: Bullies in Schools Face Reality
By Lindsey Padilla
El Defensor Chieftain
November 7, 2012
"Children learn bullying behavior because it is all around them in their environment and they think it is acceptable," said Cottonwood Valley Charter School principal Karin Williams. "Bullying can start at home because children can learn bullying from their parents."
Williams said bullying is a learned behavior from adults and the world around children. There is bullying inside and outside of the classroom.
"Something adults need to think about is their own behavior around the child," Williams said. "Children can view bullying on television and radio; all teachers and adults need to model respectful behavior, and need to not use bullying to get things done."
Adults need to realize they are models for their children at all times, she said. And most important of all, the child needs to feel they have a close relationship with a teacher at school. It is important all adults interact with children.
According to Williams, at Cottonwood Valley Charter School teachers are always walking around the classroom. They overhear and observe the children and pay attention to the students. When Williams has recess duty, she looks around to see what is going on with the children, she said.
Bullying can be prevented by being observant and being aware, Williams said.
"Prevention is knowing your students very well," she said. Williams also encourages students to stand up for other students who are victims of bullying.
"I am a believer in knowing my students and school," Williams said. "When things happen, I deal with it."
Williams said the different forms of bullying are verbal or relational, which cause damage to students who are ostracized from a group.
She will talk to students about how they can all be friends. She said when there is an imbalance of power, one child feels he or she has more power than the other. The ones who are bullied can't always defend themselves.
Williams said she talks with students who are bullied, asking what they believe is helpful. She will also talk to the child who is doing the bullying.
During her first year as principal, Williams suspended children over bullying and, as a consequence, she has an in-school suspension policy. She said a student in suspension must sit in her office and can't go back to class until they have taken responsibility for their actions. They also follow a behavior contract. According to the discipline plan, the behavior contract is written by the student and is mutually agreed upon by the student, classroom, parent, principal and teacher of how they will behave in the future.
Cottonwood's discipline plan requires an agreement that students need to honor themselves and others, take responsibility for their own actions, work toward their best behavior and listen and be heard. According to the policy, each teacher is also responsible for teaching students what these expectations look like in their classroom.
Williams meets with family and teachers, and works with students from elementary to middle school to improve the policies over the years.
"When I was bullied, I went to teachers," said Cottonwood Valley eighth-grader Amy Olsen. "Some didn't do anything. Then, I went to my mom and she put me in a new school."
Olsen was a bully victim in elementary school. She said she experienced it when she was in the first grade. Other kids would make fun of her reading and because she had short hair. Students would call her "little boy." Olsen said as you get older, other girls just want to fight you. She has friends outside of Cottonwood Valley Charter School and is afraid to try out for basketball at Sarracino Middle School because some of the girls over there don't like her. She doesn't know why and it seems to her to be for no reason.
Olsen said as you get older, girls bully more, and when she was little it was boys and girls.
"Stay strong," Olsen said. "Be who you are. Love yourself. Don't care what people think. You are perfect just the way you are."
According to the National Education Association website, bullying affects one in three American school children in grades six through 10. Boys identified as bullies in grades six through nine had one criminal conviction by age 24. The website also states 40 percent of those identified as bullies had three or more arrests by age 30.
Bullies are even at greater risk of suicide than their victims. The website also states students who are targets of repeated bullying behavior experience extreme fear and stress. They have a fear of going to school, a fear of going to the bathroom and a fear of riding the bus to and from school.
Socorro High School principal Jennifer Molina said staff members and faculty members go over the Socorro Consolidated Schools Anti-Bullying Policy with each individual class at the beginning of the school year. Students who are victims of bullying can fill out a complaint form if they don't feel comfortable talking with faculty or staff face to face, she said.
The Socorro Consolidated Schools Anti-Bullying Policy states bullying is any repeated and pervasive written, verbal or electronic expression, physical act or gesture, or a pattern thereof that is intended to cause distress upon one or more students in the school, on school grounds, in school vehicles, at a designated bus stop or at school activities or sanctioned events.
"Our students feel comfortable talking to us," Molina said. "Students who are uncomfortable need to come to us immediately so we can take care of it."
She said faculty and staff supervise students throughout the day. The types of bullying she witnessed included students calling each other names. Some students felt uncomfortable, and the bullies were brought in immediately; she called home and it stopped after that, Molina said. There was also one situation where there was going to be a fight at the school. One of the students who was aware notified a faculty member and a fight was stopped before it could happen because immediate action was taken, Molina said. The staff are good at monitoring and talking to the students, she said. They monitor the students in the hallways and at lunch time.
"Teachers will let us know. We don't accept (bullying) at our school," Molina said. "We discuss bullying monthly. If they don't tell us, we don't know how to help them."
Molina says bullying starts with peer pressure and what they see on television.
Molina said students respond well when bullying is discussed. She wants the students to feel safe in their environment.
"There are challenges of being a kid," she said. Faculty and staff try to be the best support system for the students.
Families and parents are welcome at the school to visit and observe.
"My best advice for students who are being bullied is to find an adult they are comfortable with, or write a note to an administrator," Molina said. "Let us know - because that's the only way we can help you."
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Washington DC/ Digital Technology: Schools Using Social Networking to Involve Parents
By Nora Fleming
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 11 [Edweek.org]
November 7, 2012
Digital technology is providing a growing variety of methods for school leaders to connect with parents anywhere, anytime-a tactic mirroring how technology is used to engage students.
- Through Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, and text messages sent in multiple languages, school staff members are giving parents instant updates, news, and information about their children's schools.
- Not only that, but a number of districts are also providing parents access to Web portals where they can see everything from their children's grades on school assignments to their locker combinations and what they're served for lunch.
Socioeconomic disparities in Internet access can make such digital-outreach efforts challenging and even divisive, however; some parents have many options for connecting digitally, and others don't.
Yet some school leaders are meeting that challenge head-on by teaching parents how they can use technology to become more engaged in their children's education, and in some cases, by providing them with access to it in their own homes.
- "Digital learning levels the playing field among parents in a pretty profound way," said Elisabeth Stock, the chief executive officer and co-founder of CFY, or Computers for Youth, a New York City-based nonprofit that works with low-income communities and schools to improve digital literacy.
- "For low-income parents who feel they can no longer help their kids with learning as homework starts to become appreciably harder, access to high-quality digital learning content at home and the training to use it keeps these parents in the game," she said. "These parents can now easily find help online or learn side by side with their child."
Interest among school leaders in using digital tools to connect with parents in new and more cost-effective ways is rising across the country, educators say, in efforts to save staff time, ease language barriers through translation services, and provide opportunities to reach more parents than ever before, no matter their socioeconomic status.
For those reasons, some of the largest districts have recently undertaken or expanded digital-engagement initiatives involving parents.
- This school year, the 1.1 million-student New York City system launched a new text-subscription service that notifies parents in English or Spanish of school news and a series of webinars on topics of relevance to parents.
- The 640,000-student Los Angeles school district hired its first-ever director of social media this past spring, whose main charge is communicating and sharing district information with parents and students via tools such as YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Those and similar efforts around the country are attracting the attention of parents.
- In the 182,000-student Fairfax County school system in Virginia, 84,500 people have subscribed to the district's enhanced news and information email and text service, the district's Facebook page has 26,000 "likes," and its Twitter account has 8,100 followers.
'Menu of Offerings'
It's not only the biggest districts that are reaching out to parents digitally.
- Individual schools and smaller districts are also increasingly connecting to parents using a number of virtual tools, efforts often stemming from the vision of an administrator, such as the principal of the 600-student Knapp Elementary School, about 25 miles from Philadelphia.
When Principal Joe Mazza took on his position six years ago, he made it a priority to use digital technologies to improve communication between the school and parents.
Today, the school-where 40 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and 22 languages are represented-has grown from its first outreach effort of an email listserv to communicating with parents through Twitter, Facebook, a parent-school Wiki, virtual chat, blog, and a Google text line.
In addition, the school-part of the North Penn district-has its teachers use Skype to run parent conferences and airs live and archived video of all parent and teacher association meetings for parents who are unable to attend. Recently, Mr. Mazza and some staff members even brought laptops into a local mosque that a number of the school's families attend, and streamed live footage there of one of the meetings.
"We have parents from all walks of life. The feedback we have from families has told us we can't provide a single communication means to engage them, so we provide a 'menu of offerings' they can pick and choose from," Mr. Mazza said. "Our goal is relating these family-engagement offerings to how we work with students, in a differentiated manner."
Other school leaders have similar goals.
- In California's 26,000-student Vista school district, 40 miles north of San Diego, Superintendent Devin Vodicka decided when he took the job this past summer to use social media to improve district communication with parents and staff members.
Mr. Vodicka started a Twitter account and began making the rounds to schools, with the goal of reaching every classroom in the district and tweeting his experiences at each to his Twitter followers. Other administrators in the district have followed Mr. Vodicka's lead-now, 60 administrators have school-related Twitter and Facebook accounts, and around three-quarters of the schools now have some kind of social-media presence.
Recently, a teacher told him, " 'I feel like I already know you from following you on Twitter and seeing what you see as you go around the district,' " Mr. Vodicka recalled.
Super Centers
Given that the level of access to and familiarity with digital technology can vary substantially among parents, some districts have made it just as much a priority to provide digital-literacy training to parents as to communicate with them via social-networking tools. To leaders in those districts, parents need to be familiar with such tools because their children continue to use social media and other technology tools for learning after the school day ends.
- The 203,000-student Houston district, for example, just launched a parent education initiative this school year around digital literacy; it targets low-income parents, most of whom do not have Internet access or even computers in their homes. More than 80 percent of the district's students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
With donations from the Microsoft Corp. as well as $25,000 from the local school endowment, the district created "parent super centers" on five school campuses. Each center provides classes and training to parents on office software, Internet use and safety, and the district's online grade-reporting system, among other topics.
About 2,000 parents have already received training since the start of school this year, according to Kelly Cline, the senior manager of parent engagement for the Houston district.
In addition, organizations such as the Boston-based Technology Goes Home and CFY are partnering with schools to provide parent, teacher, and school leader training and even computers for parents to use after completion of the training.
- CFY, for example, has served more than 50,000 families in 13 years in New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
- The program, which works with schools where at least 75 percent of students are eligible for subsidized lunch, provides all-day training on weekends at school for parents to complete with their children.
- They learn how to use a computer, the Internet, and an academic platform that has lessons that are grade- and age-appropriate.
- Afterward, parents receive a refurbished, personal computer and are guided in how to get broadband Internet in their homes, which they can typically access at highly discounted rates.
Ms. Stock said the organization often witnesses the leverage technology can have to repair relationships between schools and parents.
Parents who felt the school saw them as apathetic suddenly feel more empowered to participate when the school provides them with technology and "enlists them as part of the solution," she said.
One parent, Sadara Jackson McWhorter, said that until she completed the training with CFY in Atlanta over the summer, she didn't know even how to turn a computer on, let alone use the Internet. Now, Ms. McWhorter and her three school-age children use their new personal computer, the Internet, and the CFY content daily, she said. She's even using online tools to teach herself Spanish.
Wendy Lazarus, the chief executive officer and co-founder of The Children's Partnership, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based nonprofit that helped launch a school-based digital education initiative for parents in the Los Angeles area several years ago, said most of the attention around technology in education focuses either solely on schools or solely on the home.
To have parents become both digitally literate and more engaged in their children's education, schools and organizations need to make bridging the gap between home and school a priority, she said.
- "New dollars aren't necessarily needed to implement a school-to-home model, but leaders would need to allow schools and school districts to blend funding from different sources," Ms. Lazarus said. "The model takes leadership, commitment, and a partnership sustained over time. And to achieve meaningful results, it needs to be available widely, not just in pilot efforts."
But while more districts are seeing the importance of reaching parents digitally, in others, basic hurdles such as home Internet access are still waiting to be addressed.
Equity Problems
When Sean Bulson, the superintendent of the 12,000-student Wilson County schools in a rural part of North Carolina, took his position last summer, he made improving digital learning in the district, where 60 percent of students are on subsidized lunch, a top goal.
- All middle school students now receive iPads to use at school and home, and the district hopes to provide all district students with devices to take to and from school in the future.
- But the impact of the technology is and will be limited, Mr. Bulson said, unless the district addresses the home-access issue: A number of families cannot afford high-speed Internet access, and it's not even available in the most isolated parts of the county. Students in those households can take their devices home, but they can't use them to connect to the Internet.
The Wilson County district is now applying for a federal Race to the Top district grant for $24 million to have its local fiber-optic-cable provider, Greenlight, connect families throughout the county to broadband. District families who couldn't afford to pay would receive free Internet service.
It's the district's hope that once more families get connected to broadband, they can begin to do more digital outreach to parents, Mr. Bulson said, but right now access itself makes that an obstacle.
Michael Searson, the executive director for the School for Global Education and Innovation at Kean University in Union, N.J., and the president of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, said addressing what technology is used, and where, is essential if educators continue to make using digital technology in schools a priority.
"It's unethical to provide a robust digital learning program in school for kids who don't have access in their bedrooms and family rooms," Mr. Searson said.
"As schools begin to integrate mobile devices and social media into education, the out-of-school equity issues have to be considered. Education leaders need to understand equity is not only access to devices, but access to the networks that allow people to get information."
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Washington DC/ OPINION: 5 Issues Facing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in 2nd Term
By Michele McNeil
Eduction Week [Edweek.org]
November 7, 2012 11:43 AM
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has maintained that he would stick around for a second term if President Barack Obama is re-elected and asks him to stay on. Now, Duncan has that chance. During the next four years, Duncan-and any successor-will confront some significant issues.
- Waivers: His crew has approved No Child Left Behind flexibility applications for 34 states plus the District of Columbia. These are incredibly complicated, evolving plans that are already creating controversy-and the hard work of implementation has barely gotten started. Virginia had to redo its school performance targets-after the feds had already approved the methodology behind the numbers-after a huge firestorm from civil rights groups. In several states, education advocates are loudly complaining about rules that allow states to set different school targets for different subgroups of at-risk kids.
And on the national scene, many are growing alarmed at the small role graduation rates are playing in accountability system. What's more, as new governors and state chiefs take the helm in waiver states-especially if they are from a different party than those who crafted the waiver plan-we can expect some states to start wanting to substantially change their plans. How agreeable with the U.S. Department of Education be? The first test case may be in Indiana, where Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett was upset by Democrat Glenda Ritz, who has some very different ideas about K-12 education in the Hoosier State.
- Race to the Top: The president's signature education initiative will come to an end within the next two years-or at least the original iteration in which 11 states plus D.C. shared $4 billion. What will states have to show for all of this money? Did states actually do everything they said they would? Did the money move needle on not just policy, but also on student achievement? Or will it be too soon to tell? Either way, Race to the Top will face a lot of scrutiny during the president's second term. (And actually, so will the School Improvement Grant program, which got supercharged as part of the 2009 economic-stimulus package. The same goes for the Investing in Innovation program. People will be asking the same questions of SIG and i3.)
- NCLB reauthorization: Duncan will have to work with Congress, or at least make a show of it, on NCLB reauthorization. But given that Congress still remains divided, a quick (two years or less) reauthorization is probably a pipe dream. So perhaps more importantly, if NCLB doesn't get reauthorized, how will Duncan approach enforcing NCLB in states that do not, for various reasons, have a waiver? And will it be easy for current waiver states to renew their waivers, which generally expire after two years?
- Fiscal issues: Fight, fight, fight. Duncan will have to fight hard to spare education programs, such as Title I and special education, from cuts as Congress and the White House figure out how to get out of a big fiscal mess. He will have to fight even harder to get any substantial new money for his competitive grant programs, such as Race to the Top. And perhaps the hardest fight in terms of solving the underlying problem will involve Pell Grants, which have a huge structural deficit even as the president made college affordability a huge campaign issue.
- Common core: Duncan will have to walk a fine line between supporting states as they implement common standards and tests, and, in the words of Checker Finn, not loving them to death. The campaign offered up some fiery rhetoric on the common core, particularly from Republicans who said the country is proceeding down a path toward a national curriculum. Some speculate that Bennett's loss in Indiana was partly due to his support of common core.
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