Trump Taps Common-Core Foe Mick Zais for No. 2 Post at Ed. Dept.

Trump Taps Common-Core Foe Mick Zais for No. 2 Post at Ed. Dept.

President Donald Trump has tapped Mitchell “Mick” Zais, the former South Carolina chief state school officer and a vehement opponent of the Common Core State Standards, as deputy secretary, the number two position at the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump ran on getting rid of the common core—something he doesn’t have the power to do. But it’s hard to imagine Zais cheerleading the common core from his new post. As state chief in he tried to persuade South Carolina to dump the common core. And the state ultimately did shift to new standards, although it’s debatable how different they are from the common core. In 2014, Zais decided to pull South Carolina out of the Smarter Balanced testing consortia, one of two federally funded groups of states creating exams that align with the standards, even though the state board had just voted to remain in the consortium.

Zais was also a big-time supporter of school choice when he worked in the Palmetto State. He championed the expansion of charter schools and other school-choice programs, including a tax-credit scholarship program for special-needs students.

Zais will also fit right into U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ push for more local control. He elected not to compete in a special round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program that would have rewarded states, including South Carolina, that garnered high scores in earlier rounds but ultimately didn’t get funding.

His reason? “The Race to the Top program expands the federal role in education by offering pieces of silver in exchange for strings attached to Washington,” Zais said in a statement back in 2011. “More federal money for education will not solve our problems. Schools need less, not more, federal intrusion to increase student achievement.”

And during Zais’ tenure, South Carolina was hit with a $36 million penalty for making cuts to special education funding. Congress ultimately passed legislation that allowed the state to keep the money.

Before becoming state chief, Zais also served as the president of Newbery College in South Carolina. And he served for 31 in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of brigadier general.

Zais wasn’t DeVos’ first pick for the deputy secretary gig. The administration had originally hoped to nominate Al Hubbard, who worked on economic issues during both Bush administrations. But Hubbard had to drop out because it would have been too costly to untangle financial conflicts of interest.

Zais is the sixth person to be nominated to a top education department post.

DeVos was confirmed as secretary in February. Peter Oppenheim, a former aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., is already serving as the assistant secretary in charge of congressional affairs.

And last week, the White House nominated Jim Blew, a veteran school choice advocate, as the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy. Meanwhile, Carlos Muñiz, who worked for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is under consideration in the Senate to serve as the agency’s general counsel.

Common Core vs. State Standards: What’s the Difference?

Common Core vs. State Standards: What’s the Difference?

By Stacy M. Brown (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

Education must be governed by standards to achieve the learning goals that all parents seek for their children, said Dr. Reagan Flowers, a noted trailblazer in the field of STEM and the founder and CEO of Houston, Texas-based C-STEM Teacher and Student Support Services. C-STEM supports the engagement of pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students in hands-on, project-based learning experiences that expose them to workforce opportunities in related areas of Communication, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

“Through the history of public education, academic standards have evolved and have been governed by many [laws]. In our current reality, there are 44 states that have adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), 40 states with expressed interest in adopting the New Generation Science Standards, and six states including Texas following their own standards,” Flowers said.

In comparing “Common Core” to “State Standards,” there are some who might say there is no difference, she continued. Others point out that requirements are similar, but the wording of the guidelines is different.

“I would say that ‘Reading’ is ‘Reading,’ ‘Math’ is ‘Math,’ and ‘Science’ is ‘Science.’ [Common Core and State Standards] emphasize college and career readiness and there is overlap,” Flowers said.

As states struggle to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an ongoing and underlining debate pits Common Core standards versus State Standards, particularly as states are given the lion’s share of authority under ESSA.

“I see very little difference between Common Core and State Standards outside of 44 states speaking a common language about learning. In using Texas as an example, the difference between the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and Common Core Math Standards is that TEKS requires students to learn personal finance,” Flowers said.

Flowers said that ESSA can’t be compared to Common Core standards or State Standards.

“ESSA is an act designed to enforce the adopted standards, whether they are ‘Common Core’ or ‘State Standards,’” she said, noting that in practical terms it makes more sense to compare ESSA to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and, “from where I am sitting, there appears to be a big difference,” between ESSA and NCLB.

Flowers continued: “I see the biggest difference between ESSA and NCLB resting with the allowances and flexibility provided to states and schools with selecting student learning interventions and not being mandated to implement something that does not work with their student population. There is no one-size-fit-all answer to public education and that is what NCLB enforced and we can all see where that has landed us.”

States that have not adopted CCSS include Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia, Indiana and Kansas.

The Constitution has made it clear that states have control over their school systems, so Common Core standards aren’t federally mandated and each state does enjoy the option to adopt CCSS, standards that are indicators of college and career readiness that provide teachers, curriculum developers, and states significant flexibility.

Further, Common Core standards are research-based and internationally benchmarked, said Michelle Krumholz, the CEO of Evolved Educator, which develops easy-to-use software solutions to help teachers design and implement course instruction; according to Evolved Educator, this specialized course instruction drives sustainable growth in student achievement.

The greatest impact of ESSA concerning Common Core is that the federal government can no longer make a state’s adoption or maintenance of standards a funding incentive as NCLB and Race to the Top mandated, Krumholz said.

“In fact, the new law prohibits the federal government from encouraging the adoption of any particular set of standards—including Common Core,” said Krumholz. “The only requirements regarding standards existing now are that they have to be challenging—which states are left to interpret what is challenging, connected to college and career readiness, and that the assessment tool such as standardized tests, chosen by the state for accountability aligns with the selected state standards.”

In short, states have a lot of flexibility when it comes to implementing education standards, Krumholz said.

The Atlanta-based Skubes spends a lot of time analyzing the state standards for every state and the company has had plenty of experience with Common Core, said Bryan Wetzel, the COO of Skubes, which creates educational videos, quizzes and other resources for K-12 students and teachers.

“One of the little-known facts, and a deceptive fact at that, is that most states didn’t change from Common Core standards, they only erased the name Common Core from the title,” Wetzel said. “In many states, where politicians ran for office on getting rid of Common Core standards, they only changed the name and some of the nomenclature.”

One curriculum supervisor estimated that maybe three percent of the state standards have been rewritten or have been changed from Common Core, he said.

“ESSA is not a curriculum standard as much as it is rule for how federal money is spent and how it can be used,” said Wetzel. “It places more emphasis on research based solutions and/or tested interventions.”

NATIONAL: DeVos Tells Fox News: ‘There Isn’t Really Any Common Core Any More’

NATIONAL: DeVos Tells Fox News: ‘There Isn’t Really Any Common Core Any More’

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems to be indicating that, as far as she’s concerned, the Common Core State Standards aren’t really a big point of discussion in education any longer. But how did she express that idea, and does it hold up to scrutiny?

During a Fox News interview Monday, anchor Bill Hemmer asked DeVos whether the U.S. Department of Education would withhold federal money from states that use the standards.

“The Every Students Succeeds Act … essentially does away with the whole argument about common core,” DeVos responded, adding that the law gives states more flexibility in education policy decisions. She added that she hoped all states in their ESSA plans would include high expectations for students…

Read the full article here. May require an Education Week subscription.

Betsy DeVos Sees Choice-Friendly Florida as a K-12 Model for the Nation

Betsy DeVos Sees Choice-Friendly Florida as a K-12 Model for the Nation

By Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos may have helped to create the charter sector in her home state of Michigan. But in a recent interview she singled out another state—Florida—as offering a great blueprint for the country.

“I would point to Florida as being one that has had a variety of options for the longest period of time,” DeVos told Frank Beckmann, a conservative radio talk show host on WJR, based in Michigan. She said the state, which has charters, also offers both a tax credit scholarship, something DeVos and company may push in Washington, potentially through legislation previously introduced by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican, and vouchers for students in special education.

Michigan hasn’t been able to offer the same kind of voucher program as Floridabecause its state constitution prohibits public funds from being used for religious purposes. By contrast, Florida’s vouchers for special needs students can be used at schools affiliated with religious institutions. Michigan, which also has charters, recently started experimenting with Education Savings Accounts, which allow parents and students to “put [their] own customized plan together” for education, DeVos said…

Read the full article here. May require an Education Week subscription.

The Every Student Succeeds Act vs. No Child Left Behind: What’s changed?

The Every Student Succeeds Act vs. No Child Left Behind: What’s changed?

(SOURCE: USA TODAY) WASHINGTON — President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law Thursday, largely replacing the No Child Left Behind Act that was a hallmark of his predecessor’s domestic agenda.

Lawmakers have touted the new law as a more flexible approach to student testing and school accountability, once again making states responsible for fixing under-performing schools.

Here’s what’s changed in the two laws:

The Problem

No Child Left Behind:

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, was a civil rights law that provided education funding to states and attempted to ensure that every student had access to an education. The law would expire every three to five years, requiring Congress to reauthorize it. In 2001, Democrats and Republicans in Congress became increasingly concerned by the growing achievement gaps that left poor and minority students in failing schools, and devised a system of testing and accountability to fix it. “The fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning,” President George W. Bush said in the Jan. 8, 2002, signing ceremony.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law tries to preserve the spirit of No Child Left Behind, while fixing what were widely perceived as its one-size-fits-all approach. “The goals of No Child Left Behind, the predecessor of this law, were the right ones: High standards. Accountability. Closing the achievement gap,” Obama said Thursday. “But in practice, it often fell short. It didn’t always consider the specific needs of each community. It led to too much testing during classroom time. It often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didn’t always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.”

Testing

No Child Left Behind: The law required states to test students on math and English every year in the third through eighth grades, and then again once in high school. It also required at least one science test in elementary, middle and high school.

Every Student Succeeds Act: States must still test students in the same grades but will now have flexibility in how and when they administer those tests. For example, a single annual assessment can be broken down into a series of smaller tests. There’s also an emphasis on finding different kinds of tests that more accurately measure what students are learning.

Common Core

No Child Left Behind: The 2002 law did not address the Common Core standards specifically, since they didn’t emerge until later that decade. And they emerged not from the federal government, but from a state-led effort to define what the states should be teaching and how it should be taught. But the Obama administration did play a role in expanding Common Core through waivers to No Child Left Behind requirements that encouraged states to adopt the standards.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law allows states to adopt Common Core but does not require it. In fact, it requires the Education Department to remain neutral: “The Secretary shall not attempt to influence, incentivize, or coerce State adoption of the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative or any other academic standards common to a significant number of States, or assessments tied to such standard.”

Accountability

No Child Left Behind: One of the fundamental principles of the 2002 law — indeed, the principle that gave the law its name — was that schools had to improve the performance of all students. To do that, it required school districts to break out test scores and other measures for minority subgroups to make sure they were making progress each year. In practice, many states found that goal to be unrealistic and got around them by either creating “super subgroups” that lumped all disadvantaged students together, or changing to more subjective measures like parent/teacher involvement.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law leaves accountability goals almost entirely up to the states. States must submit their accountability plans to the Department of Education, which still has a limited oversight role. And there are “guardrails” defining broadly what the accountability goals need to include, and test scores and graduation rates must be given “much greater weight” than the more subjective measures.

Remedies

No Child Left Behind: States that wanted their fair share of federal funding were required to fix schools that failed to improve test scores adequately. Those “interventions” started out with softer measures, but after five years the school had a limited number of dire choices: fire the principal and most of the staff, convert to a charter school, lengthen the school day or year, or close down the school entirely.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law is much more specific about which schools need intervention but much less specific on what those interventions should be. Schools at the bottom 5% of assessment scores (as defined by the state), high schools that graduate less than 67% of students, or schools where subgroups are consistently underperforming would be considered failing and could be subject to state takeover — although the law doesn’t say what the state needs to do.

Spending

No Child Left Behind: The education law sets policy, and does not spend money directly — that’s done through annual spending bills. The original law authorized up to $32 billion in spending in 2002 dollars, but Congress never spent anywhere close to that, appropriating just $23 billion in 2015.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The law authorizes the spending of $24.9 billion in 2016, again subject to the spending bill now being finalized by Congress. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that cost would grow to $25.8 billion in 2020.

Bipartisanship

No Child Left Behind: The architects of the 2002 law were on opposite sides of the Capitol and on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio (later the House speaker), and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. The vote on final passage was 381-41 in the House and 87-10 in the Senate. Bush signed the bill into law at a high school in Boehner’s congressional district.

Every Student Succeeds Act: The lead sponsors in the Senate were Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash, and in the House were Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., and Bobby Scott, D-Va. It passed the House 359-64 and the Senate 85-12. Obama signed it into law Thursday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Contributing: Mary Troyan