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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Senate ESEA Draft: Review of Approved Amendments, Part I | deutsch29

Senate ESEA Draft: Review of Approved Amendments, Part I | deutsch29:

Senate ESEA Draft: Review of Approved Amendments, Part I



US Senate Ed Committee




 On April 16, 2015, the Senate education committee approved the Alexander-Murray draft of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), a 601-page document entitled, The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015.

The draft approval was accompanied by 29 amendments, which can be found on this Senate ed page.
I reviewed the entire original 601-page Alexander-Murray draft in a series of six posts that can be accessed here.
In this post, I begin my review of the 29 amendments with the first 10. (I will review the remainder in subsequent posts.)
I am reviewing the amendments in alphabetical order by file name. Below each file link is my review for that particular amendment.
Here we go:
Sixteen pages long. Adds Section 1202: “Grants for Enhanced Assessment Instruments”
States that apply for this grant under Title I (amount to be “not less than $1,500,000 per fiscal year) can use the money to develop assessments aligned with their “challenging State standards”; these assessments can be those designed for “measuring student progress or academic growth over time, including multiple measures,” or “comprehensive academic assessment instruments” which can include “computer adaptive assessments, and portfolios, projects, or extended performance task assessments.”
This grant comes with requirement of a publicly-available audit of the state and local assessment systems, including examination of “the purpose for which the assessment was designed and the purpose for which the assessment is used, including assessments designed to contribute to systems of improvement of teaching and learning” (pg. 6). This is not a mandate for states to use student tests to measure teachers. The language does not assume that assessment design and usage are one and the same, and it is possible for this publicly-available audit to detect states using tests designed to measure student achievement as wrongly being used to assess teacher performance.
States must also provide information on the state laws mandating the state’s assessments; the time it takes to disseminate results, assessment costs, and assessment schedules.
Local education agencies (LEAs) using this grant money (as such is passed from state to LEA) must also conduct publicly-available audits of their assessment systems.
The audits require an opportunity for education stakeholder feedback, which is to include the extent to which assessment data are made readily available; time spent on test prep and time spent on administering assessments.
Based upon the complete audit (including education stakeholder feedback), each state must submit a plan to the US secretary for improving the state assessment system, which might include cutting unnecessary assessments by buying out the testing contract (if necessary), reducing time between assessment administration and dissemination of results– and which might include eliminating assessments “used for accountability purposes” and that are not valid and reliable and that are inconsistent with nationally recognized professional and technical standards” (pg. 10).
The remainder of this amendment includes revision of some details of the federal government’s funding of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The total per-state funding for NAEP will remain at at least $3 million per fiscal year.
This one-page amendment requires that state report cards include information on “the Senate ESEA Draft: Review of Approved Amendments, Part I | deutsch29:

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.

She also has her second book available on pre-order, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, due for publication June 12, 2015.

CC book cover

Hillary Clinton Feeling Common Core Pains - Living in Dialogue

Hillary Clinton Feeling Common Core Pains - Living in Dialogue:

Hillary Clinton Feeling Common Core Pains





By Anthony Cody. 
One of Hillary Clinton’s first campaign appearances was this week at Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, Iowa. There was a roundtable of hand picked questioners, one of whom lobbed this softball: (minute 50 on this C-SPAN video).
Diane: I think we are very blessed to live where we do. Where education starting very young through high school, this community college, college. We have all these opportunities and we are fortunate here. I worry that not all of America gets to experience this treasure we have. And I think the Common Core is a wonderful step in the right direction of improving American education. And it’s painful to see that attacked. I’m just wondering what can you do to bring that heart back to education? What can we do so that parents and communities and businesses believe in American education and that teachers are respected and our schools are respected and our colleges are respected? And we offer a quality education to all Americans throughout the United States?
Hillary Clinton responded:
Hillary: Wow. That is really a powerful, touching comment that I absolutely embrace. When I think about the really unfortunate argument that been going on around Common Core, it’s very painful, because the Common Core started out as a bi-partisan effort – t was actually non-partisan. It wasn’t politicized, it was to try to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country, no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, that there wouldn’t be two tiers of education. Everybody would be looking at what was to be learned and doing their best to try to achieve that. I think part of the reason Iowa may be more understanding of this is you’ve had the Iowa Core for years, you’ve had a system, plus the Iowa Assessment tests. I think I’m right in saying I took those when I was in elementary school – the Iowa tests. So Iowa has a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time, and you see the value of it, you understand why that helps you organize your whole education system. And a lot of states, unfortunately, haven’t had that, and so don’t understand the value of a core, in the sense of a common core that then – yes of course you can, y’know, figure out the best way, in your community to try to reach.
But your question is really a larger one. How did we end up at a point where we are sooo negative about the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation, which is how our kids are educated. There are a lot of explanations for that, I suppose. Whatever they are, we need to try to get back into a broad conversation where people will actually listen to each other again, and try to come up with solutions for problems, cause the problems here in Monticello are not the same as you’ll find in the inner cities in our biggest urban areas – that’s a given – we have to do things differently. But it should all be driven by the same commitment to try to make sure we do educate every child. That’s why, I was a senator and voted for Leave No Child Behind (sic) because I thought every child should matter.
It was interesting to watch Clinton’s emotional state, since she began by describing the issue as painful. She seems most genuinely animated when describing how the a testing system based on a core curriculum “helps you organize your whole education system.” That is exactly why macro-managers like Clinton (and Bill Hillary Clinton Feeling Common Core Pains - Living in Dialogue:


Big Education Ape: Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 4/18/15


Special Nite Cap - Catch Up on Today's Post 4/18/15


Special Nite Cap 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

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Candidate District 1 Louisiana Board of Elementary & Secondary Education 

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2015 National Conference – Chicago

The Countdown to Chicago Has Begun!

The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago