(From Education Week, February 3rd, 2012)

Interesting day at AEI on Wednesday. Hosted a lively discussion on "Education 2012: What the Election Year Will Mean for Education Policy," looking at what the year ahead holds for education in Washington and nationally. I was joined by a wickedly smart crew that featured Democrats for Ed Reform chief Joe Williams; ED's Peter Cunningham; Katherine Haley, key aide to House Speaker John Boehner; influential GOP pollster and policy advisor David Winston; and Ed Week's crack political reporter Alyson Klein. The occasion for the event was the official launch of my new book (edited with my colleague Andrew Kelly), Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools.

Read the full post here.

(From NPR StateImpact, February 2nd 2012)

California was the first state to adopt a 'parent trigger,' which allows a majority of parents in a failing school to vote on a method to restructure the school.

The bill is expected to be among the most contentious education issues of the 2012 legislative session. Activists have lined up against the bill, arguing it is not being done in their name. Others argue the bill is bad policy.

For more explanation on how Florida's proposed law works, click here.

StateImpact Florida spoke with Gloria Romero, a former California state senator who authored the original parent trigger bill. Romero is now state director for the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform.

Q: Tell me what your role was with the California parent trigger bill?

A: I am the author of the original parent trigger law in the nation, which today has seen it go across the nation to some 20 states having this concept introduced into potential law.

Q: When you guys introduced this bill in California, what was the situation you were looking at and how was this bill designed to solve it?

A: It's really interesting, because to me the imagination of the parent trigger law is really to understand that it is parents who are the architects of their childrens' future. And for year after year, decade after decade quite frankly, parents felt frustrated, because the administrators -- those who run our schools -- quite simply did not sense the need of urgency to turn around especially chronically under-performing schools. Failing schools, quite frankly.

So I finally wrote this bill, turned into law, which said quite frankly, if you aren't going to do it -- meaning the school administrators and the school bureaucrats in charge of the education system -- then basically move out of the way and we the people, we the parents will. It basically asserts rights, it gives real rights to match the responsibility that parents have and feel towards trying to fight for the best education options for their children.

Q: The first time this law was attempted to be used at the Compton elementary school it turned into a bitter political fight. Is that accurate?

A: It is accurate, however, I think...there's the law and then there's the efforts to implement and use a law. I strongly support the Compton parents, what was done. But it was the first time in the nation and quite frankly the organizers did make mistakes. Now some of them were just quite trivial mistakes, for example they forgot to put a staple on a couple of papers. Or they forgot to put a date on the pages of the petition. There were some issues that were quite frankly that trivial. And yet they were dismissed in a court of law because not having a date on the petition with hundreds of signatures of parents was ruled invalid...

Having said that, the law is powerful. It is imaginative. I mean think about it: What law giving parents real rights that you can think of in recent years has sort of spawned the drive of parents and legislators across the country to try to move it into every state in the nation and that's what I think is so exciting. The funny thing is is that when I was writing this law and fighting for it in the California legislature, I had no idea people across the nation would start looking at that and say 'Yeah, I want that too because my own school district, my own elected officials, my own government is refusing to do what they're supposed to do under federal and state laws. So if they're not going to do it, give it to me and I will have the courage to do it.'

Q: This law has been invoked again since that first example. What have you guys learned since the law was first passed?

(From Education Week, February 1st, 2012)

Amid the cacophony of special interests fighting to be heard in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, a cadre of current and former chief state school officers is elbowing its way into the nation's education debate at a time when states are taking more control of K-12 education.

Read the full article here.

(From Huffington Post, January 30th, 2012)

How do we give our kids a better education than we've been giving them? It's a question that is leading to a rare bipartisan conversation these days with some big figures in the Democratic party, like Cory Booker in Newark, Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles and Andrew Cuomo in New York, actually leading the discussion. And they're not alone in the Democratic party as I saw this past week in New Orleans and Denver.

What's going on here?

The tough reality we've got to face is that too many of our schools are failing. And if you have a kid in one of those schools, you can bet that you're going to be pretty upset that your kid isn't getting the skills they need to live a successful life. That's where this conversation begins -- with the parents of kids in those schools who demand a better education for their child.

More people are also getting involved. After all, there are serious consequences when a kid doesn't succeed in school, both for themselves and the community they live in. If a kid gets through high school without being able to master basic math, science and reading, that kid is going to have difficulty finding a job. And good luck finding a business that will locate in a community that doesn't have workers with those skills. So you're starting to see a lot of businesses get involved in this conversation as well.

The great thing about this discussion is that there's not going to be just a one size fits all fix. That model isn't working. So there's room for everyone to participate and put every idea on the table. Even if you think public schools are great, can't we improve them? The solutions may vary by town, city and state.

Many communities have decided that the key is to empower parents to choose the best school for their child rather than that child being forced to attend the nearest public school no matter how low academic achievement at that school is or how bad of a fit it is for that child. If a solution is going to work for a child, their parent has to have the power to choose that solution. That's why instead of arguing over or promoting a particular fix, last week people across the political spectrum came together during to promote giving parents more choice in choosing what works best for their child during National School Choice Week.

Last Saturday, National School Choice Week kicked-off in New Orleans with a huge rally. James Carville, who spoke at the event, was so proud of the progress schools have made in that great city since Katrina. "You can't have the kind of successes that we're seeing here, the kind of improvements we're seeing in our schools, without people taking some considerable risk," he said.

Justin,

What is heating up in Washington State is a desire to do better by our children. It is for that reason why those that have previously opposed charters (including myself) have switched sides to be supportive of this form of public education.

Why is there so much interest now in public charter schools for Washington State?

Because the status quo is keeping our poor and minority kids at an educational disadvantage.

Because it is unconscionable that an African American kid growing up in South Seattle or South King currently has an 11% chance of getting a college degree or career credential. The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce predicts that, by 2018, 67% of the jobs in Washington State will require a college degree or a career credential. In the meantime, our region's high paying jobs are going to kids from other states and other countries.

Our achievement gaps are unacceptable and unconscionable. If we stay on our current path, Washington will close its achievement gaps in 105 years, according to the Center on Education Policy. States more committed to education reform, like Louisiana, will close their gaps in 12.5 years.

Charter school advocates are the first to admit that there are both good and bad charter schools, which are serving a higher proportion of minority and low income students than traditional public schools. But let's be honest. The high quality public charter schools, like K.I.P.P., Aspire, YES Prep, and Uncommon Schools are making major headway on helping disadvantaged kids succeed. They have given thousands of low-income and minority kids a fantastic education and, as a result, have changed the trajectory of their lives.

Washington has precious few traditional public schools serving the needs of low-income and minority students. A few good high achieving charters serving the kids in our high poverty communities would give us the proof points we so desperately need. The bill that is before the Washington legislature is very different from the ones voters turned down in the past. It focuses on educationally disadvantaged students and it takes advantage of the lessons learned in other states about the need for a strong authorizing environment.

By Moira Cullen, DFER Colorado State Director

Senate Bill 12-015, the ASSET Bill, was introduced in the Colorado legislature last week and had its first committee hearing on January 26th, passing out of the Senate Education Committee on a 4-3 party line vote. The bill enables Colorado high school graduates - regardless of their immigration status - to attend the State's colleges and universities at a cost between in-state tuition paid by other residents, and tuition paid by students from outside Colorado.

Immigration is one of the cultural third rails of our time: few politicians regardless of party have come out to defend current immigration policy. Rightly so. Let's all agree that immigration policy is a huge mess and there have been few sincere attempts to try to fix it. But in this burst of honesty, let's also admit that anything that touches the third rail of immigration is an issue where emotion too often clouds judgment. And clear-eyed judgment strongly suggests that this is a bill that should be passed.

To start, let's be clear about what is not in the bill: taxpayer subsidies. Under the ASSET bill, undocumented students will pay both their share and the State's share of taxes. There is zero cost to Colorado's taxpayers. There is an additional cost to the undocumented students - who will pay on average about 40% more than traditional in-state tuition. The cost of college for undocumented students is neither free nor subsidized.

Let's also remember the bill's focus: students already in the U.S., - usually entering no later than 12 or 13 years of age, and often far earlier - who have completed high school and both want and are academically prepared to go to college. They have not dropped out of school; they do not have criminal records. Many were brought to this country by their parents or family members at a very young age and did not make the decision on their own to enter this country illegally. Think what you will, but recognize that the decision to come to the U.S. was made for them, not by them.

Think that their parents are criminals for this choice? Ok then. We can debate the appropriate punishment for parents who have broken the law to give their families a better life. But what we can't really debate is this: for no other crime committed by parents do we punish their children. Adults do some terrible things, and we do not diminish the rights of their children because of this conduct. Children of convicted thieves, perjurers, Wall-Street embezzlers, and serial murderers all get to vote, drive, move freely about the country, and pay in-state tuition.

By Joe Williams

(From NY Post, January 26, 2012)

As the Department of Education closed nearly two dozen of the city's worst large high schools at the height of the "small-schools boom," one of the critics' most common complaints was that the educrats were doing too much, too soon.

A new report that tracks thousands of students who entered the small high schools created on Mayor Bloomberg's watch makes you wonder what would have happened had they done even more, faster.

From 2002 to 2008, the Department of Education closed 23 large high schools, and in their place opened 216 small schools, many offering such specialized themes as sports management or environmental studies. A good chunk of the reorganization was paid for with $150 million in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The breathtaking pace of change was certainly justified -- the huge, dysfunctional high schools that Bloomberg's team closed, such as Martin Luther King High in manhattan, were dangerous academic wastelands where the idea of someday graduating was often a sick joke.

Graduation rates were often well below 45 percent in the closed schools. At Theodore Roosevelt HS in The Bronx, it was 3 percent in 2006, its last year.

But naysayers -- including me at times -- wondered whether moving so swiftly would cause more harm than good.

The report, from the nonprofit-research organization MDRC, argues that the reforms were worth the risk. Students in the new, small high schools, the study shows, are making it to the high-school finish line at a much higher rate than at those old, large schools.

(From Education Week, January 25, 2012)

A top GOP lawmaker's plan for rewriting the No Child Left Behind Act amounts to a "rollback" of the law, 38 business, civil rights, and other advocacy organizations said in a letter, sent Jan. 24 to its sponsor.

The draft from U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House education committee, "would thrust us back to an earlier time when states could choose to ignore disparities for children of color, low-income students, English-language learners, and students with disabilities," the letter says.

Read the full post here.

(From Democrat and Chronicle Blog (AP), January 25, 2012)

Seven education groups from around the state are backing Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget proposal to expand the new competitive-grant programs for schools that reduce costs through management efficiencies and improve student achievement. The governor recommended awarding $250 million for the grants in the 2012-13 fiscal year, which starts April 1.

A number of groups -- including the Alliance for Quality Education, the state Council of School Superintendents and the state School Boards Association - have criticized the governor and urged him to instead spend more money on general education aid. State funding for education is scheduled to increase 4 percent in the next fiscal year, following two years of steep cuts.

The state Board of Regents' budget proposal included $50 million for the two programs. State Education Commissioner John King told lawmakers this week that he had concerns about the impact it would have on funding for high-needs districts, particularly in light of the 2 percent tax cap. The Council of School Superintendents and AQE also support spending just $50 million on the grants.

Organizations that are backing Cuomo's recommendation include NYCAN: The New York Campaign for Achievement Now, Students for Education Reform, Democrats for Education Reform in New York City, Buffalo ReformED, District Parent Coordinating Council of Buffalo, Parent Power Project in Rochester and Democracy Builders. This is their statement:

"For years, the special interests in New York State have fought successfully to protect the education bureaucracy at the expense of our students. The results of their efforts speak for themselves: New York State now spends more on education that any other state in the nation but we are only 38th in graduation rates. We can no longer accept an education system where the bureaucracy thrives while our students fail.

(From Huffington Post, January 25th 2012)

A broad coalition of 38 civil rights, education reform and business groups sent House education chairman John Kline a scathing letter Wednesday, describing his No Child Left Behind legislation as potentially racist.

"It undermines the core American value of equal opportunity in education embodied in Brown v. Board of Education," the groups wrote.

Their letter calls Rep. Kline's bills a rollback of federal accountability, a return to an era that ignored achievement gaps. The bills would "thrust us back to an earlier time when states could choose to ignore disparities for children of color, low-income students, ELLs [English language learners], and students with disabilities. The results, for these groups of students and for our nation as a whole, were devastating."

The 38 groups were organized by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. They include the American Association of People with Disabilities, the American Civil Liberties Union, Democrats for Education Reform, the Education Trust, the NAACP, Stand for Children, The New Teacher Project, the U.S. Chamber of Congress (which now employs George W. Bush's secretary of education, Margaret Spelling), and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second-largest teachers union.

The No Child Left Behind Act, which reauthorized the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, mandates the regular testing of students in math, reading and science. These test results have become a key lever in an accountability system that divides schools into those that are making "adequate yearly progress" and those that aren't. Poor rankings lead to increasingly stiff federal sanctions for schools, including mandatory setting aside of No Child Left Behind money for tutoring and permission for students to transfer to nonfailing schools. By 2014, the law requires 100 percent of public schools to reach student proficiency in math and reading.

(From Buffalo News, January 25th, 2012)

The District Parent Coordinating Council and Buffalo ReformED joined a few education reform groups across the state today to issue a joint statement supporting the governor's plan to allocate $250 million in the 2012-13 budget for school performance grants.

School leaders across the state have called on the governor to instead allocate $50 million for the competitive grants, and allocate the other $200 million to school districts through standard aid formulas.

The statement from the reform groups and parent groups today echoed Cuomo's often-used line that New York spends the most on education than any state, but is 38th in graduation rate, and takes to task "the special interests in New York State (who) have fought successfully to protect the education bureaucracy at the expense of our students."

"Throwing money at the bureaucracy and watching students fail simply doesn't work," the statement said. "Governor Cuomo's bold proposal to reward districts that show higher student performance truly puts students first."
The District Parent Coordinating Council and Buffalo ReformED joined a few education reform groups across the state today to issue a joint statement

(From Education News Colorado, January 24th 2012)

This commentary was submitted by Moira Cullen, Colorado state director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Senate Bill 12-015, the ASSET Bill, has its first committee hearing this Thursday, January 26th. The bill enables Colorado high school graduates -- regardless of their immigration status -- to attend the state's colleges and universities at a cost between in-state tuition paid by other residents and tuition paid by students from outside Colorado.

Immigration is one of the cultural third rails of our times: Just about no one of any political party will defend current immigration policy. Rightly so. Let's all agree that immigration policy is a huge mess that has resisted the few sincere attempts to try to fix it.

But in this burst of honesty, let's also admit that anything that touches the third rail of immigration is an issue where emotion too often clouds judgment. And clear-eyed judgment strongly suggests that this is a bill that should be passed.

To start, let's be clear about what is not in the bill: Taxpayer subsidies. Under the ASSET bill, undocumented students will pay both their share and the state's share. There is zero cost to Colorado's taxpayers, and an additional cost to the undocumented students - who will pay on average about 40 percent more than traditional in-state tuition. The cost of college for undocumented students is neither free nor subsidized.

Photo by Trey Ratcliff

By Rebeca Nieves Huffman, DFER Illinois State Director

If there were a theme for the last 10 years of my education reform experience, it would be, "teased but not completely pleased." I've been working for amazing, national organizations doing meaningful work in many places across the country - except in my lovely Chi-town. While working in other cities, I watched as Chicago experienced bold, and at times, trailblazing efforts in my own backyard and longed to be a part of the action in my own hometown.

If Tyra Banks hosted "America's Next Top Reformers," the band of reform allies across Illinois would win. She'd ordain the likes of Phyllis Lockett (New Schools for Chicago), Beth Purvis (Chicago International Charter Schools), Juan Rangel (United Neighborhood Organization), Bruce Rauner (Philanthropist), State Senator Kimberly Lightford (D), and Josh Anderson (Teach for America) with the coveted 'f' word...fierce.

For me, the teasing began in 2001 when I was working for the KIPP Foundation. The CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan, and former Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, announced the closure of three chronically failing public schools and the creation of new schools, many of which would be charters. I practically did a back flip while watching the news conference out of excitement for the reforms about to take place in my city.

Fast-forward 10 years later and reformers are still aggressively working to put the best interests of kids first--and I'm so thrilled to be joining them in that work as the Illinois State Director for Democrats for Education Reform.