Reauthorization Of ESEA Research Articles

Segregating the “gifted” in Charlottesville: the founding of Quest, 1976–1986

ABSTRACT The implementation of gifted programmes in the 1970s provided a way for school divisions to circumvent many of the aims of desegregated schooling as called for in Brown v. Board of Education. This study examines the implementation of one such system in a Southern school district that saw schools close rather than integrate in the years preceding the founding of a segregated gifted programme known as Quest. Additionally, the study situates the founding of this gifted programme in a national social and legal context involving fears of educational stagnation and white flight from public school systems. Using primary and secondary sources, this study highlights the attitudes of national policymakers at work in the 1974 reauthorization of ESEA, which significantly limited school divisions abilities to integrate while also providing funds for gifted classrooms that segregated ‘exceptional’ children using racially and socioeconomically biased measures.

Assessment of Content and Language in Light of the New Standards: Challenges and Opportunities for English Language Learners

Current State of Education StandardsThe current state is as follows: The Common Core State Standards in Language Arts and Mathematics has been adopted in various adaptations by most 46 states (Achieve, 2013). Two consortia of states-Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC - http://www.parcconline.org/) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC - http://www.smarterbalanced.org/)-are developing assessments aligned to these standards for implementation in Spring, 2015. In addition, the Next Generation Science Standards, based on the National Research Council framework for K-12 science (National Research Council, 2012), has been adopted by multiple states.What is already clearly evident in the substance of the Common Core as well as the Next Generation Science Standards is the prominence of language-not just language as in parts of speech, grammar, and vocabulary, but also high levels of language embedded in the instructional actions expected in the new standards. It is the aspects of language that linguists would call pragmatics and systemic functional linguistics. They expect language to support the following sorts of expectations:Students can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines and they can construct effective arguments and convey intricate and multifaceted information1Mathematically students understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments. They make conjectures, and build a logical progression of statements to explore the truth of their conjectures2This new angle on the language demands of the new standards has begun to be documented by the Understanding Language Initiative (ULI; available at ell.stanford.edu) and the papers widely disseminated with the primary audience being educators working on the content areas, who are coming to the realization that these content-embedded aspects of language are operational units of what has been traditionally and broadly termed academic language.The new standards, while clearly driving assessment through the federally funded consortia of states (PARCC and SBAC), have also begun to shape other parts of the system attempting to align to the standards, state and district policies regarding curriculum, professional supports, textbooks and materials, and teacher preparation. This author's observation in having engaged in various conversations with players and providers in these efforts to align the new standards systemically is that they vary and are all over the map. The variation is best characterized as piecemeal and unsystematic on one end, to strategic and thoughtful on the other. Piecemeal and unsystematic efforts will result in very little reform, whereas strategic and thoughtful efforts provide a chance. In turn, this variation is primarily attributable to system capacity to take on such a profound fundamental instructional shift that is called for by the new standards.In addition to the content assessments based on the Common Core and the new science standards, states are currently required to develop a separate assessment of Language Proficiency (ELP) that corresponds to the state content standards. English-language learners (ELL) are required by federal law to be identified, classified, and provided with additional appropriate services until their educational needs arising from their language minority status have been addressed, and they are reclassified as English proficient (ELP). In addition, the ELP assessments are used for Title III accountability purposes under the current No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002). There is a strong enough constituency base for Title m assessments so that these provisions will remain in any reauthorization of ESEA. The author does not expect any changes in the federal mandate for identification and for special services, required under Lau v. …

President Obama and education reform: the personal and the political

PART I: THE INSTITUTIONAL AND THE PERSONAL History and Policy Myths, Pluralism, and the Educational Industrial Complex Barack Obama: The Personal and the Political PART II: THE POLICIES Common Core: Backdoor National Standards The Race to the Top Obama's Accountability Inheritance - NCLB Obama's Vision of Accountability - ESEA reauthorization PART III: THE FUTURE President Obama and the Future of Public Education

Fully Accounting for English Learner Performance

This article presents a set of recommendations that promote a more nuanced, meaningful accountability policy for English learners in the next authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The authors argue that the ESEA reauthorization must strengthen the law’s capacity-building purpose so that federal, state, and local leaders support continued attention, direction, and innovation in effectively educating ELs. The recommendations put forth in this article focus on monitoring both current and former ELs, establishing time frames for the attainment of English language proficiency, and setting expectations for academic achievement that are reflective of English language proficiency level and time in the state’s school system.

A Narrow Path Through the Broad Middle: Mapping Institutional Considerations for ESEA Reauthorization

This article uses an institutional framework to analyze the political context of the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The authors analyze three relevant factors in the institutional environment: the role of traditional party politics, including theories of divided versus unified party government; the entrance of new players, both interest groups and think tanks, into the education policy arena; and stresses on the traditional coalition that historically supported education reform. The authors compare DW-Nominate ratings for the 107th Congress (which passed the No Child Left Behind Act) and the 111th Congress (which concluded in 2010) to measure the ideology of members of the education committees and the Congress as a whole. Although both education committees have witnessed aggregate shifts in a more conservative direction, the authors argue that the 112th Congress, which convenes for the first time in January 2011, is unlikely to pass President Obama's centrist education agenda, as a majority-Republican House, ideological divisions within each political party, and the politics of an upcoming presidential election are factors that militate against a bill's enactment before 2012.

In the Game

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, White House aides, and members of Congress have been working behind the scenes for months on a rewrite of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But one of the key players in the negotiations is an earnest, high-energy mother of two young children who is hardly known outside of Washington: Bethany Little, the top education advisor to Sen. Tom Harkin (D Iowa), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). On Harkin's behalf, Little has been managing ESEA deliberations not only among Senate Democrats, but also with the chamber's Re publicans. She is often Harkin's emissary to Democratic allies in the White House and the Department of Education and to the many education organizations seeking to influence the ESEA reauthorization. Eventually, she'll be negotiating with the new Republican education leaders in the House, where some recently elected members have been pushing to end the Department of Education's cabinet status. A quintessentially Washington career path brought Little, now 37, to this role. She came to D.C. from Miami, Fla., to attend Georgetown University, got into politics, and stayed. She did advance work for the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign in 1996. After a stint at a good government nonprofit, she landed a political appointment at the Department of Education and then moved to the White House domestic policy staff for two years, leaving on the last day of the second Clinton Administration. She moved up Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill, where she represented Sen. Patty Murray (D Washington) in drafting NCLB. Little left the grinding pace of Hill life and the minority status of Senate Democrats to have children, now ages six and two. During that time, she became director of government relations at the nonprofit Children's Defense Fund and then vice president for policy and federal advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, another Washington policy and advocacy group. When Democrats won back control of the Congress and Obama won the White House, the top education policy person on the Senate HELP committee, Carmel Martin, became Assistant Secretary of Education for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. Sen. Ted Kennedy, the chair of the HELP committee, offered Little Martin's former job. After a long conversation with her husband about parenting and the demands of two unrelenting Washington jobs--her husband is director of public affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency and travels regularly--she returned to the Hill. And when Harkin took over the committee after Kennedy's death, he kept Little on. Little now works out of a cramped HELP education suite on the 6th floor of the Hart Senate Office Building. She manages a staff of 10 with a policy portfolio that extends from early childhood education to college student aid and workforce development. ESEA a Priority While the HELP committee's work runs the education gamut, the reauthorization of ESEA, the major federal public education law, consumes Little's time. And though she helped write the last edition of the law a decade ago, she's quick to point out what she sees as its flaws: an overly rigid accountability system that favors affluent schools and imposes the same sanctions on slightly underperforming schools as on failing schools; ineffective school choice and tutoring programs; unintended incentives for states to lower standards; and not enough attention to the key issue of teacher quality. Little and her colleagues are using the Obama Administration's blueprint, released over a year ago, as the source for many of the changes that she's negotiating. The Administration wants to maintain the NCLB mandate that states test students annually in a number of grades and report results by race and other categories because they want to ensure that school districts pay more attention to the poor, students of color, and other often overlooked groups. …

Arguments on the ESEA Reauthorization by the U.S. Department and Interested Organizations(REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL SITUATION OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT)

Arguments on the ESEA Reauthorization by the U.S. Department and Interested Organizations(REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL SITUATION OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT)

Ethical and Appropriate High-Stakes Test Preparation in Middle School: Five Methods That Matter

Question: Which of the following instructional practices is most likely to occur in today's middle school classroom? (a) integrated curriculum (b) differentiated lessons (c) authentic assessment (d) high-stakes test preparation (e) all of the above. The correct answer: (e) all of the above. Over the last decade, high-stakes test preparation has crept into the inventory of developmentally responsive middle level instructional practices (Faulkner & Cook, 2006). Amid calls for increased accountability and more rigorous curriculum and academic standards, the middle school movement now finds itself in a spotlight of intense scrutiny (L'Esperance, Strahan, Farrington, & Anderson, 2003). This article examines the current emphasis on educational accountability through standardized testing, investigates its underlying assumptions, and offers practical suggestions for ethical, appropriate high-stakes test preparation that can support meaningful learning and instruction in the middle grades. As mandates for greater accountability have increased, the extent to which middle school students are learning and scoring well on high-stakes standardized tests has emerged and will continue to be seen as one of the benchmarks for successful teaching at the middle level (Clark & Clark, 2001; Millman & Schalock, 1997; Sanders, 1998; Yost & Vogel, 2007). In many school districts in the United States, school funding formulas, grade promotion, and teacher evaluations are closely tied to student achievement test scores (Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Bushweller, 1997; Sadker & Zittleman, 2004). The push for higher test scores on standardized state exams, value-added assessments, and other accountability measures have begun to significantly influence middle level instruction (Casey, 2007; Faulkner & Cook, 2006). Middle grades teachers now must consider not only what to teach and how to teach it, but also how to prepare young adolescents for high-stakes tests in ways that are ethical and effective, and that will not narrow the depth or breadth of rich, responsive middle level curriculum. The movement toward testing In the United States, achievement tests and standardized testing began to expand with the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), which required each state to monitor and assess the educational progress of students. The movement of school systems toward standardized testing was sustained with A Nation at Risk (1983), a landmark report on American education calling for improving teaching through higher benchmarks and standards and high-stakes tests. High-stakes tests refer to standardized exams with significant consequences for students (i.e., retention and promotion) or schools (i.e., decreased funding, negative teacher appraisals). The rise of high-stakes testing continued unabated with the passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a reauthorization of ESEA. Both A Nation at Risk and NCLB claimed there was little accountability in education, and the latter called for every student to be proficient in his or her grade level by 2012, with annual testing of reading and mathematics in grades 3-8. While high-stakes test scores do not ensure accountability, some supporters of high-stakes tests believe linking test scores to real consequences such as grade promotion, tracking, and graduation can significantly motivate students, teachers, and schools toward academic achievement and greater educational improvement (Darling-Hammond, 2002; Hess & Brigham, 2000; McMillian, 2000). Avoiding high-stakes harm to the middle school philosophy Since standardized test scores may, to some extent, be presented as an indication of the condition of learning in schools, schools and communities should bear some of the responsibility to support student learning and test preparation, and some schools have done so successfully (see e. …

Transform Toxic AYP into a Beneficial Tool

Adequate Yearly Progress is a flawed tool. But, with a few changes, AYP can become the impetus for educational good that its architects originally foresaw. Almost all educational accountability laws are enacted by well-intentioned lawmakers who want what's best for children. Sometimes, however, certain features of these laws actually diminish rather than enhance educational quality. Such is the case with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The very name of NCLB, of course, elicits warm visions of a caring government's assurance that nary one child will be neglected in our public schools. Yet, one of this cleverly labeled law's provisions--namely, its adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirement--now causes serious educational mischief in the nation's schools. NCLB, as most educators know, is the current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), a landmark federal statute that, for the first time, lobbed substantial federal tax dollars into the nation's public schools. Because the next reauthorization of ESEA will soon be upon us, it's altogether imperative that the AYP flaws in this influential law be remedied. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An Unintended Malignancy In a nutshell, NCLB currently calls on schools to increase the test scores of successive cohorts of students, including several NCLB-designated subgroups. Incorporating an amalgam of federal and state controls, NCLB sets forth the general structure of AYP but allows states to 1) decide what levels of student achievement will be required for a particular state's students to be 2) select the achievement tests to measure students' levels of proficiency, and 3) install state-specific timelines to ensure that all of the state's students will become proficient by the close of the 2013-14 school year. Given state-by-state choices regarding these three key options, it comes as no surprise that state percentages of AYP-failing schools vary considerably. Nonetheless, the NCLB requirement that all students earn proficient-or-above test scores by 2014 is having an adverse impact on schooling. This is because, though states can slightly jiggle their AYP timelines regarding how they'll reach the 2014 goal, they still must satisfy this federal demand for proficient-or-above perfection. Schools that fail to reach their annual AYP targets soon become the recipients of serious sanctions (if those schools receive NCLB dollars) or public embarrassment (if those schools don't receive NCLB dollars). Avoiding those negative consequences has become a primary focus of educators at all levels of public schooling. Many of these failure-avoidance endeavors by educators, unfortunately, have nothing to do with improving education. In truth, the havoc caused by AYP is sufficiently serious that characterizing it as a malignancy really doesn't demand much literary license. Five Changes Any changes to AYP in the reauthorized rendition of ESEA must be politically palatable. For instance, if AYP is eliminated or eviscerated in a new version of ESEA, then the public might interpret this as evidence of educators' lack of concern about children's academic progress. Such perceptions would, almost certainly, doom any versions of a reauthorized ESEA under consideration. I'm convinced, however, that with five changes, AYP can be saved without losing political face. Moreover, AYP can become the impetus for educational good that its architects originally foresaw. RECOMMENDATION #1 Change the language. A new version of ESEA should abandon the current NCLB descriptive labels--basic, proficient, and advanced. Shifting to a new set of fundamentally different achievement descriptors will provide state officials with an opportunity to install more clear and more defensible definitions of student achievement levels. Student's test performances could be described in a three-category system revolving around the grade-level performance of students, namely, below grade level, at grade level, and above grade level. …