Legislative Hot Topics: Blog

There are two hearings of interest coming up this week that are of interest.  The Wednesday Senate hearing on the impact of sequestration is important because the pending January 2, 2013 sequestration will cut on average 9% from the Title I funding school districts are getting - about one-half the districts say that they have no information on the pending sequestration.  The Tuesday hearing is on alternative teacher certification a hot issue in the Congress.

Sequestration: Wednesday, July 25^th at 10 AM. The Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education will be holding a hearing on the impact of sequestration on education. This hearing was requested by the Committee for Education Funding in a letter to the chairman early this month.

The hearing will have the following witnesses:

Panel 1:

The Honorable Arne Duncan

Secretary United States Department of Education

Panel 2:

June Atkinson

State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Raleigh, North Carolina

Billy Walker

Superintendent

Randolph Field Independent School District

University City, Texas

Neal P. McCluskey

Associate Director

Center for Educational Freedom

The Cato Institute

Tammy Mann

President and CEO

The Campagna Center

Alternative Teacher Certification: On Tuesday, July 24^th at 10:00 AM, the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education will be holding a hearing:

On May 30th a webinar was held to discuss a draft toolkit for IRA state councils.  This toolkit is being designed to help the councils to work with state and local district education agencies to help implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  What many are not aware is that the CCSS is not a curriculum but rather a set of ideas that will need to be interpreted into curricula and then teachers and administrators will need to refocus instruction to implement that curriculum.  Who is going to do this?  States have almost no resources to implement.  Take a look at this webinar to see some ideas and also look at the CCSS for state councils May 2012.pdf  slides.  Please contact Rich Long with feedback about what make sense, what needs to be changed.  This is a draft, so comments are most welcome - rlong@reading.org

http://connectpro49244956.adobeconnect.com/p85wfmm0xbx/

On May 22nd the US Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan announced a new Race to the Top competition aimed at providing resources to school districts to support an increased emphasis on personalized education.  The announcement specifically outlined the draft criteria for this program and invited comments to be filed with US ED by June 8th. 

In summary this is a $400 million competition that will make awards to 15 to 20 school districts (or groups of school districts).  Each application will need to reflect their program's emphasis (or some say acceptance) of the prinicipals of school system reform reflective in the administration's other initiatives (teacher and principal evaluation, use of data, college and career ready standards, etc.) and increase attention on personalized education. 

From the USED's handout "Fast Facts" the absolute Priority 1, Persoanlized Learning Environment(s) includes this definition.  The environments are "designed to significantly;

improve teaching and learning through the persoanlization of strategies;

tools and supports for teachers and students that are aligned with college- andcareer-ready standards; 

increase the effectiveness of educators, and

expand student access to the most effective educators inorder to raise student achievement; decrease the achievement gap across student groups; and increase the rates at which students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers."

For more information to to: www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-district