Senate expected to pass No Child Left Behind revision

Reauthorization was last done under No Child Left Behind, which imposed sanctions on schools whose students did not score as proficient on reading and math assessments.

“NCLB had been a real problem for our teachers and our schools”, Welch said.

A bill that replaces the landmark education bill sailed easily through the House last week. “With that comes new threats to student data privacy that never existed before, and it’s imperative that our educators have the resources and education they need to protect personal student information”. As education blogger Mercedes Schneider wrote, “The federal government is trying to force the testing without taking responsibility for forcing the testing”.

The conference committee quickly moved to approve a bipartisan framework for updating No Child Left Behind.

Vermont will no longer have to identify failing schools and apply for waivers for the state’s schools under the new law.

No Child Left Behind has been roundly condemned as a test-and-punish approach that treated a single standardized test score as a full representation of a school’s worth. In Vermont, 73 percent of schools were unable to meet that expectation.

The original intent of No Child Left Behind was to provide a quality education to all students regardless of their ZIP code or family income. It prohibits the federal government from requiring states to adopt Common Core. Those dollars would remain at struggling schools. It doesn’t. It sets up several new federal education programs (albeit desirable ones – STEM and Civics), continues failed pre-school programs and locks them in for another four years.

The new bill gives states the power to determine how much weight to give test scores when evaluating teachers.

Vermont will also have discretion in how it chooses to deal with chronically underperforming schools. They misunderstand the justified anger that fuels the test refusal movement. Unlike under NCLB where schools with lower than 95 percent participation rates were automatically labelled failing, local districts and states can decide what to do when a school doesn’t make it. States are expected to consider low participation on the tests as part of their accountability system.

A new education law promises more local control for school districts while maintaining federal oversight of student outcomes. Those alternative measures could include successful completion of advanced coursework, as well as portfolios and performance tasks to demonstrate achievement. Students could refuse to take the tests, but if enough of them do, then their state would risk losing federal education aid. CAT also provide immediate feedback to the classroom teacher to allow for adjustments in teaching each child. States, however, would be required to intervene in the nation’s lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, in high school “dropout factories” and in schools with persistent achievement gaps – something Democrats insisted must be part of any education overhaul. He said he isn’t sure how the additional funding will help Vermont yet. And it ensures that there will be plans to put strong teachers in schools where they’re needed most. Out of the eight tests, only two were federally required.

Assembly Bill 165: The Nevada Education Choice Scholarship Program, also known as Opportunity Scholarships, offers tax credits for businesses who donate money for students of low-income families to attend a private school of their choice.

Washington will not play any part in teacher evaluations.

NCLB’s demise is long overdue and will be the first step in giving Texas teachers, students and parents a voice in shaping the “next generation” of accountability.

There are also funds in Title II for peer-led, evidence based professional development for teachers.

Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk. “I am pleased that the Act maintains a commitment to standards, but now more state and district driven”, said Greenwich schools Superintendent William McKersie. That’s instead of Washington mandating what critics had dubbed a one-size-fits-all approach to governing the country’s 100,000 public schools.

Ultimately, Uncle Sam’s boot has been lifted from the neck of each state’s education system.

The brainchild of Dean Kim Metcalf, the daylong event aims to focus on the education initiatives passed in the 2015 Legislature, which boosted spending in the state’s public school system by more than $400 million. Now, with the new law’s passage, that issue will be moot.