In a May 25 letter to the four top federal lawmakers responsible for funding the U.S. Department of Education, Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nev., and Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., urged Congress to “prioritize investments” in programs related to the Every Student Succeeds Act, career and technical education, and elsewhere.
“Governors’ message to Congress is clear: There must be careful consideration as to how to appropriately invest in these types of programs (and many others),” Sandoval and Inslee wrote. “Otherwise, cuts and changes not carefully considered could lead to a deterioration of state budgets.” Sandoval is the vice chairman of the NGA…
SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced an $18 million proposal to fund education and healthy food programs, including nearly $10 million for the Education Action Plan, a series of programs aimed at eliminating the opportunity gap between white students and African American/Black and other students of color. An additional $5.7 million will fund increased support for children from birth-to-five years old and their caregivers, such as prenatal care. And $3.2 million will fund expanded food access including the Fresh Bucks program, which provides low-income households vouchers for fresh fruits and vegetables at local farmers markets. These programs will be funded by a 1.75 cent sweetened beverage tax Mayor Murray transmitted to Council today.
“Addressing equity in education and health are paramount challenges to ensure everyone has access to opportunity in Seattle,” said Murray. “It is imperative that we proactively support Seattle Public Schools students and improved food access with frontline programs that put equity first. Healthy kids get better educations and are more likely to have a brighter future. The sweetened beverage tax transmitted today gives the City the financial resources to address each of these challenges.”
Despite significant efforts to provide an equitable education system, a persistent opportunity gap exists between white and Black students in education. In Seattle, according to officials, public school students of color meet third grade reading standards at a rate 31 percent lower than white students. The proposed investments in the Education Action Plan will be implemented using guidelines recommended by the Education Advisory Group that are directly tied to eliminating educational disparities for African American/Black students and other students of color.
The robust investments proposed in the Education Action Plan will significantly scale up programs devoted to eliminating inequality in education such as investments in before and after school opportunities like STEM extracurricular classes; adding more mentors in schools; reducing discipline disparities by providing personalized case management and providing special training to teachers; expanding summer learning programs; funding more internships; and diversifying Seattle’s teaching staff.
To fund these investments in education and food access, Murray has proposed a local tax on naturally and artificially sweetened drinks including soda, energy drinks, juice and sweetened teas. The proposed $0.0175 per ounce (1.75 cents) tax is expected to raise $23 million for the first year, and because consumption is expected to decline, $18 million annually thereafter. Of the revenue raised in the first year, 20 percent will be invested in one-time start-up costs or time-limited projects such as $5 million for the 13th Year program – an investment intended to ensure all Seattle Public Schools graduates can attend at least one year at the Seattle Colleges.
The $3.2 million investment in the Fresh Bucks program helps fund a match of purchases at Farmers Markets for low-income recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, promoting more healthy eating by increasing accessibility of fresh fruits and vegetables. This investment is important because the Fresh Bucks program is supported by federal funding which is not expected to be renewed by the Trump Administration. Additional health investments will also address food insecurity for households that do not qualify for SNAP or who may be unauthorized immigrants.
The Education Action Plan is the result of the City’s inclusive process that began in 2016 by bringing various communities together to address education disparities for African-American/Black students and students of color. The City heard from a total of over 2,000 parents, teachers, and advocates on how best to combat these disparities across 20 community conversations, on-line forums, and Seattle’s first citywide Education Summit in over 25 years. From those conversations, an Advisory Group was formed of representatives from the City, Seattle Public Schools, community organizations, businesses, philanthropies and education advocates to create recommendations that would address the opportunity gap.
President Donald Trump’s full education budget proposal for fiscal 2018 would make notable cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, and leverage existing programs for disadvantaged students and K-12 innovation to promote school choice, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Trump’s full education funding blueprint would cut $9.2 billion, or 13.6 percent, from the Education Department’s current $68 billion budget, said the report, based on still-unreleased budget documents. Also, the spending plan calls for the creation of a new, $1 billion federal grant program under Title I to allow students to take federal, state, and local dollars to their public school of choice. That money would be added to the $15.9 billion Title I receives this budget year, fiscal 2017 that current funding is not “portable” to public schools of choice and goes out by formula.
Both the cuts and the new grant for Title I, along with other aspects of the full budget proposal expected to be released as early as next week, are consistent with Trump’s preliminary budget released in mid-March...
There’s been a lot of speculation in the K-12 policy world about how President Donald Trump will handle education issues in rural America, where he won overwhelming support in the 2016 election. One part of the puzzle could be how he decides to deal with the the Secure Rural Schools program.
The program is designed to provide additional support for schools and local governments affected by activities on federal lands and is linked to revenue from timber harvests on those lands. Before 2000, school districts and counties got a fixed percentage of this revenue, but as this timber-related revenue declined, local governments’ share of the money declined accordingly. In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act and changed the way these payments were structured.
Secure Rural Schools impacts 4,400 schools and 9 million students in 775 districts. The program is controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The program received $278 million in federal cash in fiscal year 2015, but the funding dropped to $58 million in fiscal 2016. A half-dozen years ago, in fiscal 2011, U.S. Forest Service payments to localities (including districts) topped $300 million. The single biggest state beneficiary of the program, you may not be surprised to hear, has historically been Oregon, with California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington also receiving relatively large payments…
The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, reaffirmed the status of arts classes as “core academic subjects” alongside English, math, social studies, science, and other content areas.
Over the past decade, the body of research surrounding the power of the arts to foster social-emotional learning, combat absenteeism, and generate an engaged, positive school community has continued to grow. For instance, a study spearheaded by the Kennedy Center’s Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) Program, analyzed a decade of research based on sixteen participating schools, more than 400 teachers, and more than 3,000 students. Data collected from interviews, surveys, grades, test scores, and attendance records indicates that integrating the arts had a profound impact on closing achievement gaps, particularly for students from low-income families and English language learners. Moreover, when compared to their peers who were not regularly receiving arts instruction, teachers participating in CETA reported a “more positive and cohesive” learning environment, citing increased peer collaboration and improved social skills in the classroom.
Likewise, in 2012, a study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts analyzed four K–12 longitudinal datasets provided by the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The research, which focused on youth at risk of dropping out of school, finds that high school students partaking in arts courses tended to have higher grade point averages and were at least five times more likely to graduate as compared to their peers who did not earn arts credits. While causation between arts instruction and this data cannot be proven explicitly, the study highlights a strong correlation between arts involvement and high school graduation rates.
However, despite these promising developments, some districts still make cuts to their arts programs when faced with budget constraints and other challenges. While a recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that the vast majority of schools nationwide offer some type of arts programming (94 percent), the quality of programming provided varies widely. This has given way to an economic and racial opportunity gap in the field. For instance, a 2009 study about arts education conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office finds that in the years studied, the schools that cut time for arts instruction were more likely to serve high percentages of students of color, students from low-income families, and students labeled as “in need of academic improvement.”
So why should schools prioritize an arts curriculum when students are struggling to make academic gains in content areas like math and reading?
Elizabeth Whitford, the executive director of Arts Corps, an organization dedicated to closing the arts opportunity gap in Seattle, Washington, strives to answer this question. “What we learn through the arts is that—because it’s so centered in self-expression and student voice—it’s a very motivating modality through which young people can learn,” Whitford explains. “And because there’s often no right answer in the arts, it really promotes creative, critical- and process-oriented thinking—the types of transferable twenty-first-century skills that young people need to have stepping forward.”
Two years ago, Art Corps launched a program known as the Creative Schools Initiative, which predominantly serves students of color and students from low-income families. This multi-year initiative, funded in part by ED’s Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant, imbeds teaching artists into four of Seattle’s economically disadvantaged middle schools to assist classroom teachers in integrating the arts into other core content areas. According to Whitford, the results of the initiative are promising, including improved attendance rates and higher levels of engagement in their academics.
When implemented well, the arts bring a sense of community into the classroom, foster decision-making skills, and promote cultural awareness that transcends the walls of the school. Furthermore, for some students arts education helps them get through the day, which sheds light on the improved attendance records seen in schools served by Art Corps and CETA. As Whitford explains, “This is the modality through which some students learn best, and yet they don’t have access. So in taking away the arts, you’re taking away the joy in learning for those young people, the thing that would make them get up and go to school.”
As ESSA moves through the implementation process, states should be aware of opportunities to promote arts education and reaffirm its status as a core academic subject, particularly through the Title IV, Part A Student Success and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) Grants program.
This grant program, originally authorized by the U.S. Congress for $1.65 billion, encompasses several older grant programs (like the Advanced Placement Test Fee Program) in addition to funding several new areas of student learning. Schools can use SSAE grants to fund programs that ensure a well-rounded curriculum, promote a healthy school climate, or integrate technology in the classroom.
Unfortunately, SSAEG—which could support arts education and other school climate initiatives—is currently at-risk for being drastically underfunded by Congress, with both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives proposing just $300 million and $1 billion, respectively. Failure to fund SSAEG at the full amount could reduce critical funding for arts education nationwide.
In helping students establish a sense of identity, arts education simultaneously helps schools establish a sense of community—a vital component in the quest for positive school climate. If fully funded, SSAEG could allow more schools to launch and prioritize these initiatives across the country, providing millions of underserved districts with the opportunity to transform their school environments and assist their students in cultivating twenty-first–century skills.
Earlier this week, the Brookings Institution released the fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, which ranks school choice in the largest school districts in the U.S.
During her address, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos claimed that “parents are the primary point of accountability.” When asked about policies that ensure that schools of choice are actually improving student performance, she answered that “the policies around empowering parents and moving the decision-making to the hands of parents on behalf of children is really the direction we need to go.” She later repeated the idea that transparency and information, coupled with parental choice, equated to accountability.
While it is indeed important to communicate information on school choice, transparency and information are only part of the accountability puzzle. In addition to these components, states also use accountability to ensure that schools that fail to meet academic or financial standards are improved or closed.
This is of particular importance for public charter schools, who have been given the authority to operate independently of school districts and many state rules or regulations. Accountability rules assure that students are learning and that public funds are spent responsibly.
While the accountability measures used for charter schools to demonstrate quality performance vary from state to state, they do exist, and they include more than just reporting information to parents.
Forty-three states had charter school laws in place when we completed this analysis (not including Kentucky, which passed a bill in March 2017 to allow charter schools). We examined four points of accountability within the charter school policies as recorded by the Education Commission of the States: annual reporting, specifications for termination, performance-thresholds, and technical assistance.
Annual Reporting
Most states require charter schools to submit annual reports as a part of their accountability obligations. Some annual reporting requirements include annual report cards, education progress reports, curriculum development, attendance rates, graduation rates, and college admission test scores. Many states that do not require annual reports still require financial reports, which speaks to the other side of accountability, appropriate usage of funds.
Some states, such as Washington, require charter schools to provide the same annual school performance reports as non-charter schools.
In Ohio, each charter is required to disseminate the state Department of Education’s school report card report to all parents.
North Carolina requires its charter schools to publish their report performance ratings, awarded by the State Board of Education, on the internet. If the rating is D or F, the charter school must send written notice to parents. North Carolina also requires specific data reporting related to student reading.
State Specification for Termination
Forty-two states specify the grounds for terminating a charter school, fostering accountability by establishing standards and consequences of failure to adhere to those standards. Failure to demonstrate academic achievement and failure to increase overall school performance are among the terms cited as grounds of termination among some states.
These state specifications for termination do not only apply to performance levels; they can be applied to a violation of any part of the charter law or agreement, such as fraud, failure to meet audit requirements, or failure to meet standards set for basic operations.
State Threshold
In addition to state specifications for termination, some states have set a threshold marking the lowest point where a school can perform before it is closed. Some states without a clearly communicated low-performance threshold have set other standards which specifically mark the lowest point of acceptable performance.
Setting a minimum threshold for performance for the automatic closure of failing schools may increase charter school accountability, and encourage high performance.
State-Provided Technical Assistance
Technical assistance to charter schools included leadership training or mentoring charter school leaders, or assistance with grant and application writing and other paperwork related to charter school operation.
In addition to holding charter schools accountable for high performance, several states offer technical assistance to ensure that charter school administrators understand how requirements are measured, and can be directed to resources to assist them with achieving performance goals, especially if they are at risk of closure due to failing to meet previously established standards.
These are clear displays of school accountability policies that help to ensure that parents have truly good schools from which to schools. Accountability relies not only on information for parents, but also consequences for schools that fail to educate students or use taxpayer dollars responsibly.
[1] The following states also require annual financial audits with their annual performance reports: Arkansas, Arizona, DC, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Michigan, Texas, Utah
[2]Utah requires the most comprehensive technical assistance offerings, provided by the state charter school board which includes: assistance with the application and approval process for charter school authorization, locating private funding and support sources, and understanding and implementing charter requirements.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told an audience at the Brookings Institution Wednesday that she wouldn’t necessarily approve every state’s plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act right off the bat. And at the same event, she continued to push her favorite policy: school choice.
DeVos didn’t say specifically that states would have to embrace choice in their plans in order to pass muster with the department. But the juxtaposition still had some folks nervous, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who told Politico that she hopes DeVos “clarifies her comments and makes it clear that she does not plan to threaten states or hold their proposals hostage unless they conform to her privatization agenda.”
So, could DeVos legally reject a state’s plan because it didn’t include choice, even if she wanted to?
Short answer: No. That would be a violation of ESSA.
Longer answer: Both Democrats and Republicans who worked on ESSA say doing that would violate the long, long list of prohibitions on the Education Department’s authority in the law, one of which says the secretary can’t tell states what kinds of interventions they can or can’t use with their lowest-performing schools.
To be sure, there are definitely parts of ESSA that choice lovin’ states and districts can get excited about. The law allows states to set aside Title I money for course choice, free tutoring, and public school choice. It permits states and districts to offer public school choice to students in struggling schools, or turn low-performing schools into charters or magnets. And it gives 50 districts the chance to try out a weighted student funding pilot. The pilot could smooth the way for choice programs in districts that are interested in creating them, but doesn’t have to be used for choice.
Importantly, though, all those things are totally and completely optional.
DeVos can use her megaphone as education secretary to draw attention to the parts of ESSA that states and districts that are gung-ho on choice can use to their advantage. But she can’t reject a state’s application if they say thanks-but-no-thanks to setting aside some Title I funds for course choice.
“She can cajole, plead, request, etc. but she cannot require,” said a Senate GOP aide who worked on ESSA.
And that interpretation is bipartisan. Anne Hyslop, a former Obama administration official who worked on ESSA and is now at Chiefs for Change, tweeted something pretty similar.
@benjaminjriley short answer: based only on statute, having a hard time finding the hook. Choice is totally optional in title I.
Photo: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos talks with Russ Whitehurst, senior fellow in the Center on Children and Families in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution, on March 29 in Washington.
Any lingering questions over how aggressively the Trump administration was going to pursue school privatization were answered on March 16 with the release of its FY2018-19 budget proposal. If approved by Congress, federal education programs will be slashed across the board, all to pay for an initial down payment of $1.4 billion this fiscal year on a national expansion of private school voucher programs. The eventual price tag for the program will be $20 billion annually.
It doesn’t matter how their proponents try to disguise them – education savings accounts, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships – vouchers are destructive and misguided schemes that use taxpayer dollars to “experiment with our children’s education without any evidence of real, lasting positive results,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García,
That was also the consensus of a panel of experts who convened recently at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank based in Washington D.C, to explore the implications of the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. The discussion focused on three ways school vouchers pose a danger to the nation’s most vulnerable students, which were identified by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a memo to her Senate colleagues and summarized in her keynote remarks.
Vouchers Help Private Schools Skirt Accountability and Transparency
Strong accountability measures help prevent students from falling through the cracks. “We fly blind without the information we need to make sure our students are succeeding,” said Murray. “We strive to make accountability as effective as possible. ‘Unfortunately that system breaks down completely when it comes to public money going to private schools.”
Unlike public schools, private schools have almost complete autonomy with regard to how they operate: who they teach, what they teach, how they teach, how — if at all — they measure student achievement, how they manage their finances, and what they are required to disclose to parents and the public.
In addition to the financial fraud and abuse that some voucher programs have generated, students in these programs often end up doing worse academically. “We’ve seen real negative impacts on achievement,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of the Brookings Institution. Recent evaluations of voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana and Ohio found that students attending private schools on a voucher scored worse than their public school counterparts on reading and math assessments.
Vouchers Fund Discrimination
Anna Caudill, a parent of a special needs child in Tennessee, told the CAP audience that vouchers do give students a choice: “You can trade your child’s federally-protected civil rights under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for a one-time monetary amount to pay for private school tuition.”
After her son fell too far behind academically in public school, Caudill looked for another option. Her family was offered an “Individualized Education Account,” the state’s version of a voucher. The Caudills would have received $6,300 – as long as their son waived his rights under IDEA. They also would have had to re-enroll annually with no guarantees they would receive the same amount. And even with the voucher, Caudill’s family still wouldn’t have been able to afford full-time private school instruction.
The best solution is for Congress to fully fund IDEA. Caudill said. “I believe in public schools. I believe that general and special education teachers with support from their districts and their states are the best equipped professionals to address the unique learning needs of students with disabilities.”
Neena Chaudhry, Director of Education and Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center pointed out that vouchers use taxpayer dollars to discriminate against many other vulnerable groups. “We see this regarding LGBT students and students of color especially,” Chaudhry said.
Some voucher-funded, private religious schools in the South, for example, have explicitly anti-gay policies. And a recent study from the Century Foundation found that voucher programs actually increase racial segregation. Some states have expanded eligibility to include more higher-income families, who are more likely to be able to take advantage of the voucher. “Vouchers can be used as tools of white flight,” Chaudhry explained.
Accountability is critical because “allowing private schools to operate in the dark will only exacerbate these problems.” Even under a new national voucher program, states can find ways to skirt federal civil rights protections. In fact, Chaudhry warned, members of Congress may design the legislation to make that easier.
Vouchers Leave Communities and Students Behind
In many remote areas of the country, private schools are simply not an option. An expansion of vouchers nationwide, Senator Murray said, could “devastate rural schools.” She cited the example of the tiny community of Plevna, Montana, where the closest non-boarding private achool is 240 miles away. “If funding is diverted to private schools, not only would the school in Plevna sever, its students wouldn’t even be able to access the private school that are receiving public funds,” Murray explained.
A new CAP analysis on vouchers found that there 9,000 “sparse” school districts (five or fewer schools) that would be decimated by a national voucher program. The ability of an additional 2200 “average” districts (5-8 schools) to serve all its students would be seriously undermined. Together, “sparse” and “average” districts constitute roughly 85% of the nation’s regular school districts.
Cassia County School District in south central Idaho has 17 schools but is still located in a remote area. “Our biggest challenge is funding,” said Superintendent Gaylen Smyer, “We have a hard time finding qualified teachers. and bringing in new opportunities for students so they can compete after they graduate. Vouchers are not going to help. If anything, I think they would just undermine our public schools.”
Is there a demand for vouchers in Idaho? “I’m not seeing it,” Smyer said. “Geographic distances pose a challenge for private schools to be set up and parents aren’t willing to transport their children a long way to a private school. So there’s no demand for vouchers in south central Idaho. Our focus is on improving all schools for all our students.”
Senator Murray calls the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda a “false choice,” because it leaves out the best option for students: strong, well-funded public schools in their own neighborhood. “Public schools by definition are open and inclusionary and many students thrive in their neighborhood schools,” Murray said.
But the federal government must make the proper investments and “ensure that the states are creating strong accountability and improvement mechanisms so that groups of students previously denied access to an equitable education do not fall through the cracks once again.”
For some time, lawmakers have been pondering what should go into a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Now GOP lawmakers overseeing education issues in Congress appear set to take another crack at updating the law, which was last renewed in 2008.
In a recent story, we looked at some issues lawmakers will be tackling in a refreshed HEA that are likely to have an impact on public schools, and in particular those students who are preparing to make the transition from secondary to postsecondary life. It’s clearly on Sen. Lamar Alexander’s mind—the Senate education committee chairman and Tennessee Republican recently told us that reauthorizing the law will be his committee’s “major focus” over the next year.
Among those issues are what kind of information about colleges and universities prospective students will be able to see. The Obama administration released a new “College Scorecard” with information about debt loads and graduation rates. But it’s based on a limited pool of information, and skeptics question whether the information is particularly useful (or used often) by prospective students…
![[ESSA] State Plan Versions That Have Been Released So Far](https://nnpa.org/essa/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/essa-posts-featured_0060_iStock-460421987-1-1080x600.png)
Any lingering questions over how aggressively the Trump administration was going to pursue school privatization were answered on March 16 with the release of its FY2018-19 budget proposal. If approved by Congress, federal education programs will be slashed across the board, all to pay for an initial down payment of $1.4 billion this fiscal year on a national expansion of private school voucher programs. The eventual price tag for the program will be $20 billion annually.
Strong accountability measures help prevent students from falling through the cracks. “We fly blind without the information we need to make sure our students are succeeding,” said Murray. “We strive to make accountability as effective as possible. ‘Unfortunately that system breaks down completely when it comes to public money going to private schools.”
Anna Caudill, a parent of a special needs child in Tennessee, told the CAP audience that vouchers do give students a choice: “You can trade your child’s federally-protected civil rights under the 
In many remote areas of the country, private schools are simply not an option. An expansion of vouchers nationwide, Senator Murray said, could “devastate rural schools.” She cited the example of the tiny community of Plevna, Montana, where the closest non-boarding private achool is 240 miles away. “If funding is diverted to private schools, not only would the school in Plevna sever, its students wouldn’t even be able to access the private school that are receiving public funds,” Murray explained.