ESEA Reauthorization Update

In March, the Obama Administration released its blueprint for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The blueprint offers broad concepts regarding changes to the current version of the law, commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

While details of the plan have yet to be fully released or vented in Congress, the key elements of the administration’s Blueprint for Reform are summarized below.

What Stays:
 A Strong Focus on Standards – The new proposal continues to focus on the “common core standards initiative” to establish more uniform academic standards in reading and math to prepare students for college or a career.
 Annual Testing – The new proposal keeps the requirement for annual testing in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.
 Reporting Requirements – The new proposal keeps the requirement for disaggregating and reporting on student data for populations such as racial minorities, English-language learners, and students in special education.

What Changes:
 The Title I program would receive a new name and be called “College and Career Ready Students”.
 The proposal eliminates the NCLB’s 2014 deadline for bringing all students to academic proficiency and replaces it with a goal of ensuring that all students are ready for college or a career by 2020.
 It replaces the focus on teacher quality with teacher and principal effectiveness. States and districts would be required to publish, at least every two years, a performance level report card on teacher and principal effectiveness.
 Under the new plan, all or nearly all of the new federal money will go to innovation and be competitive money.
 The new proposal eliminates many of the NCLB sanctions, including the provision of offering Supplemental Educational Services (SES), when schools have not made AYP for three consecutive years.
 The ESEA reauthorization plan replaces AYP with a more comprehensive review of student performance that looks at student growth and school progress.
 The new proposal places a focus on the nation’s lowest 5% of schools by requiring them to take drastic steps to improve.

Both the House and the Senate are scheduled to release draft reauthorization bills in June2010.

Guiding Principles:
1. Promote College and Career Readiness for All Students.
2. Maintain Focus on Equity and Core Investments.
3. Ensure Meaningful Accountability.
4. Encourage Innovation in State Policy.
5. Ensure Coherence and Reduce Burden in and across Federal Law.
6. Build Capacity to Support Comprehensive State Policy Reforms.
7. Increase and Improve Investments in Research and Dissemination of
Knowledge.

The Administration's ESEA Blueprint presents core themes regarding the Administration's proposal in numerous areas of education reform:

• College-and career-readiness: New focus of Title I
• Flexibility: Move toward "tight on ends, loose on means.”
• Incentives: Focus on carrots, not just sticks
• Competition: Formula funding remains, but new increases for competitive grants
• Consolidation: Broader, fewer funding streams
• Equity: Scope unclear, but new focus on resource equity
• Capacity: Recognition of need to support state systems

In the weeks since the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising ESEA on March 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee have held multiple hearings on ESEA reauthorization.

During the last week of April, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) said that he intends to mark up legislation in May that would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Harkin has set a goal of having the legislation reach the Senate floor in late June or July, but acknowledged that finding a replacement for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced that he will retire this summer, could cause the timeline to slip. In addition, others have suggested that immigration reform could cause reauthorization to take a back-burner. And, with the mid-term elections slated for November, many observers believe reauthorization this year is not likely.

2011 Federal Education Budget update

The 2011 Federal Education Budget reflects the Obama administration’s dizzying array of policy and funding changes, and we expect more may be on the horizon.

On February 1, 2010, President Obama released the FY 2011 budget proposal. The budget proposal is built around the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization. In fact, the proposal would require the passage of a reauthorized bill before the funds could be appropriated because much of the requested funding is for the new programs. Many question whether it is realistic to think that the ESEA could be reauthorized so quickly. Listed below are some highlights of the potential changes in the budget proposal.

 The proposal consolidates 38 programs into 11 funding streams and eliminates many programs.
 With regard to early childhood programs, the President’s budget proposal creates record-setting increases for childcare.
 The budget proposal focuses all new money on competitive grants rather than formula grants.
 The proposed budget would also include a substantial boost for the Title I School Improvement Grants, a program that helps districts target interventions to schools struggling to meet the goals of the ESEA law.
 The proposal includes funds for Effective Teachers and Leaders Grants, which would provide formula grants aimed at helping districts recruit, prepare, reward, support, and retain highly effective teachers.

Federal dollars devoted to education for the 2009 and 2010 budget years remained flat at $45.4 billion and $46.2 billion, respectively, with the exception of stimulus funding. The 2011 budget request made by the Obama Administration shows an increase of $3.5 billion. Most of that increase is allocated to a few select programs, namely an increase of $355 million in School Turnaround (formerly School Improvement) grants, plus new funding for Race to the Top (RTTT), $1.35 billion, and Investing in Innovation (i3) programs. (The complete 2011 budget request is at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget11/index.html.)

Congress will be working on the proposed 2011 budget throughout the summer to have it ready before the new federal fiscal year, which begins on October 1 (though in recent years, final resolution generally has come after that date). This year’s proposal warrants special attention because it lays out the Administration’s priorities for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); see section that follows.

Noticeably absent from the 2011 proposal is the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. This shift indicates it’s time to stop thinking of technology as a stand-alone goal and budget item within the education process and to start treating it as an integrated component within learning solutions. This is a fundamental change in how states, districts, and schools will consider technology purchases, and we view this as a positive trend since it means technology is being looked at as “must have” as opposed to “nice to have.”

Title I (that is, the ESEA Basic Grant Program) was allocated the same dollars in the 2011 proposal as in 2010; however, the Administration has renamed the program as College- and Career-Ready Students to better reflect the significant change in direction of the $14.5 billion program. Under the proposed new program, states will be required to adopt new college- and career-ready standards with aligned assessments and also to commit to working toward a system that links student achievement with the effectiveness of their teachers. New as well would be the replacement of “adequate yearly progress” with a broader measurement of school performance that accounts for improvements in other areas like school climate and high school graduation rates.

The 2011FY budget also includes many other important programs that offer lucrative opportunities for education companies. There are predominant themes throughout all of the programs within the proposed reauthorization of ESEA—student outcomes, competition, innovation, and a focus on the schools and students of the greatest need. New programs being proposed that we are tracking closely include:

Effective Teaching and Learning: Literacy – $450 million to improve K-12 literacy instruction

Effective Teaching and Learning: STEM – $300 million to improve teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and math

Effective Teaching and Learning: Well-Rounded Education – $265 million to develop and expand innovative teaching and learning in the arts, foreign languages, civics and government, history, geography, economics, financial literacy, as well as other subjects

College Pathways and Accelerated Learning – $100 million for college-level and accelerated courses, gifted and talented programs

Expanding Educational Options – $490 million to support charter schools and public school choice

Promise Neighborhoods – $210 million for neighborhood services

In addition, the National Education Technology Plan 2010 was released in the middle of March. Entitled “Learning Powered by Technology,” the plan for using technology to improve education is based on the themes of learning, assessment, teachers, infrastructure, productivity, along with research and development. All stakeholders are encouraged to review the document and provide feedback on the Plan. The complete 2010 Plan is at http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010.