Obama wants to revise No Child Left Behind Law.

Some of these changes sound good but others are not clear and not clearly a beneficial change. However those who make changes always call them reforms these days. Looking at just more than maths and reading scores is reasonable but at the same time performance in these areas is quite important. The new law would look at whether students were ready for college or a career. But how do you measure that?

There is an attempt to use the carrot rather than the stick. However, no doubt schools will find ways to game the system so that they may meet whatever criteria are set up for improvements to get more money but actually do little to improve education. Also, the worst schools may be the worst because of the conditions in the locale they find themselves located in. However, they will find that they won't get the funds they desperately need and any teachers in such schools may face being fired. Such a policy will be ensure that such schools remain poor and are able to hire only the most desperate of teachers.

Obama Wants 'No Child Left Behind' Law Overhauled
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


President Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries.


A plan to overhaul the 2002 education law championed by President George W. Bush was unveiled by the Obama administration Saturday in hopes of replacing a system that in the last decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and created a hodgepodge of sometimes weak academic standards among states.

"Unless we take action — unless we step up — there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential," Obama said during a video address on Saturday. "I don't accept that future for them. And I don't accept that future for the United States of America."

In the proposed dismantling of the No Child Left Behind law, education officials would move away from punishing schools that don't meet benchmarks and focus on rewarding schools for progress, particularly with poor and minority students. Obama intends to send a rewrite to Congress on Monday of the law.

Unless we take action -- unless we step up -- there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential.
- President Obama
The proposed changes call for states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career rather than grade-level proficiency — the focus of the current law.

The blueprint also would allow states to use subjects other than reading and mathematics as part of their measurements for meeting federal goals, pleasing many education groups that have said No Child Left Behind encouraged teachers not to focus on history, art, science, social studies and other important subjects.

And, for the first time in 45 years, the White House is proposing a $4 billion increase in federal education spending, most of which would go to increase the competition among states for grant money and move away from formula-based funding.

The blueprint goes before the House Education and Labor Committee on Wednesday as Obama pushes Congress to reauthorize the education law this year, a time-consuming task that some observers say will be difficult. Committee Chairman George Miller, a Democrat from California, praised Obama's plan.

"This blueprint lays the right markers to help us reset the bar for our students and the nation," Miller said in a prepared statement.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan briefed a handful of governors, lawmakers and education groups on the plan Friday, including Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican.

"The governor is very supportive of the direction the secretary is going," said Perdue's spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

A few other highlights from the blueprint:

— By 2020, all students graduating from high school would need to be ready for college or a career. That's a shift away from the current law, which calls for all students to be performing at grade level in reading and math by 2014.

— Give more rewards — money and flexibility — to high-poverty schools that are seeing big gains in student achievement and use them as a model for other schools in low-income neighborhoods that struggle with performance.

— Punish the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools using aggressive measures, such as having the state take over federal funding for poor students, replacing the principal and half the teaching staff or closing the school altogether.

— Duncan has said the name No Child Left Behind will be dropped because it is associated with a harsh law that punishes schools for not reaching benchmarks even if they've made big gains. He said the administration will work with Congress to come up with a new name.

Amy Wilkins, a vice president with The Education Trust in Washington, D.C., called the blueprint a "culture shift."

"One of the things America has not been clear about is what k-12 is supposed to do," Wilkins said. "In this, we're saying K-12 is supposed to prepare kids for college and meaningful careers."

The nation's first federal education law — Elementary and Secondary Education Act — was passed in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty. The law has been reauthorized several times since, most recently in 2001 under President George W. Bush.

It was criticized by educators for focusing too much on testing and not enough on learning. Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said he is glad to see No Child Left Behind go away.

"We're delighted over that," he said. "We have not been a fan of No Child Left Behind."

Obama and Teacher's Unions on collision course.

I am rather amazed that school boards are able to do this without being sued for breach of contract. Surely there are ratified agreements between the school boards and the teachers. What is even more surprising in that Obama should go along. Obama seems quite willing to commit political suicide. He has alienated many of his liberal and left voters. Of course US liberal democrats are notorious for their fear of the Republican opposition and so will always go with the lesser evil.

NY Times
School’s Shake-Up Is Embraced by the President
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and SAM DILLON

A Rhode Island school board’s decision to fire the entire faculty of a poorly performing school, and President Obama’s endorsement of the action, has stirred a storm of reaction nationwide, with teachers condemning it as an insult and conservatives hailing it as a watershed moment of school accountability.

The decision by school authorities in Central Falls to fire the 93 teachers and staff members has assumed special significance because hundreds of other school districts across the nation could face similarly hard choices in coming weeks, as a $3.5 billion federal school turnaround program kicks into gear.

While there is fierce disagreement over whether the firings were good or bad, there is widespread agreement that the decision would have lasting ripples on the nation’s education debate — especially because Mr. Obama seized on the move to show his eagerness to take bold action to improve failing schools filled with poor students.

“This is the first example of tough love under the Obama regime, and that’s what makes it significant,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, an educational research and advocacy organization.

“I think it’s going to give some cover to other school boards and school superintendents around the country that want to do something similar,” Mr. Petrilli said. “They can say the president of the United States, Barack Obama, someone the teachers voted for, supports us here to take some radical actions to shake up our schools.”

In Boston on Thursday, another city moving to carry out the administration’s school-turnaround policy, officials announced that staff members at six underperforming schools would have to reapply for their jobs. Carol R. Johnson, the schools superintendent, said staff members were not being fired, but were being asked to “recommit” themselves. This move angered the teachers’ union, which said it was exploring legal action.

Mr. Obama’s endorsement of the Rhode Island board’s tough action infuriated many of the four million members of the two national teachers’ unions, thousands of whom campaigned vigorously for him in 2008.

“I ripped the Obama sticker off of my truck,” said Zeph Capo, a midlevel official at the Houston Federation of Teachers who trains classroom teachers. “We worked hard for this man, we talked to our neighbors and our fellow teachers about why we should support him, and we’re having to dig the knife out of our back.”

Officials at the two unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, were so angry in the hours after Mr. Obama first endorsed the firings that an irreconcilable break with the administration seemed possible, perhaps bruising Democrats’ electoral chances in November. Recognizing how a permanent breach could hurt everyone, however, both sides sought to lower tensions, partly by encouraging a negotiated settlement in Central Falls, administration and union officials said in interviews.

But neither the president nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan backed off his support for tough action, including dismissing teachers en masse, to improve learning conditions in chronically failing schools. At the high school in Central Falls, a poor community with a large immigrant population, only 7 percent of 11th graders passed state math tests last fall. And if the administration’s posture was undermining its support among teachers, it was earning unusual praise from conservatives, as well as from supporters of an overhaul of the nation’s schools.

“The administration is putting down a real marker here,” said Alex Johnston, chief executive of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a business-backed education advocacy group.

The decision by the Central Falls school board came under the terms of a new Obama administration policy intended to spur interventions in thousands of failing schools nationwide.

To get a share of the $3.5 billion in what are known as School Improvement Grants, school officials can choose to transform the learning environments in failing schools by extending instructional hours and making other changes, converting them to charter schools, closing them entirely or replacing the principal and at least half the staff.

The Central Falls superintendent, Frances Gallo, initially chose the first option this year, but after a dispute arose with the union over extra pay for adding 25 minutes to the school day, she broke off negotiations. Backed by the local school board, she announced the firings on Feb. 23. Last Monday, Mr. Obama supported the board’s action in a speech to a dropout prevention group.

“If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability,” Mr. Obama said. “And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week.”

National union officials were shocked.

“Teachers were taken aback — and profoundly disappointed,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Teachers will watch carefully whether Washington, the states and local districts will be partners that help us do our job or whether they’ll be scapegoating and demonizing.”

In Central Falls, community protests erupted against the firings. Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, said members of the state’s Congressional delegation had urged the parties in Central Falls to return to the negotiating table.

On Wednesday, Dr. Gallo agreed to resume contract talks, raising the possibility that at least some of the firings would be rescinded. Nonetheless, at week’s end, the two sides said animosity remained strong and negotiations were unlikely over the next few days.

Dr. Gallo said she had invited the union to participate in a meeting of parents, district officials and other parties on Thursday to help plan the school’s future.

Meanwhile in Washington, the Obama administration was bracing for similar controversies in other communities as more states identify failing schools.

“This is not a political strategy; this is about reforming the lowest-performing schools,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman. “It’s not always painless, it’s not easy. But what’s critical is taking action in these places.”

Union officials said the administration’s stance on the Rhode Island firings seemed to put it on the side of management in what unions see as basically a labor dispute.

Mr. Obama’s position “set us back in how we work together,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. “I think the worst thing that can happen would be for President Obama to be seen as antiteacher. I think that would harm him.”

Teachers nationwide, including many who had once campaigned for Mr. Obama, said the events in Rhode Island had left a bitter taste.

Anthony J. Mullen, an instructor at the Arch School in Greenwich, Conn., who is the national teacher of the year, said he supported the notion of establishing more accountability in schools. “But what kind of accountability are we talking about?”

“This ‘off with their heads’ mentality,” he said, “it’s a bloodthirsty mentality.”

Katie Zezima and Liz Robbins contributed reporting.