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President Obama, Education, and the 111th Congress--Updated May 7, 2009
“Increasing the share of school improvement funds used in middle schools makes sense because middle schools are almost twice as likely as elementary schools to be identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring (22 percent vs. 13 percent).” Excerpt from Summary of President Obama’s FY 2010 Education Budget
NEW INFORMATION:
1. NEW! Education in the Economic Stimulus
2. NEW! President Obama’s Education FY 2010 Budget and Proposals
3. NEW! Legislation Introduced in the 111th Congress
1) Education in the Economic Stimulus
A. NEW! Smartest Ways to Invest Federal Stimulus Funding to Improve Student Achievement
By the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation / May 7, 2009
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation convened a “brain trust” of more than 30 national education policy leaders and practitioners to come up with recommendations for using the ARRA dollars. What resulted were five recommendations generated from the practices and policies that will most likely dramatically raise student achievement in America, based on the group's decades of experience in education reform.
The resulting recommendations suggest state and district-level actions across five key areas for reform:
1. Standards
2. Data and information
3. Teacher evaluations
4. School turnarounds
5. Student support
The full report is available online at http://www.coalitionforstudentachievement.org/economic_rec.asp. These recommendations are intended to build on the federal guidance by providing detailed, specific, bold steps that state and local leaders can take to use the one-time ARRA investment to yield powerful, long-term student achievement results. If implemented in conjunction with efforts to save jobs, these recommendations can provide an appropriate balance between short- and long-term gains in the American public education system
B. "US ED DEPT Releases Suggested Use of Stimulus Funds to Drive School Reform"
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Using ARRA Funds to Drive School Reform and Improvement
April 24, 2009
DOCUMENT FROM DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION WEB SITE: Ways Schools Might Use Recovery Act Funds
This document includes framing questions for decision making and examples of potential uses of funds to improve educational outcomes from early learning through high school. It is intended to spark ideas about how districts and schools might use ARRA funds, particularly those available under the SFSF, Title I, and IDEA Part B programs. Districts generally have up to two years to obligate these funds. While many school districts may need to use a portion of their ARRA funds to save jobs, every district and school should be considering how to use these funds to improve student outcomes over the next two years and to advance reforms that will have even longer-term impact.
The Department will supplement these examples over time with ideas about best practices from schools throughout the nation. The Department will also provide specific guidance on uses of funds allowable under Title I, IDEA Part B, and other ARRA programs.
In considering how to best spend ARRA funds, decision makers should consider whether they can answer "yes" to these five questions:
1. Drive results for students? Will the proposed use of funds drive improved results for students, including students in poverty, students with disabilities, and English language learners?
2. Increase capacity? Will the proposed use of funds increase educators' long-term capacity to improve results for students?
3. Accelerate reform? Will the proposed use of funds advance state, district, or school improvement plans and the reform goals encompassed in ARRA?
4. Avoid the cliff and improve productivity? Will the proposed use of funds avoid recurring costs that states, school systems, and schools are unprepared to assume when this funding ends? Given these economic times, will the proposed use serve as "bridge funding" to help transition to more effective and efficient approaches?
5. Foster continuous improvement? Will the proposed use of funds include approaches to measure and track implementation and results and create feedback loops to modify or discontinue strategies based on evidence
C. Realigning Resources for District Transformation
By Center for American Progress and Education Resource Strategies | April 22, 2009
Economic circumstances and the troubled history of education reform suggests that school districts will use one-time funds stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy time doing business in old ways. Recognizing this, the act wisely specified a set of reform assurances and accountability principles to prod states and districts to think creatively about new ways to use funds strategically to improve student achievement.
By providing concrete ideas for strategic spending in the key areas of taking stock of current practices, focusing on support for quality instruction, and making transitional investments, this report gives guidance to those districts seeking to balance the act's short-term focus on preserving jobs with its long-term goals of promoting radical improvement in achievement of all students.
D. US Department of Education Releases to States $44 billion in New Stimulus Funds and Guidance for Reforms (April 1)
Secretary Arne Duncan announced that $44 billion for states and schools is now available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA. This funding will drive education reforms and help save hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs.
For continuous information on the dispersal of funds to state and local school districts:
2) President Obama's Education FY 2010 Budget and Proposals
A) President Obama Releases his FY 2010 Education Budget Details
On May 7, 2009, President Obama released his detailed FY 2010 budget proposal that reinforced the areas of education investment he highlighted in his March 10th education speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (see next section for details of speech). To build on the historic levels of support provided for these goals in the Economic Stimulus Recovery Act, the President is requesting $46.7 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education, an increase of $1.3 billion over the comparable discretionary total provided in the regular 2009 appropriations act.
The 2010 request is focused on laying the foundation for the expansion of early childhood education as part of the President's comprehensive Zero-to-Five initiative; vigorously supporting and rewarding effective teaching; expanding State and local efforts to turn around low-performing schools, including the so-called high school "dropout factories" that graduate 60 percent or fewer of their students as well as the middle grades schools that feed into them.
Key proposals in the 2010 budget include the following:
$370.4 million for an expanded (K-12) “Striving Readers” program, a $30 million increase for adolescent literacy demonstration grants and $300 million for a new initiative to help school districts implement comprehensive and coherent programs of reading instruction for children in the elementary grades. The President’s Education Budget makes literacy a priority by increasing funds for these programs and proposing a new literacy focus within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
$1.5 billion for Title I School Improvement Grants, an increase of $1 billion to help ensure that States and LEAs have the resources to develop and implement comprehensive, research-based improvement plans for the growing numbers of schools (including 40% for middle and high schools) identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.
$50 million for a High School Graduation Initiative to promote innovative strategies for increasing high school graduation rates, particularly in those high schools (and their feeder schools) with unacceptably low rates.
$29.2 million for school leadership, a $10 million increase for competitive grants to assist high-need LEAs in recruiting, training, and retaining principals and assistant principals. This increase reflects the Administration’s convictions that “there is a strong connection between school leadership and student achievement.”
$100 million for the What Works and Innovation Fund, to be combined with the $650 million provided for this activity by the Recovery Act, to support competitive grants to LEAs and partnerships between non-profit organizations and LEAs that have made significant gains in improving student achievement, or have demonstrated significant improvement in other areas, to expand or evaluate their work and serve as models of best practices.
View details of President Obama’s FY 2010 detailed education budget (http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget10/summary/index.html)
Congress passed its own budget outline on April 29, 2009. This plan was based on the President's proposal but modified to satisfy the concerns of some, mostly conservative, Democrats. The President’s more detailed plan (released May 7, 2009) will be used by the appropriations committees to determine the final FY 2010 funding levels for individual programs including Title 1, Special Education and a few proposed initiatives. These bills must be finished by the beginning of the next fiscal year (October 1st) and then signed by the President.
Congress is expected to tackle healthcare reform, climate change, and energy legislation this year. For education, Congress may agree to the President's proposal to make Pell Grants for low-income college students a mandatory program allowing students who qualify for a grant to be guaranteed the funds. Congress may also save taxpayers $4 billion annually by originating all new student loans in the direct lending program, eliminating subsidies to outside lenders. In addition, the President’s budget proposes a new $500 million “College Access and Completion Fund,” a mandatory federal-state-local partnership to undertake innovative programs designed to increase postsecondary enrollment and completion, particularly from students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
On a separate track, House and Senate authorizing committees will be discussing the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year with the expectation that it will be completed by the end of this Congress (October 2010).
B) President Obama Outlines the Five Pillars of his Education Agenda (March 10, 2009)
Highlights of President Obama's Education Speech
So let there be no doubt: The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens—and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities, the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals and passionate teachers and gifted students, and we have parents whose only priority is their child's education. We have a legacy of excellence, and an unwavering belief that our children should climb higher than we did …
I think you'd all agree that the time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding us—holding ourselves accountable is here. What's required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It's time to expect more from our students. It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones. It's time to demand results from government at every level. It's time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. It's time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career. We've accepted failure for far too long. Enough is enough. America's entire education system must once more be the envy of the world—and that's exactly what we intend to do …
That's why I'm issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you'll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact. That's how we will reward quality and incentivize excellence, and make a down payment on the success of the next generation …
More Highlights from President Obama's Education Speech
View the President's Speech or to Read the Full Transcript
Excerpt from White House Fact Sheet on President Obama's Education Speech (March 10, 2009)
America's competitiveness demands a focus on the needs of our lowest-performing students and schools. Our middle- and high- schools must identify students at-risk of dropping out, and we must scale-up models that keep students on a path toward graduation. Reform in America's lowest-performing schools must be systemic and transformational. For some, partnerships and additional support can bring about change and drive improvement. Others may need to move beyond the late 19th century and expand the school day.
The President supports a national strategy to address the dropout crisis in America's communities, and efforts to transform the nation's lowest-performing schools. 2,000 of the nation's struggling high schools produce over half of America's dropouts. The President will invest in re-engaging and recovering at-risk students, including those enrolled in the middle school grades.
View the Entire Fact Sheet of President Obama's Education Speech
3) New Legislation in the 111th Congress
A) NEW! Secondary School Innovation Act (formerly GRADUATES Act) Introduced in the House and Senate
The Secondary School Innovation Fund Act was introduced on May 4th in the House and Senate. Though it was called GRADUATES in the 110th Congress, it will now be known as the Secondary School Innovation Fund Act. The sponsors are Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Congressman David Loebsack (D-IA) and the bills were introduced with the numbers S 968 and HR 2239, respectively.
The bill would create a $500 million Secondary School Innovation Fund to support partnerships to create innovative models and programs in secondary schools to increase student achievement and prepare students for success in post-secondary education and the workforce. The partnerships would consist of state education agencies or local education agencies with institutes of higher education, community based organizations, non-profits, businesses, or school development organizations to create innovative models and programs of reform in the nation’s secondary schools.
A summary and sign-on letter as well as further information on the bill are posted on the Alliance for Excellent Education’s website at: http://www.all4ed.org/federal_policy/legislative_updates/SSIF. NMSA has signed on to this letter in support of the legislation.
B) President Signs the National Service Bill
On Tuesday, April 21st, President Obama signed the landmark Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act at a Washington DC elementary school. The law is a sweeping expansion of national service that will engage millions of Americans in addressing local needs through volunteer service. The Serve America Act reauthorizes and expands national service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency created in 1993. The Corporation engages four million Americans in result-driven service each year, including 75,000 AmeriCorps members, 492,000 Senior Corps volunteers, 1.1 million Learn and Serve America students, and 2.2 million additional community volunteers mobilized and managed through the agency's programs.
For more information, click here: http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/newsroom/releases_detail.asp?tbl_pr_id=1301
4) Recommendations for President Obama and the 111th Congress
Joint Statement to President Obama on Adolescent Reading (PDF)
Joint Statement to President Obama on Graduating Every Child Prepared for the 21st Century (PDF)
Joint Statement to President Obama on Putting the World in World-Class Education (PDF)
5) Important Information on 111th Congress
Meet the New Members of the 111th Congress
House of Representatives (PDF)
Senate (see bottom of list for new members)
Members of Key Committees Assigned:
House Education and Labor Committee
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (PDF)
House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Subcommittee (PDF)
Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Subcommittee (PDF)
6) Recommendations from the 110th Congress
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