Senate Democrats Push For Federal Guidelines On "Student Achievement," Teacher Evals Tied To Test Scores

Tom Harkin doing the bidding of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan:

Until recently, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate education committee, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the panel's top Republican, were in talks to see if there was any chance of getting a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the long-stalled No Child Left Behind Act together in this Congress. But now it's looking like the two lawmakers were unable to resolve fundamental disagreements, making an already very tough reauthorization process that much harder.

The reason: philosophical differences on a couple of key areas that scuttled the chance at bipartisanship between the chairman and ranking member, advocates and congressional aides say. Perhaps the biggest area of disagreement? Harkin would like to see states set goals for student achievement as they now must under the NCLB waivers granted by the U.S. Department of Education. (That's a big change from legislation he supported in the previous Congress.) Meanwhile, Alexander sees that as too much federal intrusion, advocates say.

In including a requirement that states set student-achievement goals in the bill, Harkin is hoping that he can help build on the momentum of the waivers, which are now in place in 34 states and the District of Columbia, a Senate Democratic aide said. The administration had outlined the criteria for the waivers when the committee considered the bill back in 2011, but states hadn't yet applied.

...

Back in 2011, the Senate education committee approved a bill, which Alexander reluctantly supported, that essentially didn't include achievement targets—and got absolutely clobbered by business groups and the civil rights community, including groups representing students in special education, who have long seen Harkin as a champion.

Goals were a sensitive issue even during committee consideration of the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., introduced an amendment that would have called for states to set goals for student achievement that are similar to the parameters spelled out in the administration's ESEA waivers. But he then withdrew it so the bill could move forward without dealing with the super-sticky issue.

What's more, the still-under-discussion measure will likely call for states to create teacher evaluation systems based in part on student achievement, as they must now under the waivers. The goal will be to bolster teacher professional development, the Democratic aide said. The focus will be on supporting professionals in the classroom with the meaningful feedback and targeted professional development they need, the aide added.

Teacher evaluation was another major sticking point last time. When the Harkin bill was first introduced as a draft in 2011, it included a provision that would have required states and districts to craft teacher-evaluation systems based in part on student achievement. But Republicans (including Alexander) saw that provision as too much of a federal intrusion and worked to get the language out of the bill. Needless to say, the National Education Association was pretty happy about that development, and Democrats on the committee were spared from having to choose between supporting the NEA and voting with Harkin and the administration. This is an issue to watch again this time around. 

Obama and Duncan are trying to keep their test-based teacher evaluations/RttT/Common Core juggernaut going.

But this bill, even if it gets out of the Senate (which is unlikely), isn't going anywhere in the House.

I voted for Obama the first time around and still regret that vote.

Every time I see his latest education proposal, I regret that vote more and more.

It is clear that Obama and Duncan are never going to walk away from their test-based teacher evaluations/RttT/Comon Core policies.

These are their signature policies and they are going to remain with them until the bitter end.

Harkin Puts His Finger On The Problem

From all the jive we see from the Gates Foundation-produced bullshit in the media these days (the steaming pile of horseshit Elizabeth Green wrote for the Times last week - no link - is the latest and best example of a journalist rewriting Gates Foundation pamphlets and calling it "journalism"), teachers and schools are the sole problem with public education these days.

If we could just get better quality teachers who would work longer and harder and sacrifice their own lives for their students, then everything would work great!

Just ask these teachers in New Orleans how well that works long term.

But yesterday in Washington, during a hearing that was the usual teacher/school bash-fest where some guy from a foundation financed by billionaires shrieked about "America's education crisis" and blamed it on teachers and schools, somebody else actually spoke truth to power and power actually kinda heard:

America’s education advantage, unrivaled in the years after World War II, is eroding quickly as a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States, said Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which helps coordinate policies for 30 of the world’s richest countries.

“Among O.E.C.D. countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S.,” Mr. Schleicher said. About 7 in 10 American students get a high school diploma.

Mr. Schleicher’s comments came in testimony before the Senate education committee and in a statement he delivered. The panel plans to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law governing federal policy on public schools.

The committee also heard from Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union; John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives; and Charles Butt, chief executive of a supermarket chain in Texas, who said employers there faced increasing difficulties in hiring qualified young workers.

The blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools, Mr. Butt said, but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that undervalues education. “Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.

Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who leads the Senate Committee, picked up on that comment. “Overentertained and distracted — that’s right,” Mr. Harkin said. “The problem lies with many kids before they get to school, and if we don’t crack that nut, we’re going to continue to patch and fill."

Forget the jive the O.E.C.D. guy said. That's the usual claptrap that we have heard before and will keep hearing as long as Gates and Broad Foundation fellows are running the education dialogue.

But that remark from the supermarket CEO bears repeating:

“Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.

And Harkin actually heard it! His comment bears repeating as well:

“Overentertained and distracted — that’s right,” Mr. Harkin said. “The problem lies with many kids before they get to school, and if we don’t crack that nut, we’re going to continue to patch and fill.”

That's it in a nutshell.

Blaming teachers and schools for not educating overentertained, distracted children from dysfunctional backgrounds growing up in a society and culture that undervalues education is not only unfair, it's counterproductive and won't solve the problems.

It will be patch and fill, patch and fill.

Thankfully Senator Harkin hears that message. Dunno his stance on charters, 60 hour school weeks, etc. He may be as bad as Obama and Duncan and Klein and Bloomberg and George Miller.

But at least he gets that there are substantial reasons for the problems American students face that do not lie with the teachers.

Obama, Duncan, Klein, Bloomberg et al. either don't seem to get that or don't care.

Call Tom Harkin and Let Him Know What You Think About the NCLB Reauthorization

From what I can tell from the Times story, the only way school districts will get money from the feds in the coming years is if they subscribe to the Obama reforms of longer school days/years, additional standardized testing, teacher pay and evaluation tied to test scores, lots of school closures, no caps on charters and the addition of thousands of charter schools.

Tom Harkin is Chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the Senate. Let him know what you think about the Obama "reform" initiatives. Let him know how things are playing out here in NYC. Let him know what will happen to traditional public schools if Obama and the other public school system privatizers get their way.

Here is where you can contact him:

150 First Avenue, NE
Suite 370
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
(319) 365-4504 Phone
(319) 365-4683 Fax

210 Walnut Street
Room 733, Federal Building
Des Moines, IA 50309
(515) 284-4574 Phone
(515) 284-4937 Fax

731 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3254 Phone
(202) 224-9369 Fax
(202) 224-4633 TDD

NCLB Reauthorization

On Saturday, the Washington Post looked at the Obama administration's upcoming No Child Left Behind reauthorization push.

The gist of what will happen is best summed up by Diane Ravitch:

"They're really not going to repudiate No Child Left Behind," Ravitch said. "They're just going to rename it and add the twist of more choice, more accountability."

Like Mayor Bloomberg, like Bill Gates, like Eli Broad, like all the hedge fund managers/education "reformers," Obama wants to destroy teachers unions, sell off the public schools to the privatization folks, and make schools into 10 hour a day/300 day a year factories for churning out good corporate employees willing to work longer and harder to make a lot less than their parents and grandparents.

More change we can believe in from the Change We Can Believe In President.

One thing I would note about the NCLB fight - Obama is a weakened president already. Whatever cache and juice he had last year has been tarnished - people on the extreme right think he's a foreign-born terrorist, people in the middle are unhappy with the bailout policies and overall direction of the country, and some (though not nearly enough yet) on the left see him as corporate sell-out.

Obama can be fought on this.

Had he pushed through NCLB in 2009, he would have gotten everything he wanted.

But with Ted Kennedy deceased and Chris Dodd so weakened by his Countrywide scandal that he is retiring from the Senate, Tom Harkin is the new head of the Education Committee. Ed Week says the administration may actually get some opposition from Harkin to their reform plans:

Frederick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said he sees Harkin as “more of a traditional Democrat on education issues” than Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and an author of the NCLB law.

“Assuming that the administration is interested in promoting Race to the Top-style priorities through the [NCLB] reauthorization, Harkin could be trickier for them,” Mr. Hess said

As chairman, Harkin may provide a needed check on the administration’s agenda, Hess said. “We need more speed bumps, and Harkin is certainty more likely to be a speed bump than Dodd” would have been.

Also, Obama has spent a lot of political capital on the still incomplete health care reform measure, the economy remains in bad shape for nearly everybody but the people who work on Wall Street, unemployment remains at 10% and a double dip recession is not out of the question once government stimulus spending comes to an end. Obama will take a lot more heat in the coming days for the bailout mess as it becomes quite clear that his treasury secretary, Timmeh Geithner, gave away the store to Goldman Sachs, et al. And that's assuming that the terrorist threat doesn't continue to occupy much of his time and energy.

My point about all this is we may have a bit of an ally in the Senate to pushback on Duncan and Obama on some of the reforms they want to push and much of the country, weary already of President Accountability and his economic policies and the health care fight, may not be so thrilled about the permanent systemic change he wants to bring to education.

The key is to get the unions to see that Obama is weakened and can be taken down in this fight. Randi is a collaborator by nature, so I worry that despite a president with a tanking popularity and enough opposition in the country to push back against ed deform, she'll choose to cave instead.

Guess we'll just have to see.

In the meantime, I'm hoping the Repub actually wins that special election up in Mass (it may be close) and sends President Accountability his own accountability message - liberals are pissed off at him and willing to see his administration and its corporate-friendly agenda go down in flames rather than vote for crap they don't want just because it's a "Democrat" giving it to them.

Not to mention that would be the end of the health insurance giveaway program Obama is terming "reform," which just might be the best thing that could happen for both the long-term health of the Democratic Party and the country at large