Although not the primary focus of his reelection campaign, President George Bush outlined his education policy agenda for a second term.  Proposals included:

• Building on NCLB: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed with broadly bipartisan support three years ago, introducing tough accountability measures, testing, and expanded choice for pupils in low-performing schools. President Bush proposes a focus on high schools with annual testing of pupils in grades 9 – 11 (ages 15-17) and extra help for struggling readers in middle and high schools through the Striving Readers initiative.
  
  

• School choice: NCLB allows pupils to transfer out of low-performing schools into better ones. The law does not allow for vouchers to be used to attend private schools, although President Bush was a strong supporter of the first federal private school voucher program established in the District of Columbia earlier this year. He supports extra funding for charter schools.
  
  
• Teacher quality: The agenda proposes a $500 million Teacher Incentive Plan with $5,000 awards for 100,000 “effective” teachers.
  
  
• Early Childhood: Having instituted testing of Head Start children in literacy and numeracy, President Bush proposes that the federally-funded preschool program for low-income children focus on readiness for school. Proposals to have low-income parents trained in early literacy through Head Start are also included. Reuthorisation of Head Start has languished in the current session of Congress and will be revisited in 2005.
  
  
• Math and Science: With the goal of increasing math and science achievement in high schools, a proposed Mathematics and Science Partnership program would provide funding for more professional development for teachers.

Not all of President Bush’s agenda will be funded. Indeed, Congress passed the spending bill for the new fiscal year at the end of 2004 and there are cuts for most domestic departments, including education. Election proposals which have not been funded include:

• making Advanced Placement (college level preparatory courses) more available to low-income pupils (by teacher training)
• $40 million for an Adjunct Teacher Corps to encourage professionals outside of education to teach part-time in middle and high schools

Although funding for NCLB has increased, it still falls short of the funding requested by President Bush. Funding for education, in general, is less than requested.

The Education Trust, an organization which advocates for higher achievement of disadvantaged students, has issued a report on the No Child Left Behind Act. It suggests progress is being made on tests scores and closing the achievement gap between white and minority pupils in most states. The authors of the report attribute some of the progress to NCLB. However, they also say that progress is moving too slowly for all pupils to meet the required standards by the federal deadline of 2014. The report suggests states should be held more accountable for providing high quality teachers and a better system of tracking graduation rates.

Read a summary of Measured Progress and find out more about the Education Trust.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that states are struggling to implement the No Child Left Behind Act and that the US Education Department needs to do more to help.

Although all states, and the District of Columbia, received approval last January for their testing and accountability plans in compliance with the new law, most were approved with conditions and few have received final approval. State officials, however, appear comfortable with the pace of negotiation with the Education Department.

The report also says that states are struggling with the required data collection to comply with the law. Poor tracking of data is an obstacle to proper implementation of the law which requires student information and performance data to ensure ‘adequate yearly progress’ (AYP).

Read highlights of No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements Needed in Education's Process for Tracking States' Implementation of Key Revisions, or the full report.

The US Department of Education has released a booklet, A Guide to Education and No Child Left Behind which gives a brief history of education in the USA, statistics on the number of students and schools, and a definition of the federal role in education and what the education law, No Child Left Behind, means.

(Source: Education Week, Oct. 13, 2004; Oct. 20, 2004)

Margaret Spellings has succeeded Rodney Paige as Secretary of Education in President Bush’s second term cabinet. Ms. Spellings has been a key domestic policy advisor to President Bush, and their affiliation goes back as far as his days campaigning for Texas Governor. Ms. Spellings was a key architect of the No Child Left Behind Act, and her appointment has been welcomed, in general, by both Republicans and Democrats.

Read the White House press release on Margaret Spellings appointment.

Last summer Mayor Richard Daley announced his proposal to shut down 60 of the city’s worst performing schools and re-open them as 100 smaller schools.  The reform is known as Renaissance 2010. Mayor Daley has been in charge of Chicago’s public schools since 1995 when state law handed power over to him.

Chicago’s public schools, which make up the third-largest school system in the USA, have been at the forefront of education reform for the past two decades, with changes in school governance (formation of local school councils – or LSCs) in the mid-80s) and the move towards more accountability and closing failing schools in the 1990s. However, many schools are still performing well below national averages.  

Renaissance 2010 will affect 20 high schools and 40-50 elementary schools. The proposal is to re-open a third of the schools as charter schools, one third as independently operated contract schools, and the rest as small schools run by the district. (Contract schools are defined as being “closely tied to the district and subject to state regulations such as school year minimums and mandated holidays…they will be given the freedom to hire their own staffs, set pay, decide the length of the school day and design curriculum” according to a state education official.)

The experiment will rely on private sector involvement and investment. Already $50 million has been provided by private foundations with an interest in small school initiatives.

Teachers unions are concerned about yet another phase of reform with ideas which are untested in the long term. They are also concerned about businesses being committed to the long haul. Parents have voiced concern about their children being used as “guinea pigs”. Officials view the experiment as a necessary move to attempt to improve a system where little else has worked.

(Sources: Chicago Tribune June 25 and 27, 2004; Education Week July 14, 2004; Christian Science Monitor Sept. 21, 2004)

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education approved a plan in October to divide every middle and high school into smaller units of around 350 – 500 pupils within the next five years.

The plan will affect 131 schools in total.  Some high schools in the Los Angeles district enroll up to 5,000 pupils. Details of the plan have not yet been worked out. Some schools might specialize in the arts while others might follow existing magnet school models.

Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston are large urban school systems which have been experimenting with charter, contract or small schools in the hope of improving graduation rates and the numbers of pupils pursuing post-secondary education. Partial funding for the plan will come from the Gates Foundation which supports small school initiatives.

For more information visit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

After two years in development, the 'What Works' Clearinghouse was launched in July. Funded by the US Department of Education, the clearinghouse will vet research on programs and strategies and publish research findings. The service is part of the Bush administration’s demand for the use of more evidence or scientifically-based programs in education.

The US Department of Education makes clear that it does not endorse any of the listings. The clearinghouse is meant to be a useful tool for policy makers and practitioners to access research findings more easily.

There are stringent standards for inclusion in the clearinghouse and, possibly for that reason, listings are fairly limited at the moment (the current focus is middle school math curricula).  However, future topics include ‘beginning reading’, ‘character education’ and ‘drop-out prevention’.

(Source: Education Week July 14, 2004)

President Bush's second term education agenda includes proposals affecting Higher Education. These proposals include:

• Math and Science: With funding from the Mathematics and Science Partnership program (mentioned in item one above), President Bush wants to create a public-private partnership offering $100 million to low-income college students who study math or science.
  
• Community colleges: A $250 million program which would strengthen the role of community colleges in workforce development is proposed along with $125 million to encourage community colleges to offer programs allowing high school students to earn college credit.
  
• Financial aid: The President proposes increasing the maximum federal grant for low-income college students by $100 for five years.  He also proposes restructuring the government’s student loan system with the goal of saving money which could be put toward financial aid (Pell Grant program). The appropriations bill recently passed by Congress maintains the maximum Pell Grant at $4,050 for the third year in a row.

Congress passed legislation in October that would extend the Higher Education Act until the end of September 2005. The current HEA was due to expire in November. Work on reauthorization of the HEA will begin early this year after members of the 109th session of the US Congress are sworn in this month.

The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act which authorizes funding for career and technical education (and is considered one of the largest federal investments in high schools) also ran out of time in this session of Congress. Updated versions of the law passed the House and Senate education committees, but they did not make it to the floor of either chamber. There are key differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. The Senate version does not include some of the President’s proposals to streamline funding (fearing cuts in programs) and emphasizes stronger academic and technical skills with increased accountability. There is, however, stronger bipartisan cooperation on this bill than in other areas of education and the reauthorization will be taken up by the new Congress this year.

High school pupils in Massachusetts who do well in their final examinations will not have to pay tuition at state universities. The state board of education has created scholarships for the top 25% of pupils in each school district. Pupils must score well in the math and reading sections of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).

It is hoped that the scheme, known as the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship Program, will be an incentive for low-income pupils to do well in the MCAS. However, it has been pointed out that tuition at public universities in Massachusetts accounts for only about 25% of the total cost of attending an institution. Potential students would have to find additional sources of funding to cover fees and living costs. The scholarship will be made available to pupils graduating from high school in 2005.

(Source: Education Week Nov. 3, 2004)

A number of flagship state universities are reporting the smallest number of African-American applicants in years, despite the Supreme Court ruling eighteen months ago that race could still be a factor in admissions for institutions seeking a diverse and representative campus. (For background on the Supreme Court ruling and the University of Michigan, go to US Education Update 18.)

The trend, although not uniform, is widespread enough to be causing concern among admissions officers. The decline in minority applications is particularly affecting competitive state universities which struggle to maintain diversity on campus. No single cause has been identified; however, a number of reasons have been suggested:

• Change in the application process – regarding the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court allowed for race to be taken into consideration in the admissions process, but points could no longer be awarded automatically to a minority candidate. Now applicants are assessed on an individual basis and are required, for example, to write essays on how they would contribute to a diverse campus.
• The rising cost of tuition at state institutions
• Smaller pool of talented applicants (lower test scores among minorities)

Some flagship state universities, such as the University of Texas at Austin, have seen a rise in minority enrollment. The university enrolls the top ten percent of each graduating high school class, which includes schools with predominantly minority pupils. (For background, see US Education Update 17.)

(Source: The Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2004)

The National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) issued its independent report to Congress in June. The study, which took three years to compile, is the fourth since 1980 and the first study since 1994. NAVE looks specifically at the status of vocational education and the impact of the Perkins Act (the billion dollar federal law which invests in career and technical training and is up for reauthorization).

Key findings include:

• vocational education has important short and medium term economic benefits
• vocational students are now more likely to enroll in academically challenging classes compared to ten years ago
• vocational students lag behind their academic peers in test scores, completing high school and going on to college
• a “lack of clarity” in vocational education’s goals is seen to hamper progress
• teacher quality tends to be poorer in vocational classes

Download and read The National Assessment of Vocational Education Final Report to Congress for more information.

(Source: Education Week, July 14, 2004)