Reauthorizing ESEA Maybe Education Jobs Less and Less

Reauthorizing ESEA Maybe Education Jobs Less and Less Likely AASA Summer Leadership Institute July 31, 2010

Reauthorizing ESEA • AASA is pushing hard for reauthorization this year or REGULATORY RELIEF • Secretary Duncan is pushing hard for reauthorization this year, but • Tom Harkin Senate committee Chairman wanted to have a bill on the floor in June, but • House Chairman George Miller’s staff indicate that they are working on a bill for July that will incorporate parts of his 2007 discussion draft and the Administration’s Blueprint, maybe … 2

Competing Views on Federal Education Policy • The old competition in ESEA was between – Groups and individuals who wanted to privatize public education and – Advocates for public education • The old policy debate has disappeared and a new debaters have emerged – Educators want continuous improvement – Mostly non educators calling themselves “Reformers” wanting structural changes

Is there a New Education Establishment? “Reformers” • Think tanks, privately funded advocacy groups and foundations – Democrats for Education Reform – Education trust – Fordham foundation – Alliance for Excellent Education – Aspen Group – Gates Foundation – Broad Foundation – Walton foundation Educators • Education Organizations – – – – – AASA NSBA NEA AFT CCSSO PTA NAESP NASSP NABSE etc

Competing Views Using ESEA to: 1. Force standardization of state and local policy 2. Supplement efforts to improve outcomes • • Federal requirements/mandates – Uniformity among states • Graduation • Standards • Assessment • Accountability system • What is good enough • Student data systems • Transparency – Teacher evaluation model – Performance compensation – Alternate pathways to certification – Terminating of removing personnel Stronger state role – Enforcement of national standards – New attendance choice options – Implementing new teacher standards Diminished Local authority Increased Local Responsibility • • Seeking Federal Assistance to Continue Progress for Students With Greater Needs – Unequal distribution of resources – Unstable resource base – Unequal opportunities to learn Seeking Federal Funds to Help Address Systemic problems – Improved teacher preparation & continuous development – Improved instruction and leadership – Improved information about student progress – Improved assessments – Addressing all barriers to learning school and non school based – Greater flexibility to address local operations – Improved parental engagement Balance local/state federal authority and responsibility Greater federal/state transparency in rule making

Competing Views on Federal role and Changes Needed in ESEA • Use federal funds as leverage to increase federal authority over: – How instruction is delivered – How teachers are hired – How teachers are evaluated – How teachers are paid – How teachers are assigned – How students are assigned to schools • Use federal funds to supplement local efforts to improve outcomes for low income students and other high need students

What v. How • Historically the federal role, except in special education, has been limited to what schools are expected to accomplish • How the work was done was a matter for state and local policy makers • Some states have been more active in How the work is done than other states

• TEACHER UNION CHIEF RAPS OBAMA AT NATIONAL CONVENTION: SAYS INNOVATION KEY, BUT "BLAME THE TEACHER" CROWD NOT PRODUCTIVE Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- July 8, 2010 By Fiona Cohen

• TEACHERS UNION CHIEF BLASTS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S EDUCATION POLICIES • The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune -- July 4, 2010 By Masako Hirsch

TEACHERS' UNION SHUNS OBAMA AIDES AT CONVENTION New York Times -- July 5, 2010 By Sam Dillon New Orleans -- For two years as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama addressed educators gathered for the summer conventions of the two national teachers’ unions, and last year both groups rolled out the welcome mat for Education Secretary Arne Duncan. But in a sign of the Obama administration’s strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling. “Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, antistudent environment I have ever experienced, ” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the union, the National Education Association, told thousands of members gathered at the convention center here.

7 Civil Rights Groups Question Parts of Administration’s ESEA proposal • “If education is a civil right, children in “winning” states should not be the only ones who have the opportunity to learn in high-quality environments. Such an approach reinstates the antiquated and highly politicized frame for distributing federal support to states that civil rights organizations fought to remove in 1965. With the creation of the ESEA as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the federal government took the first steps toward requiring an equitable distribution of funding among states. Shifting the emphasis from competitive grants to conditional incentives can preserve those gains. Incentivizing behavior through limited competition, in and of itself, is not a bad strategy, but we must go further to recognize that many states and districts in our union will not compete, either because they do not have the capacity or because they lack the political will. This increases the likelihood that better-resourced states and communities will win out. For these reasons, a competitive framework does not go far enough to ensure equity. ”

ESEA Reauthorization House Rumors • Chairman Miller plans to: – Keep AYP, but call it something else – Keep the matrix, but it might grow – Keep the all or nothing accountability design – Focus on comparability in instructional costs per pupil at the school level – Include the administration’s blue print design by consolidating some programs

House Rumors • Chairman Miller plans to: – Incorporate growth or progress in accountability • Not clear exactly what that means – Keep the important formula programs such as Title II (D) and Title III, besides Title I

the bottom Line • ESEA is not going to get finished in 2010 • But it might get started in 2010 and get done in 2011 • Because the is no consensus about what to do ESEA could possibly not get done in 2012

Keep our Educators Working Act • Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 3206 proposing $23 billion to save or create education jobs • Was to be offered as an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill • But Blue dog Democrats torpedoed that • Was given last rites on June 24 th • Shrunk to $10 billion to seek votes and was offset rather than deficit spending

Getting Education Jobs $$ Let the games Begin • Supplemental update: $10 billion for education jobs and $4. 95 billion for Pell grants. • $800 million in education rescissions partially from ARRA funds, but not Title I or IDEA: • $100 million from FY 10 funding for the Public Charter School program (ESEA Title V, Part B, Subpart 1) (reducing funding from $256 million to $156 million) • $200 million combined from both FY 10 and ARRA funds for the Teacher Incentive Fund (reducing the combined FY 10 and ARRA funding from $600 million to $400 million) • $500 million from ARRA funds for the Race to the Top (reducing available funding from $3. 4 billion to $2. 9 billion ($600 million has already been awarded and $300 million is set-aside for Race to the Top Assessment Grants))

Pared-Down Spending Bill Pending By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff, July 19, 2010 – 1: 41 p. m. • House Democratic leaders have decided to accept the Senate’s stripped-down supplemental spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and seek a different vehicle for domestic spending, including aid for local school districts. • House and Senate Democratic aides said Monday that the decision resulted from the inability of Senate Democrats to muster the votes needed to take up the fiscal 2010 supplemental measure (HR 4899), which the House passed July 1 after adding more than $22 billion in domestic spending, including $10 billion to keep teachers and other school employees on the payroll this fall.

Education Jobs Bill Update Edward Epstein and Kerry Young, Congressional Quarterly, June 29, 2010 • Democratic leaders have said they hope to move the supplemental this week, before Congress departs for its July Fourth recess. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said the Pentagon needs the added funds quickly, a plea echoed Tuesday by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus during his Senate confirmation hearings to be commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan. • But a divided Democratic Caucus might not have the votes to pass a war supplemental without Republican help, because a number of Democrats oppose further funding for the conflicts. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. , a longtime and vocal critic of the wars, has said Democrats are increasingly uneasy about funding them. • Democratic House leaders have been polling members on their support for added domestic spending in a supplemental. • C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, a deputy Democratic whip, said he expected that it would be easy to win support for the war funding, but that winning support for domestic spending would be harder, given rising concerns about the deficit. “When we are at war, we understand that we have to support the troops, ” he said, adding that “this deficit eventually will make us weaker as a nation, and we can’t afford that. ”

Domestic (spending) tranquility? JONATHAN ALLEN, Politico, June 30, 2010 • House leaders are trying to win support for a two-part emergency war-spending measure – one section that would pay for the Pentagon’s needs and another that would load on tens of billions of dollars in cash for schoolteachers, college grants and other domestic programs. The Democratic whip team recorded the leanings of rank-and-file lawmakers on two-column response sheets Tuesday to get a count of where each member stands on each part. CQ’s Kerry Young, Dave Clarke and Joe Schatz have the details of the domestic-spending proposal: “[T]he measure includes $10 billion for the Education Department to avert teacher layoffs, as well as $4. 95 billion in discretionary funding for Pell grants to fix what Democrats perceive as a problem in President Obama’s budget request

Getting Education Jobs $$ game on • Thursday July 1 st the House was voting on supplemental war funding. The vote AASA cared about was on Rep. Dave Obey’s amendment to add emergency funds, including $10 billion for teacher jobs and Pell grants. • Earlier in the day, the President threatened to veto the legislation if the current language of the Obey amendment is included. • The House voted, 239 -182 to attach the domestic spending provisions to the FY 10 supplemental war funding bill (HR 4899). • The bill has gone back to the Senate. The Senate could well oppose the additional domestic spending, even if the costs are fully off-set.

War Supplemental Likely Stuck in the Senate for Weeks, Harkin Says By Brian Friel, CQ Staff, July 13, 2010 • The fiscal 2010 supplemental appropriations bill including money for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to remain stuck in a Senate logjam for weeks, a senior Senate appropriator said Tuesday. • Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. , said he will not support the domestic funding the House added. “We’d like to fund the troops and not have a bunch of add-ons that don’t have the emergency status that these kinds of bills ordinarily require, ” he said. • Harkin said he will fight to keep the teacher funding in the bill. “It seems to me the Republicans are drawing a line and saying no money for teachers, ” Harkin said. “That’s an interesting position to take

Senate Republicans Call for Return to a Streamlined War Supplemental July 14, 2010 – 8: 11 p. m. , By Kerry Young, CQ Staff • A dozen Republicans helped Senate Democrats pass a supplemental fiscal 2010 war funding bill in May. But their support does not to extend to the version of the supplemental the House passed earlier this month. • In a related development, education groups who previously differed on some provisions of the House bill have set aside their differences and plan a united appeal to senators, asking them to find ways to fund the $10 billion for school aid. • “Because some have concerns with the education offsets in the House-passed supplemental, we urge the Senate to work with the House and the administration to craft a package that can garner the needed votes for swift passage, ” the two largest education unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said in a July 15 letter.

The Week Ahead: Senate to Tackle Education Jobs Aid, Energy, Kagan Confirmation Before Recess By Niels Lesniewski, CQ Staff • On Monday evening, the Senate will take a procedural vote on a $26. 1 billion measure to provide education jobs funding and Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) aid to states. State and local government officials have campaigned for the aid to prevent layoffs of public-sector employees. The measure is fully offset with a variety of spending rescissions.

Funding Proposal for Labor, HHS and Education Reflects Anxiety About the Deficit By Ben Weyl, CQ Staff July 29, 2010 – 9: 06 p. m • The draft bill would provide $169. 6 billion in discretionary funding — a $5. 9 billion, or 4 percent, increase from the level for the current fiscal year, but $986 million less than Obama requested.

Funding Proposal for Labor, HHS and Education Reflects Anxiety About the Deficit By Ben Weyl, CQ Staff July 29, 2010 – 9: 06 p. m • The bill would provide $74. 6 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services, $300 million more than the administration requested, and $66. 4 billion to the Education Department, a $937 million reduction from the president’s request. By trimming President Obama’s education priorities in favor of expanded health care spending, the president’s signature education initiative, Race to the Top, which provides competitive education grants to states, would receive $675 million — half of what he requested in his fiscal 2011 budget proposal.

Funding Proposal for Labor, HHS and Education Reflects Anxiety About the Deficit By Ben Weyl, CQ Staff July 29, 2010 – 9: 06 p. m • Neither the funding bill nor the energy measure is expected to clear the 60 -vote threshold required to limit debate in the Senate. If that happens, the bills are likely to be pulled from the floor.

Money management Bomb Buried in Child Nutrition House and Senate Bills • “If the program directors of every federal program can go to the Hill and get regulatory authority to vary the government-wide directives of OMB on grant management and cost accounting, then the Title I directors, the special education directors, the voc education directors, and of course the homeless directors will want their own special regulatory authority -- really bad precedent…” Jeff Simering, Council of Great City Schools