U.S. Department of Education

For more on this issue, check out this post from Amy Laitinen on our sister blog, Higher Ed Watch.

Establishing a commission to study an issue is, in the words of President Obama, “Washington-speak for ‘we’ll get back to you later.’” This week, House Education and Workforce Committee member Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN) proposed yet another to study how to collect higher education data and which data points to include. The bill falls well short of resolving the concerns of students, families, businesses, and policymakers who don’t know what they’re getting for all the time and dollars spent on postsecondary education.

While the House bill, the Improving Postsecondary Education Data for Students Act, is still debating the question of whether we even need better data other members of Congress have rightly moved on. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) authored the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). The bill, also supported in the House by Education and Workforce Committee member Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), would collect student-level higher education data in state data systems from colleges and universities, making it available to students, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

The data would include remedial education rates, graduation rates, transfer rates, post-graduation employment, and student debt levels. And for the first time, it would move beyond the “first-time, full-time” reporting model currently in place – an embarrassingly incomplete glimpse of the higher education landscape, given that only a quarter of full-time undergraduate students lived on campus in 2008 and more than half of students were over the age of 23.

Some critics have expressed concern about students’ privacy if we collect outcomes at the individual level. Those complaints grew out of a fearmongering campaign back in 2007 during the Higher Education Act reauthorization that ultimately led to a ban on a student unit record system. But the data under the Wyden-Rubio bill would be anonymous, so student privacy would be protected.

Amy Laitinen, deputy director of higher education for the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program, has a rundown of the support proffered in recent years for improved higher education data over at our sister blog, Higher Ed Watch. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced late last year that better data would be at the top of the House Republicans’ agenda. He joins the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training Virginia Foxx (R-NC),  the congressionally created Committee on Measures of Student Success, the White House, the Chamber of Commerce, Young Invincibles and other advocacy and research groups, the National Governors Association, and many more education leaders in a chorus of voices calling for data and transparency in higher education.

The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act is a critical piece of legislation. It will help answer the questions of whether students are graduating from certain colleges and universities, whether they’re shouldering excessive debt or earning enough to pay back their loans, and how “nontraditional students” – the new majority – are faring in institutions around the country. In the words of Senator Wyden, the new legislation will move the debate from access to higher education to “access plus.” Stakeholders will be able to demonstrate the value institutions can (or cannot) provide their students. That’s the kind of information students and families need to ensure they sign up for a good investment – not another brushoff from Congress.

The California Office to Reform Education (CORE) is now one step closer to becoming the first group of school districts to receive a waiver from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Last week, the nine CORE districts received feedback from the Department of Education after their official peer review. Moving the application to peer review sent a clear signal that the Department was considering the request seriously; remember, California’s state-level request was denied prior to the review stage.

CORE chose not to release specific comments from the peer review until their districts have addressed any concerns in a revised proposal. According to Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog, a spokeswoman for CORE explained: "As you can imagine, the parties who are opposing district-level waivers are looking for any opportunity to criticize, and we worry that if we don't release the peer review and our responsive update at the same time we will face a 'death by a thousand paper cuts' situation."

But CORE did release a summary of the reviewers’ concerns. Reviewers clearly had questions about how additional districts could join CORE and begin implementing the waiver with, or without, further involvement from the Department. And they also requested more details across all three flexibility principles: standards and assessments, accountability and school improvement, and instruction and leadership.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I have several questions about the viability of district-level flexibility when waivers (and NCLB, for that matter) were designed to work through state-level policy. And my objections seem rather tame compared to those coming from some civil rights organizations, state leaders, lawmakers, and policy wonks. Given the number of organizations and leaders speaking out against district waivers, why does Department continue to press on? Despite my own hesitancy to embrace its plan, here is the best case I can muster in support of the CORE proposal.

Size matters. CORE’s waiver is under consideration, in part, because these districts represent over a million students, in one of the nation’s largest states. In fact, CORE serves more students than 24 of the 34 approved waiver states. Frankly, if nine small districts in Montana had applied, we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation. Further, CORE’s districts are well ahead of their state, enacting reforms the Department would like to see across California, including longitudinal data systems, Common Core implementation, and teacher evaluation. Rewarding these districts would send a strong signal to the state of California about its own policy choices.

Promoting Innovation. Despite cries for “multiple measures” and less emphasis on testing, most states didn’t use their waivers to experiment much with accountability. Instead, states continued to rely on math and reading proficiency levels to identify priority and focus schools. CORE took the opposite approach. The districts proposed to use tests from schools’ highest grade level only for accountability, While peer reviewers nixed this idea, CORE’s plan still broadens the scope of accountability by including social/emotional and school climate domains alongside academics. In addition to proficiency, growth, and graduation rates, CORE’s accountability system will include: chronic absenteeism, suspensions and expulsions, non-cognitive skills, student and parent perception surveys, special education identification, and redesignation for English language learners. These measures will provide a more holistic picture of students’ performance for educators, parents, and policymakers. If the Department is seeking to reward innovation via waivers, the CORE request is more inventive than any I’ve seen.

The problem with being creative, however, is that CORE can offer few details about how it will work. And based on reports of the reviewers’ comments, I suspect they want these details too. How will CORE measure non-cognitive skills? Who will design the surveys? What annual performance targets will be set in each domain, and will each carry the same weight? How will these targets be used to identify priority, focus, and reward schools? According to CORE’s request, these questions may not be answered until the 2015-16 school year. Given this timeline, does CORE merit flexibility now?

All Improvement is Local. CORE’s proposal hinges on unprecedented cooperation between districts. While other waivers rely on capacity provided by states, CORE does not have that luxury. Instead, CORE districts must agree to develop and share Common Core-aligned performance tasks and assessments, report common measures to a CORE data system, hold each other’s schools accountable for meeting performance targets, and use individual schools’ expertise as a primary tool for turnaround, pairing high-achieving schools with low-performing ones for coaching.

In some ways this could be a strength. School and district staff may have more credibility and expertise than state officials, far removed from the local context, in leading turnaround efforts and developing instructional resources or professional development. Additionally, given the size of CORE, they have greater capacity than many state education agencies. However, districts don’t have a stellar record of holding all schools and students to rigorous standards and providing meaningful accountability, and they certainly don’t have as many policy tools to wield as a state education agency.

The bottom line is that both districts and states have a role to play in implementing NCLB flexibility and improving the quality of teaching and learning. Many states have recognized this in their waivers by relying more heavily on districts’ strengths and capabilities to improve schools and support teachers. The question is whether CORE’s plan can work without a strong state role at all. I’m still not sold.

Today, the New America Foundation’s Federal Education Budget Project released Federal Education Budget Update: Fiscal Year 2013 Recap and Fiscal Year 2014 Early Analysis, an issue brief that explores the 2013 and 2014 budgeting processes and their implications for federal education programs. The brief outlines the key benchmarks Congress and the president reached, and provides a simple, comprehensive resource to understand the broader budget picture.

As the brief notes, the fiscal year 2013 budget is now complete, and the 2014 appropriations process is officially underway. But the complex circumstances of 2013 – including a temporary funding measure that Congress passed to hold funding steady at last year’s level (continuing resolution), and then an across-the-board 5.0 percent spending cut (sequestration) applied to most federal education programs – have made it challenging to track the vital figures in appropriations spending. That’s why many education stakeholders might be surprised to discover this: Next year’s budget could bring even more pain than sequestration has.

Sequestration was a product of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), a broader deficit reduction bill passed as a compromise to raise the federal debt ceiling. According to the law, when a congressionally appointed “supercommittee” of legislators couldn’t agree on $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, the BCA ensured most of that would happen anyway – through sequestration in 2013, and through lower spending caps from 2014 through 2021.

Sequestration was applied indiscriminately to virtually every program funded by the federal government – a poorly targeted, mid-year cut. However, the spending caps laid out by the BCA will force federal appropriations spending even lower next year than sequestration forced it this year. Instead of $984 billion in total appropriations spending, the post-sequestration total for 2013, the law caps appropriations at $966 billion next year.

Importantly, the spending cap for next year is only an aggregate one. Whereas the sequester in 2013 applied evenly to every program, the 2014 cap instead means that Congress will have to make difficult choices as it drafts spending bills. Lawmakers are supposed to appropriate not more than what the cap allows (though they may pass a law to override that limit) but within the broad category of discretionary spending, the law does not limit funding for any one program (think Head Start, Title I, and Pell Grants).

Some policymakers have opted not to make those hard decisions, at least so far. Both President Obama’s 2014 budget request and the budget resolution passed by the Democratic Senate for 2014 ignore the overall spending cap, and instead revert to the BCA spending caps set out before the supercommittee’s failure ($1.058 trillion in 2014). The House, meanwhile, stuck with the post-sequester cap in its own budget resolution.

Any joint budget resolution between the House and Senate is still a mystery; in fact, for the past several years, Congress has elected to stick with the BCA limits rather than pass a joint resolution at all. But if lawmakers vote to exceed the cap, they’ll also have to vote to override the BCA, because the BCA takes precedence over a non-binding budget resolution. If, on the other hand, lawmakers stick within the BCA limits, federal education programs will be fighting for a share of an even smaller pie than was provided in 2013.

Click here to read the full brief

The New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program released an issue brief detailing the completion of the fiscal year 2013 appropriations process and the start of 2014 budgeting. The brief explores congressional budget actions over the past year and describes their effects on federal education programs.

Much of the discussion around the President’s 2014 education budget has centered on proposed initiatives for universal pre-K and a $1 billion Race to the Top competition for college affordability and completion.

Compared to these bold new proposals, K-12 education seems to have drawn the short straw. The U.S. Department of Education could see some new or expanded programming for K-12  – additional money for the Promise Neighborhoods program, a new competitive grant competition for high school redesign, and an expanded School Turnaround Grants program – but nothing like what it has outlined for very young and adult learners.

The lack of banner initiatives for K-12 belies the attention that the Department has paid to the issue of teacher professionalism and evaluation over the past year. In fact, the dearth of new proposals may actually underscore the importance of changes to a reintroduced $5 billion proposal to transform the teaching profession – a proposal that was fleshed out today as the Blueprint for RESPECT (Recognizing Education Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching).

We would be remiss not to mention that issues of teacher evaluation and accountability have stirred a lot of public attention this year. September’s Chicago teacher strike and a recent federal lawsuit by Florida teachers on use of student scores for untested subjects have made teacher evaluation and dismissal practices a subject of national debate. Bill Gates’ Washington Post op-ed earlier this month advocated for the use of multiple measures for evaluation (including student surveys and observations by veteran teachers), as well as policies that increase collaboration rather than competition amongst teachers. Accountability measures are here to stay, but  Gates argues that the focus should shift towards how to use them in a way that increases the number of effective teachers.

In last year’s budget, the administration proposed using $5 billion from the failed American Jobs Act for a competitive grant program to “reshape the teaching profession.” The initiative as originally conceived was accountability-heavy; it suggested that state or district reforms could include making teacher training programs “more selective and accountable” and “ensuring that compensation is tied to performance.” Other possibilities included reforming tenure to “raise the bar, protect good teachers, and promote accountability” and strengthening teacher autonomy “in exchange for greater accountability.”

While not enacted, the American Jobs Act proposal did launch the RESPECT project, the Department’s attempt to engage in a national conversation on the teaching profession. This project facilitated conversations on the teaching profession across the nation and provided districts and teachers with a way of submitting feedback to the Department. Over the last two years, the Department has held 360 roundtables with 5,700 educators and solicited feedback from national teacher organizations, like the National Education Association.

Given the administration’s focus on effective teaching and school leadership, we weren’t surprised when this part of the American Jobs Act initiative returned in the 2014 budget request as $5 billion in mandatory funding to underwrite the RESPECT Project. But we were surprised by some changes to the proposal. Perhaps as a result of the conversations started by its namesake, the language used in the current budget proposal is strikingly transformed from the 2013 request.

After a year of conversations with teachers, the Department is now thinking – or at least speaking – differently. See for yourself below: “accountability” and “tenure” have been replaced, literally, by “shared leadership and responsibility for student outcomes.” Compensation system reforms are now designed to “attract and retain top talent.” Reforms could include creating “conditions in schools that support effective teaching, including by providing teachers greater autonomy… and time for collaboration.”

The system reforms envisioned in the two versions of the proposal are largely the same, but the 2014 RESPECT version is couched in the language of talent development and teacher support, rather than accountability and consequences. Those in the Department may have recognized that implementing evaluation systems doesn’t have to mean identifying winners and losers in teaching careers. Rather, these new systems can spur the development of a profession that relies on collaboration, data, and talent development to increase student achievement.

The strong shift in budget justification language, in addition to the release of the Blueprint today, signal a credible change in the way that the Department is addressing the issue of teacher quality and retention. Regardless of whether the RESPECT project is funded, it will be fascinating to see how this new direction influences other competitive grant programs, like the Teacher Incentive Fund, and whether it can ultimately facilitate changes to strengthen the teacher profession.

Although the deadline for all students to achieve proficiency in math and reading has been lifted in most states by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, 2014 test anxiety is high as ever. That’s because the 2014-15 school year is the first time 45 states and Washington, D.C. will be fully implementing the Common Core State Standards – including new tests that will be used as part of high-stakes accountability systems for schools and, in many cases, teachers and students. But when the time comes, will states stay the course? Practical concerns along with escalating political arguments already threaten the emerging system of common standards and assessments.

As I wrote previously, Alabama became the first state to exit the Common Core test consortia, opting instead to administer ACT-based assessments. By 2014, Alabama will likely not be alone in its choice. ACT is a well-established player that has spent decades building an organization with a reputation for providing valid, reliable assessments. Conversely, the state consortia are upstarts, attempting to build next-generation assessments and a precarious, multi-state structure to support and sustain the effort simultaneously. Naturally, states are left with many unanswered questions. How much will the new tests costs, and what are the technical requirements? Will the tests accurately reflect a student’s readiness? And will the assessments even be completed on time? In his smart take on the issue, Bellwether Education Partner’s Andy Smarick writes, the ACT “is the ‘Plan B’ that many states – concerned about the reliability and cost of the consortia-developed tests – have been looking for. It enables a state to remain committed to tough standards and rigorous assessments without putting all of their eggs in the basket of a fragile multi-state entity.”

But this kind of pragmatic concern isn’t the only threat to the common standards. While the Common Core is a state-led initiative (I repeat, the Common Core is a state-led initiative), the effort has been supported by private and corporate philanthropy and by the federal government. Specifically, the requirement to adopt the common standards to compete for Race to the Top funding is at the heart of increasingly polarized and politicized arguments against the Common Core. In their words, “Obamacore” amounts to a “nationalized curriculum” and “leftist indoctrination” that has been “forced on state governments” and “imposed on the children of this nation.”

Reasonable individuals easily dismiss most of these arguments. But reasonable arguments are often overshadowed, especially when national politicians and parties start getting involved. Just last week, the Republican National Committee adopted an anti-Common Core resolution, echoing these same divisive arguments.  And President Obama frequently touts that his administration “convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards, all for about 1 percent of what we spend on education each year” – adding credibility to their claims.

The problem may be about to get worse. As noted in our Key Questions on the Obama Administration’s 2014 Education Budget Request, federal funding for the assessment consortia is set to expire before the tests are fully launched. To provide continued support, President Obama’s latest budget includes a $9 million competitive grant initiative that could finance some of their ongoing work. The other $380 million of the “Assessing Achievement” program would provide states with formula grants for their current assessment programs, although leftover funds could go toward Common Core implementation.

However, a significant change would occur in fiscal year 2015: Assessing Achievement formula funding would be available “only to States that have adopted college- and career-ready standards that are common to a significant number of States” (emphasis added). While Race to the Top included a similar requirement, that program was a competition, where states could opt-out. NCLB waivers also require states to adopt college- and career-ready standards, but they do not have to be common ones. The Assessing Achievement program would mark the first time federal formula funding – typically available to all states – required adoption of common standards. If enacted, this requirement will undoubtedly add fuel to the “Obamacore” fire. On the heels of the president’s budget request, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Ia) is calling for the federal government to eliminate all Department of Education funding that supports or prioritizes the Common Core – and he doesn’t even mention the Assessing Achievement program.

What can we make of these threats to the Common Core? To date, most of its political detractors have been contained outside of the mainstream and have had little success gaining traction or passing legislation to reverse Common Core adoption. Will the RNC resolution, Grassley’s letter, or potential changes in federal funding have a greater impact?

On the other hand, the pragmatic concerns about how the new standards and assessments will be implemented are just that – pragmatic. Few could fault Alabama’s decision to choose the ACT over PARCC and SmarterBalanced. All three of the developing testing systems could prove to be a great improvement over current assessments, measuring competencies better aligned to postsecondary work and providing more useful information to students, their teachers, parents, and policymakers.

The important difference between the practical and political critiques is that states deciding to use the ACT system are not necessarily backing away from their commitment to the Common Core altogether. Yes, the assessment consortia should do as much as possible to allay the concerns of wavering states. And yes, policymakers and stakeholders should closely monitor all of the emerging for-profit and non-profit ventures to ensure their assessments, curricula, textbooks, and other resources accurately reflect the new standards. But in the end, any damage done to the Common Core from these pragmatic objections to the consortia is far less severe than what would happen in the unlikely, but not out of the question, case that “Obamacore” goes mainstream. Common Core supporters would do well to distinguish between the two. 

While poring over the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request, we noticed several subtle, but critical, shifts in the way that the administration addresses teacher preparation grants and regulations.

Just as in the fiscal year 2013 budget request, the administration is proposing to phase out the current TEACH Grants program in favor of a $190 million Presidential Teaching Fellows program. What follows is our attempt to read the tea leaves in the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed budget.

TEACH grants, started in 2008, provide $4,000 a year to eligible undergraduate or graduate students who agree to teach a high-needs subject in a high-needs school for at least four years within the first eight years after they graduate. In the 2013 budget, the Department projected that a large number of grant recipients – perhaps as high as 75% – will not fulfill the service requirement and instead will see the grants converted to Unsubsidized Stafford loans. The 2014 budget justification does not cite this figure, indicating only that a “significant” number of recipients will not fulfill the requirements, and that the Department anticipates about $17 million in revenues from converted grants.

In last year’s Presidential Teaching Fellows proposal, the administration would have provided formula grants to states to improve teacher preparation program performance and finance scholarships of up to $10,000 for students in the last year of an effective education program. Scholarship recipients would commit to teaching a high-needs subject in a high-needs school for at least three years out of six following graduation.

This year’s budget request includes the same framework for granting scholarships, but the provisions for improving teacher preparation programs have been softened. Previously, the Department would have required states to “withdraw approval of programs persistently identified as low-performing,” noting that 38 states and D.C. have not yet identified any low-performing or at-risk teacher training programs. Programs would be given technical assistance to improve before having their approval revoked after a given number of years.

Now, funding is contingent on states’ willingness to “hold teacher preparation programs accountable for results, including withdrawal of approval for programs persistently identified as low-performing” – a subtle difference, but an important one. Rather than revoking approval, states would be required to “establish and enforce a timeline for withdrawing financial support” from schools and alternative preparation programs that have received technical assistance but have not improved in a given number of years. And rather than focus on the closure of schools that produce ineffective teachers, the 2014 budget proposal also has new language that encourages states to “facilitate the broad adoption of practices employed by [high-quality] programs” to broaden the share of teachers prepared using high-performing methods.

This language shift may be the result of the stream of conversations around teacher preparation program accountability that occurred after the last budget release. At the end of February in 2012, ED released a draft set of federal regulations to join the TEACH grant eligibility to teacher preparation reporting under Title II of the Higher Education Act. Submitted for consideration under a negotiated rulemaking process, the regulations would have classified teacher-prep programs in four categories – high-performing, satisfactory, low-performing, or at-risk – based on new indicators including student learning outcomes, employment levels, and satisfaction surveys from recent graduates and schools that hire them. Students attending schools rated in the bottom two categories would not be eligible for federally-funded TEACH grants.

The negotiated rulemaking process fizzled out without a consensus  in April, so ED has been left to write regulations governing teacher preparation programs and TEACH grants on its own. These new rules were initially expected by last fall but thus far are still in progress. In the wake of this slow-down, those on the inside are not optimistic that significant regulations will move forward this year.

Nonetheless, in February the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) released a draft set of accreditation standards for teacher preparation schools that provides for increased use of outcome-based measures. The standards have spurred feedback, particularly from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), which objects to the creation of a “gold standard” designation for top programs and provisions for the use and interpretation of outcome data.

It remains to be seen whether the revised language in the 2014 budget will move the conversation around teacher preparation towards a feasible outcome for all stakeholders. In the meantime, a few states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, have already implemented systems for tracking student outcomes for graduates of teacher preparation programs. Furthermore, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has partnered with U.S. News & World Report to release a ranking of quality of teacher training programs in 2013. Even if the Department ends up dragging its feet, it’s clear that the push to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for their graduates’ achievements will go on.

Welcome to the Syllabus, a weekly guide that provides insight into what’s happening in higher education.

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California State U. System Will Expand MOOC Experiment, Steve Kolowich
Chronicle of Higher Education

Last fall, San Jose State, part of the California State University system, used material from a MOOC on circuits and electronics to flip the classroom for its own introductory course in electrical engineering. San Jose State offered three versions of the course—two were taught as they had been traditionally taught before, and one section replaced the lecture with videos from the MOOC so that students could participate in group work during class. The passage rates in the two conventional sections were 55 to 59 percent. In the flipped section, 91 percent of students passed. Now, a second semester of trials is under way.

President Barack Obama submitted his fiscal year 2014 budget request to Congress on April 10, 2013. The New America Foundation has reviewed the president’s proposals and generated a list of key questions that policymakers, the media, stakeholder groups, and the public should ask about the proposals.

• The president proposes expanding the recently enacted, more generous Income-Based Repayment plan for federal student loans, Pay As You Earn, to all borrowers rather than just new borrowers as of October 1, 2007, and eliminating the tax on loans forgiven for borrowers. Last year, the New America Foundation argued for those exact policy changes – provided that Congress and the administration first address the perverse incentives and windfall benefits the program will provide to graduate and professional students and the schools that enroll them.

President Barack Obama submitted his fiscal year 2014 budget request to Congress on April 10, 2013. The New America Foundation has reviewed the president’s proposals and generated a list of key questions that policymakers, the media, stakeholder groups, and the public should ask about the proposals.

Below are a few of our questions on early learning and PreK-12 education. To read the full report, click here.