Federal Update - February 13, 2009
Brought
to you by your voice at the national level,
the Association of American
Educators.
Final Version of Stimulus Package Provides Roughly $100 Billion for Education
New Report Sheds More Light on Alternative Certification
"What Arne Duncan Thinks of No Child Left Behind"
Margaret Spellings to Continue Work in Education
KIPP Charter School Success Documented in New Book
Final Version of Stimulus Package Provides Roughly $100 Billion for Education
"After days of tense negotiations, congressional leaders hope to begin voting as early as Friday on a nearly $800 billion economic-stimulus bill that would provide some $100 billion for education.
"The compromise agreement, worked out by a House and Senate conference committee, would provide $53.6 billion for a state fiscal-stabilization fund, including $39.5 billion that local school districts could use to avert staff layoffs and programmatic cutbacks and to pay for school modernization, among other purposes."
For more information:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/02/12/21stimdeal_web.html?r=1611013995
New Report Sheds More Light on Alternative Certification
The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences has released a new report on alternative certification.
"The report, An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification, compares the achievement of elementary school students in the same grade, at the same school who were randomly assigned to teachers who chose to be trained through different routes to certification - traditional education school routes and alternative routes. The evaluation found that students of teachers who chose to enter teaching through an alternative route did not perform statistically different from students of teachers who chose a traditional route to teaching."
For more information:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094043/
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094043/pdf/20094043.pdf
"What Arne Duncan Thinks of No Child Left Behind"
From U.S. News and World Report:
"As the former leader of Chicago Public Schools, [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan lived through what he called the unintended consequences of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Duncan supports the focus on accountability for student achievement, but he wants to make the law less punitive. 'I know there are schools that are beating the odds where students are getting better every year, and they are labeled failures, and that can be discouraging and demoralizing,' he says."
Duncan also commented on higher education, as well as the section of the congressional stimulus package designated for schools.
For more information:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2009/02/05/what-arne-duncan-thinks-of-no-child-left-behind.html
Margaret Spellings to Continue Work in Education
"President Bush has left town, but former Education secretary Margaret Spellings says she'll remain until 2010, spending part of her time burnishing Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which is due for reauthorization.
"Spellings says she's confident her successor, former Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan, will keep the law's core goal intact: closing the achievement gap between middle-class and poor children."
For more information:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-02-01-spellings_N.htm
KIPP Charter School Success Documented in New Book
"KIPP's [Knowledge is Power Program] unlikely rise is the subject of Work Hard. Be Nice., a new book by Washington Post education columnist and longtime reporter Jay Mathews. He spent two years visiting 31 KIPP schools and interviewing its two founders, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, as well as the parents, teachers and thinkers who influenced them.
"Mathews says the key to KIPP is simple: It has figured out how to 'harness the power of teaching in a big way ... as fuel for that flame, you give those grate teachers more time in the day to teach.'"
For more information:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-02-11-kipp-knowledge-power_N.htm