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New York's draft of its request for a waiver of ESEA requirements is now ready for review and public comment. By submitting this request, New York is requesting flexibility through the waiver of specific ESEA provisions and their associated regulatory, administrative, and reporting requirements.

Last week, a group of around 25 education advocacy organizations, including influential players such as Democrats for Education Reform and The Education Trust, released a "statement of principles" on the role of teacher quality in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The statement, which is addressed to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House committees handling the reauthorization, lays out some guidelines for teacher-focused policy in ESEA (a draft of the full legislation was released this week; summary here).

"I first heard of Doug Christensen back in 2008, when he was still serving as Commissioner of Education in Nebraska. He was forced to resign because the locally-based assessment system he had developed there did not meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind - as described in this interview here. I connected with Christensen again a couple of years later, and we discussed the importance of local initiative and self determination. This week, I caught up with him again, as he has been on Capitol Hill, sharing his views with lawmakers wrestling with the reauthorization of ESEA. Here is what he has to say."

"The accountability provisions in Virginia's original application for "ESEA flexibility" (or "waiver") have received a great deal of criticism (see here, here, here and here). Most of this criticism focused on the Commonwealth's expectation levels, as described in "annual measurable objectives" (AMOs) - i.e., the statewide proficiency rates that its students are expected to achieve at the completion of each of the next five years, with separate targets established for subgroups such as those defined by race (black, Hispanic, Asian, white), income (subsidized lunch eligibility), limited English proficiency (LEP), and special education. Last week, in response to the criticism, Virginia agreed to amend its application, and it's not yet clear how specifically they will calculate the new rates (only that lower-performing subgroups will be expected to make faster progress). In the meantime, I think it's useful to review a few of the main criticisms that have been made over the past week or two and what they mean."

Today a new form of redlining is emerging. If passed, the long-awaited Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would build a bigger highway between low-performing schools serving high-need students-the so-called "bottom 5 percent"-and all other schools. Tragically, the proposed plan would weaken schools in the most vulnerable communities and further entrench the problems-concentrated poverty, segregation and lack of human and fiscal resources-that underlie their failure.

For months-no, years-the ESEA discussion has been nothing short of maddening. While many pundits decry the lack of a "clear route to reauthorization," an obvious bipartisan solution has been sitting there, ready for the picking. It goes something like this: Step away from federal heavy-handedness around states' accountability and teacher credentialing systems; keep plenty of transparency of results in place, especially test scores disaggregated by racial and other subgroups; offer incentives for embracing promising reforms instead of mandates; and give school districts a lot more flexibility to move their federal dollars around as they see fit.

"Our guest author today is Stephen Lazar, a founding teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, where he teaches Social Studies. A National Board certified teacher, he blogs at Outside the Cave. Stephen is also one of the organizers of Insightful Social Studies, a grass roots campaign of teachers to reform the newly proposed New York State Social Studies standards. The following is Steve's testimony this morning in front of the Senate HELP committee's hearing on ESEA reauthorization."

Without question, designing school and district rating systems is a difficult task, and Ohio was somewhat ahead of the curve in attempting to do so (and they're also great about releasing a ton of data every year). As part of its application for ESEA waivers, the state recently announced a newly-designed version of its long-standing system, with the changes slated to go into effect in 2014-15. State officials told reporters that the new scheme is a "more accurate reflection of … true [school and district] quality." In reality, however, despite its best intentions, what Ohio has done is perpetuate a troubled system by making less-than-substantive changes that seem to serve the primary purpose of giving lower grades to more schools in order for the results to square with preconceptions about the distribution of "true quality." It's not a better system in terms of measurement - both the new and old schemes consist of mostly the same inappropriate components, and the ratings differentiate schools based largely on student characteristics rather than school performance.

The final drafts of the Common Core State Standards were released a year and a half ago-almost to the day. Anyone who's read the Race to the Top applications or the ESEA waivers knows that state departments of education have begun to put together statewide CCSS implementation plans. Some states are working to revise curricula. Others are adjusting current assessment blueprints to reflect CCSS priorities. And all are thinking about the changes that they will need to make to professional development and training in the coming months to make this sea change in standards work for kids.

A total of 1325 elementary, middle and high schools and 123 districts statewide have been identified for improvement under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  Of the identified schools, 1173 will receive Title I funds in 2011-12 and are required to offer extra help to eligible low-income students; 416 of these Title I schools must also offer public school choice (as appropriate) to all enrolled students. 

"Diane Ravitch's (2010) critique of the standardized achievement testing apparatus has not been refuted, but it has been criticized for failing to present an alternative. Likewise, proponents of standardized achievement testing, although conceding, "it has its flaws," respond "there is no better way." This commentary sketches a Plan B alternative that is supported by contemporary events and by Educational R&D resulting from the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965."

Proposed changes by some Republican senators to the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called No Child Left Behind, could push more children with disabilities away from taking the same kinds of tests as their classmates. That could limit how many students with special needs are included when schools and districts are held accountable for their students' progress, the National Center on Learning Disabilities told several senators in a letter this week.

The charter bill is modeled almost entirely on the House's just-passed charter bill, except that it will also allow charter management organizations to compete directly for federal funds. Right now, only states or districts can compete for those funds; under this provision, a CMO like KIPP could compete for direct federal grants.

A group of key U.S. Senate Republicans-led by Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, a former U.S. Secretary of Education-are going their own way on reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Senate education chairman Tom Harkin has finally released his committee's bill for renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (now known as No Child Left Behind.) Here's a look at the key pieces with respect to teacher-quality policy

The accountability system at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act would be completely reinvented under a draft reauthorization proposal released today by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Video of panel discussion and links to resources. This briefing was sponsored by the Office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), in partnership with the Coalition for Teaching Quality.

Darling-Hammond zeroes in on how new federal programs - the proposed Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Race to the Top guidelines - deal with schools in the bottom 5%. Federal policy now formally redlines these schools, she concludes, just as banks have used a red line on a map to exclude some poor and minority communities from any kind of investment, mortgage or commercial loan.

I sat down with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan yesterday for a wide-ranging interview on the hot education topics of the day: waivers, Race to the Top, reauthorization, and the election. If you want more than just the highlights, check out the full transcript. Or, read through snippets of our conversation below.

"States would be encouraged to set up more high-quality charter schools, under a measure just introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who oversees the House subcommittee dealing with K-12 policy."