April 18, 2005

1:00 – 2:00 EST

NREAC Member Participants:

Joe Bard, PARSS, Coalition Chair

Bill LeTarte, MRSS

Bruce Hunter, AASA

Other AASA Staff present:

Mary Kusler

Terri Schwartzbeck

Agenda Items:

E-Rate 

Federal Funding/Budget

Perkins Career and Technical Education

1% + 2%= 3%: Is it Flexibility?

Committee for Education Funding Activities

Other NREAC Member Updates

AASA Breaking News

E-Rate

E-Rate has been the subject of exhaustive hearings and investigations into waste, fraud and abuse over the past 2 years in the House of Representative.  This has tainted Washington DC’s view of the E-Rate program into a view of a program filled with corruption and waste in school districts across America.  No where has this been proven truer than with the recent comments of the new House Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX).  “If I had to vote today, I'd vote to abolish it," Chairman Joe Barton (R., Texas) said at a Federal Communications Bar Association event in Washington.

Saying he would "be hard pressed to come up with a more mismanaged program," Barton said, "if I have the votes to kill (the E-Rate program), I'm going to do that."  If he doesn't have the votes, Barton said he would try to underfund the program so much that it effectively withers on the vine."[1]

This should have us all up in arms.  The chairman of the committee that oversees the E-Rate Program has now publicly threatened its existence.  We must work hard and fast to tell the good story of E-Rate to members of Congress.  They need to hear that this program has been helpful, especially in rural America.  They need a reason to support continuation of this program.  Urge your member of Congress to let Chairman Barton know that E-Rate is a critical program for connecting schools to 21^st Century technology.   Without a strong response from educators across the country, this program could be threaten as the rewrite the Federal Telecommunication Act this summer.

In addition, the Senate has been busy working permanently exempting the Universal Service Fund, including E-Rate, from the Anti- Deficiency Act.  Many of you might remember that there was a delay in commitment letters being issued last fall as E-Rate was unofficially frozen due to an accounting change.  That change stated that the E-Rate commitment letters were considered obligations and therefore the Universal Service Administrative Company had to have money in the bank to cover each letter sent out.  Due to the slow spend out of the E-Rate dollars, it is not necessary to have all of the money in the bank at the time of the letters.  Because e rate advocates made a clear case that the Anti-Deficiency Act did not apply, a one year exemption from the Anti-Deficiency Act passed in December 2004 and commitment letters were able to resume.

Senators Snowe (R-ME) and Rockefeller (D-WV) have introduced a permanent exemption for Universal Service to the Anti-deficiency Act, S 241.  There is currently a bi-partisan grouping of over 35 senators that have chosen to co-sponsor.  We are working hard to increase the number of senators who would be willing to co-sponsor the bill.  In addition, we are also working on the introduction of a similar bill in the House.  The success of these measures will ensure that there are no more delays in getting the discount commitment letters out to school districts.  You can call your members and ask them to support E-Rate by co-sponsoring this vital legislation.

Federal Funding/ Budget

Congress is trying to develop the Congressional Budget Resolution.  Both the House and Senate have passed their respective budgets which vary greatly when it comes to education.  The House budget assumes the President’s cuts to education including the potential for cuts of $21 billion over 5 years to child nutrition programs including free and reduced lunch programs.  The Senate budget paints a much more optimistic picture for education.  Senator Kennedy passed an important amendment to the Senate budget to add $5.4 billion in funding to education.  While a good portion of these dollars were directed to higher education, the amendment restored funding for the Perkins Career and Technical Education program and the TRIO and GEAR UP Programs aimed at getting minority students into higher education.  Overall, the Senate budget raises the amount of dollars that can be spent on education; therefore, helping the funding levels of all of our priorities.

Right now, the House and the Senate republicans are having informal conversations on funding levels.  There is a huge divide between them not only over education, but also over potential cuts to Medicaid that could have an impact on your state budgets.  In one sense, we want a budget to be completed to give us a chance at a higher level of funding for education.  If there is no budget, we will most likely be subjected to the lower funding level proposed by President Bush.

Our message needs to be to only accept a budget that increased the federal investment in education.  Please call your members to ensure their support for a budget that supports increased federal funding for education!

Perkins Career and Technical Education

The Perkins Career and Technical Education Program reauthorization is moving along.  The Senate passed their version of the bill 99 to 0 back in early March.  The Senate version supports the current setup of the program and includes an increased focus on academic rigor but supports the use of multiple measures.  In addition, it supports efforts to increase transition for students going from secondary schools into further education opportunities or the workforce. 

The House has also passed a bill out of committee.  It has yet to be considered by the House floor.  Their bill also supports the main tenets of career and technical education but consolidated the Tech Prep program into Part B state grants.  Their bill also increases academic rigor but does not have clarity in the use of multiple measures.  Another red flag in the House bill is the inclusion of equitable participation of private school students language.  This is new to Perkins and could include new added costs for school districts.  We expect this to be considered by the full House in the coming weeks and then quickly through a conference committee to final passage.

1% + 2%= 3%: Is it Flexibility?

On Thursday, April 7, after weeks of speculation, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced a new approach to flexibility for states on implementing No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The Secretary’s announcement included a new policy on special education assessment for Adequate Yearly Progress, a new larger framework for how the Department will work with states on flexibility, and implied several key policy shifts. Much is still ambiguous.

The first issue is a new policy regarding special education assessment .

• There is a new category of special education students – which seems to track with the idea of “gap” students – students with persistent academic disabilities.

  • This is based on 2-3 year old research from Jack Fletcher at the University of Texas that concludes that even with the best possible interventions, some students are not able to reach grade level standards.

• There is a new category of assessments to meet the needs of those students: “alternate assessments based on modified achievement standards” as opposed to and in addition to “alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards.”

• The cap on proficient scores for purposes of AYP for alternate assessments to alternate achievement standards is still 1 percent of all students. The cap on alternate assessments to modified achievement standards is 2 percent.

• These new concepts are not going to be implemented quickly and will not affect this year’s testing cycle . There will be a notice of proposed rulemaking later this spring and the expectation is that these new modified assessments will be implemented in 2005-06 or 2006-07.

• States may implement this new policy if they “agree to several activities” including:

  • Improving alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards

  • Developing modified achievement standards

  • Implementing a strong accountability system

  • Offering high quality professional development

  • Training IEP teams and teachers, especially general education teachers

These criteria is still extremely ambiguous and it is not clear how and with what authority the U.S. Department will be judging states on these issues.

The second issue is the new larger framework for state accountability and implementation for No Child Left Behind . Countless organizations, including AASA, have called for changes and improvements to the law and encouraged the Department to consider the unique factors of existing state systems and local conditions. In an attempt to deal with this complexity, the Department has a new set of guiding principals (called “Raising Achievement: A New Path for NCLB”) for dealing with state accountability and requests for flexibility. The principals are still very ambiguous and it is not clear how they will be operationalized. They also include many factors, such as a state’s efforts in high school reform, state academic standards, and support for charter schools, that it is not entirely clear that the Department has any authority to judge states on, either in the NCLB statute or in the legislation that chartered the Department. Regardless, the intent appears to be that any states wishing to use any flexibility offered in addition to the recently announced changes in special education assessment must first meet the requirements of these new critieria. This framework still leaves many questions unanswered and we will know more in the coming weeks and months.

Third, there seem to be several key shifts in Department rhetoric and assumptions underlying these policy changes as well as several unanswered questions.

• Reid Lyon, architect of so many of the Department’s policies regarding Reading First and special needs children, was quoted in the Title I Monitor as saying that the status quo – the 1 percent rule – “was not scientifically defensible.” “In some cases,” the Monitor went on to quote, “we’ve got kids with disabilities that are being held to a standard they cannot reach.”

This is really quite earth-shattering, as three years ago any educator who made a statement to that effect was considered an apologist, to be making excuses, and to be on the wrong side of history.

• In fact, by developing what might be called the “1 + 2 = 3” rule, the Department is acknowledging that 100 percent proficiency is not a realistic goal. Recent research cited by the Department discusses how some students do not real grade level even with the best possible interventions.

• The Department is also well on the way to moving away from the term proficiency and continuing their emphasis on the term “grade level” achievement.

• At the Mount Vernon event, Secretary Spellings also stated that a task force to look at how growth models might be used would be created in the Department. She indicated that the department was “open” to suggestions on how to do this. Again, AASA has been calling for consideration of a growth model for quite some time as have many other organizations, so this is encouraging. We will be coming to you in the coming weeks and months to seek input on this topic.

• While there are many unanswered questions about how these new policies will work, one key one stands out: if the research cited by the Department has been available for at least one to two years in most cases, why is it just now being considered?

Throughout the implementation of NCLB, AASA has heard and reported concerns from school leaders about the fairness and accuracy of AYP. Since January, AASA has specifically been calling for a commonsense approach to assessing students with disabilities , specifically one that concerned the unique characteristics and needs of each child. Secretary Spellings has now finally reflected this consistent concern from the field by stating in the Wall Street Journal that all children should not be treated alike. However, AASA will be watching how this new policy develops very carefully with an eye to fairness for each child. For example, if, as Reid Lyon stated, the 1 percent rule is not scientifically defensible at all, it’s not defensible anywhere, and states should not have to jump through additional hoops or meet additional standards to apply the latest research.

More documentation of the new policies and frameworks can be found at http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/04/04072005.html

Committee for Education Funding Activities

The Committee for Education Funding, which NREAC has joined as a member is in the process of doing a national op-ed campaign to support an increased federal investment in education.  I am posting the sample op-ed below.  We are looking for volunteers from the following states to submit the op-ed:

If anyone would be willing to submit this op-ed to the regional and local papers in your area and/ or state, that would be great.  Just email me their name and contact information.

Thanks so much.

Also, we will be sending weekly update emails from CEF, as a member service, to the coalition.

CEF SAMPLE Op-ED

It is an all too familiar scene in Washington — too much talk about how to improve education in this country, but too little funding to support the efforts.

In February, President Bush proposed an education budget for FY 2006 that, if enacted, would cut education for the first time in a decade. Even more alarmingly, this budget lays out a path for education to face further cuts over the next five years, completely reversing the recent investments in federal education funding.

(INSERT STATE) can not afford this. (GIVE 2 OR 3 SENTENCES WORTH OF LOCAL/STATE EXAMPLES OF WHAT IS AT RISK IF FUNDS ARE NOT INCREASED)

On a national level, the consequences of the budget are even more grim: 48 programs serving hundreds of thousands of students at all levels eliminated, nearly 7 million students with disabilities receiving billions less than they were promised, low-income students facing a net loss in financial aid for college.

Congress is debating this budget right now and the House has endorsed the President's cuts. Fortunately, the Senate has approved a bipartisan budget that would restore the president's cuts and add much needed funding to expand educational opportunities.

It does not take an economist to realize the devastating effect these drastic cuts would have on (INSERT STATE)’s and our country's education system, from pre-school to college. This is an issue that touches all of us, not only as students, parents, educators and administrators, but as Americans. We must ensure that all of our nation's students have the knowledge and skills to succeed in the 21st century. (INSERT SENATOR OR REPRESENTATIVE) and our other national leaders should not and cannot lose sight of these facts-our students, our schools and our country cannot afford it.

Other NREAC Member Updates

Joe Bard shared that he held a field hearing in Harrisburg on NCLB.  There were 5 witnesses including 4 superintendents and one head of an intermediate unit.  He will share the testimony as soon as it is compiled. Joe stated that there was a good response to the hearing.

There was no other member updates.

AASA Breaking News

Nine Local School Districts Sue U.S. Department of Education Over Unfunded Mandates; AASA Member Speaks at Washington, D.C. News Conference

AASA member William Mathis, superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union (Brandon, Vt.), spoke today at a news conference announcing the first national lawsuit against unfunded mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act. The Rutland Supervisory Union is one of nine public school districts that joined the National Education Association and ten of its affiliates (Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Reading, Pa., Texas, Utah and Vermont) in filing suit against U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and the U.S. Department of Education. The suit, Pontiac School District v. Spellings, was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and seeks legal clarification on Section 9527(a) of No Child Left Behind, which states:

“Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal government to . . . mandate a state or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.”

The lawsuit was unveiled at simultaneous news conferences in Laredo, Texas; Pontiac, Michigan; and Washington, D.C.  Mathis, who spoke at the Washington, D.C., news conference, said that accountability is a “solemn compact between government and schools,” and the federal government has broken its contractual obligations to provide schools the resources they need to raise academic achievement.

Mathis also spoke of the impact of poverty on children’s ability to learn, emphasizing that the federal government’s nine-tenth of one percent increase in federal education spending is not sufficient to address the multitude of needs many low-income children bring to the nation’s classrooms. Furthermore, failure to address those needs impedes students’ ability to learn. Mathis said that he spends more annually—by a percentage increase—on personal health care premiums than the federal government invests in K-12 education, “yet the federal government thinks this is OK. I find it wrong and illegal.” The federal government’s cure for poverty is more testing and school improvement plans, he said.

AASA supports the rights of state governments and local school districts to seek legal remedies to unfunded NCLB mandates. To read AASA’s statement, go to http://www.aasa.org/newsroom.

To read more about the NEA lawsuit, go to http://www.nea.org/lawsuit