Senate Moderates Release NCLB Overhaul Plan

Alyson Klein
"Senate Moderates Release NCLB Overhaul Plan" - Education Week
Published Online on March 2, 2011
Complete URL:  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/03/a_group_of_moderate_democratic.html

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, of Colorado and Sen. Kay Hagan, of North Carolina led a group of 11 moderate Senate Democrats in releasing some principles aimed at revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) or NCLB.  They are hoping their statement will appeal to some moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats as their support will be needed to pass the ESEA reauthorization bill through the Senate before it goes to the Republican dominated U.S. House.  Their statement consists of 5 key points:


1)  Change the accountability measurement, Adequate Yearly Process, to measuring student progress over time instead of measuring one cohort of students against another.  The Senators also want to reward or provide incentives to schools that make major strides in student achievement.
2)  "Stick with the Obama administration's four options for turning around the lowest-performing schools, which include steps such as turning a school over to a charter operator, closing the school, removing half the teachers, and/or putting in a new instructional program, and extending learning time while beefing up professional development."
3)  Make sure that colleges of education are held accountable for the performance of their students.
4)  Continue with President Obama's "Race To The Top" Program.
5)  "Fix the so-called "comparability loophole" in Title I, so that schools would have to report salary data for teachers in addition to other expenses."


The title of the article is a little misleading as it is on moderate U.S. Democrat Senators, but the first sentence of the article clarifies the title.  In looking at the 5 points, if you had asked me 2 months ago does this sound like good proposals I would have said yes.  But now after doing more reading and studying through the MAT Program, I have some different opinions.  On point 1, though it sounds good to reward schools for making major strides we have to be honest in stating that the money will go to predominantly white schools as they will have the money and power to make things happen.  On Point 2, the whole point is to blame the teachers which makes no sense to me.  I actually like Point 3 and it appears this group wants to work with teachers on the measurements and having support to do a good job.  Point 4 is more of the NCLB.  Point 5 seems like good intentions, but when the article says this would be like TARP I do not really see the TARP program as a good policy to follow for schools.  The bottom line for all these points is the changes they are proposing will have a huge effect on our schools, our teaching programs, students and society as a whole, but the question to me is: will the changes work?