The House Education and the Workforce Committee has sent the Teacher Empowerment Act to the full House with changes that could weaken a focus on smaller class sizes. As reported earlier, the bill combines the Eisenhower Professional Development program, Goals 200, and President Clinton’s new teacher hiring initiative. The Act would create a $2 billion professional development program.
An amendment by Rep. William Goodling (R-PA), chair of the committee, would maintain the formulas for state allocations based on the components’ current base. The original bill, proposed by Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) would have distributed 50% of the funds based on population and the other half on the percentage of the population living in poverty. This formula would now come into play only if the appropriations for the new Act exceeded the amount of current grants to states.
States must allocate 80% of the funds to local education agencies (LEAs) based on the 50-50 split. The remaining 20% is reserved for a competitive grant program.
LEAs still must target their funds under the bill to schools with the highest proportion of out-of-field teachers, the largest class sizes, or have been identified for school improvement.
The bill would require states to inform the public about the status of teaching, including: the percentage of classes taught by out-of-field teachers and of core academic classes taught by emergency/provisional teachers and the average statewide class size.
Republicans praise the bill’s three-fold purpose–teacher excellence, smaller classes, and local choice. However, the bill does not define teacher quality but seems to rely on teacher certification as an indicator. As noted in CAPS Connection (Vol 3, No. 3), certification requirements in most states do not guarantee quality teachers.
The bill requires LEA to spend some funds to reduce class size, but also allows LEAs to spend the money allocated for class size reduction on additional special education teachers, even if this does not reduce overall class size. LEAs can apply for a waiver from the class size requirements in order to spend money on professional development.
Another provision would create teacher opportunity payments -- grants to teachers to choose their own professional development if they are in a consistently poor-performing LEA. This contradicts Title I provisions and standards-based reforms that focus on school-wide professional development plans.
The Center for Law and Education continues to meet with members of Congress to generate support for the Local Family Information Centers as part of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (see Vol 3, No. 2 issue of CAPS Connection or the members’ section of www.cleweb.org). The centers would be completely independent from a school district, operating as a non-profit organization, and would provide information and support to parents of students in Title I schools. CLE’s proposal calls for at least two such centers in each state.
For more information on how you can help support CLE’s work in this area and/or contact your member of Congress to push for the provision, please contact Christine Stoneman or Margot Rogers at 202/986-3000.
In an attempt to temper President Clinton’s seeming endorsement of retention policies to end social promotion, the U.S. Department of Education has released a guide, “Taking Responsibility for Ending Social Promotion: A Guide for Educators and State and Local Leaders.”
The guide is intended to help states, districts, and schools identify strategies and resources to help end the practice of promoting unprepared students by ensuring that all students have the opportunity and assistance they need to meet high standards. While it gives numerous helpful resources, the guide falls short of the mark by continuing to use examples of social promotion policies in Chicago, Boston, and other places that have been criticized by education and civil rights communities. The complaints focus on the districts’ failure to provide students with adequate opportunities to meet standards and their heavy or exclusive reliance on norm-referenced, standardized tests.
You can download the guide from the department’s website: http://www.ED.gov/pubs/socialpromotion
On the House side: Starting July 13th, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will hold hearings on “Comprehensive School Reform: Current Status and Issues” and “Small Programs in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (July 15, 1:30 pm). If you want copies of testimony from these hearings or schedules of upcoming events, go to http://thomas.loc.gov. Once you are on the website, click in succession: “Committee Pages,” then “House,” then “Committee on Education and the Workforce.”
On the Senate side: The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions resumed its schedule July 13 with a hearing on “Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Safe and Drug Free Schools.” On July 20th, it will hold a hearing on “Improving Use of Funds” under ESEA. For copies of testimony from these hearings or schedules of upcoming events, go to http://thomas.loc.gov;. Once at the website, click in succession “Committee Pages,” then “Senate,” then “Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.”