K-12 Education Is Focus of More Activity

June 22 saw a lot of activity on the K-12 education front. New legislation was introduced in the House and Senate to expand states’ ability to waive federal education regulations. In addition, a Senate hearing in preparation for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) focused on teacher professional development. While the new bills would decrease the federal government’s control over use of its education dollars, witnesses at the hearing testified to the importance of maintaining a federal emphasis on issues such as professional development. One related her experience that transferring funding responsibilities to a state government resulted in a good program going “down a black hole.”

The House bill (H.R. 2300) and Senate bill (S. 1266), both introduced on June 22 and entitled the “Academic Achievement for All Act” or the “Straight A’s Act,” would enable states to apply to the Secretary of Education for a waiver of some ESEA funding requirements, including the Eisenhower Professional Development program and its focus on science and math. States would have to submit a five-year performance plan and measure the progress toward goals determined by the state. The legislation incorporates improved student achievement, and narrowing gaps in student achievement, as goals, but basically leaves it up to the states to choose any other priorities. This legislation would go further than the Ed-Flex Act (signed into law on April 29), which included language - written by Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) - requiring states to ensure that the underlying intent of the federal requirements (such as science and math professional development) was being met in some way.

The bills have the support of the Republican leadership; House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is a cosponsor of H.R. 2300, while Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) has signed on to S. 1266. The House bill has 81 Republicans and one Democrat as cosponsors; the Senate bill has 10 cosponsors, all Republicans. It is of note that neither of the physicists in Congress, Reps. Vern Ehlers and Rush Holt (D-NJ), both on the Education and Workforce Committee, have yet signed onto the House bill. In the Senate, neither has Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman James Jeffords (R-VT), a chief architect of the ongoing ESEA reauthorization process.

The same day that the two bills were introduced, Jeffords spent the morning listening earnestly and asking thoughtful questions as a panel of educators spoke to his committee about what works and what is needed in the federal government’s professional development programs for teachers. Jeffords and the panel agreed that efforts to raise the quality of teaching constitute one of the most important factors in student achievement, and student achievement - as one witness stated - “is the bottom line.” When states and local school districts are looking for savings, Jeffords said, “professional development dollars many times are the first sacrificed. That is why the federal funds for professional development are so significant.” He cited a recent report which found traditional approaches to teacher training “relatively ineffective,” and asked how the reauthorizing legislation could help improve the situation.

The witnesses, citing both personal experience and recent data, agreed unanimously on a number of factors necessary for successful professional development: programs must be focused on classroom situations; be sustained over time; emphasize content knowledge; facilitate teacher collaboration and mentoring; and allow sufficient time for teachers to practice and incorporate the lessons. Emphasizing the brief and uncoordinated nature of many traditional in-service activities, Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, referred to them as “drive-by workshops.”

The educators generally praised ESEA and the Eisenhower program. Asked by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) about proposals to block grant federal education money to the states, they almost unanimously opposed block granting. Emily Feistritzer, president of the National Center for Education Information, cited a move in the early 1980s to transfer to her state the funding and control responsibilities for a series of teachers’ centers. What happened, she said, was that “the programs went down a black hole immediately. They went from very effective federally-funded programs to nothing.... Where the money went is anybody’s guess.” Barbara Schneider, director of a professional development lab for a New York city school district, commented that in her experience, block granting tended to punish school districts that performed well; Weingarten added that in many school systems, “professional development is the first to go if there are competing needs.” She warned that effective teacher development “requires a whole lot of money"and takes time.

Jeffords called professional development one of the “most critical” components of ESEA, and promised to “make sure we do it right as best we can.”