Education Week - September 18, 2013 - 24

24 EDUCATION WEEK
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SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 www.edweek.org
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Ed. Dept., Arizona Clash on Waiver-Accountability Plan
We just
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
and you put a diploma in their
hands you haven’t done them
any favors,” he said.
The second area in which the
state and federal officials seem
to be at a stalemate is teacher
evaluations. Changing Arizona’s
teacher-evaluation system to meet
federal guidelines has proved even
more difficult, because the state
started its new method for judging
educators back in 2010, before
waivers even came along.
Now, the state and federal officials
are arguing over how
Arizona should measure student
growth and the role of state assessments
in teacher evaluations.
Specifically at issue is how
teachers of tested grades and
subjects are evaluated—and to
what extent districts should
have flexibility to determine how
data from state tests should be
used to measure student growth.
“We are so far ahead, and now
our rules don’t fit the federal
guidelines. We’re not going to
keep changing our rules,” said
Karla Phillips, the state education
department’s director of
cross-divisional initiatives.
Overall, Mr. Huppenthal is
highly critical of Mr. Duncan’s
promise of flexibility, which
comes with a slew of requirements
favored by the Obama
administration. Those requirements
include what some view as
prescriptive solutions for school
turnarounds and teacher-evaluation
systems in particular.
“We just think the federal de-
partment of education needs to
up its game in terms of how this
is all going to work to improve
education,” Mr. Huppenthal
said.
Tough Federal Stance
From the federal department’s
standpoint, the flexibility is
optional, made as an effort to
help states as Congress stalls
in reauthorizing the Elementary
and Secondary Education
Act, of which NCLB is the current
version.
“States are not required to
choose that path as we all wait
for reauthorization of No Child
Left Behind,” a department official
said.
Now, Mr. Huppenthal says he’s
facing a Hobson’s choice. Either
he gives the federal officials
what they want, compromising
what he says he believes is best
for the state, or he refuses to
give in and is left with nothing
in the way of flexibility—which
means he has to abide by NCLB
as written. That means working
toward a goal of 100 percent
student proficiency in math and
reading and seeing more schools
face penalties as they fail to
make adequate yearly progress.
“We would end up with 80
percent of our schools in school
improvement,” he said. “It adds
a lot of bureaucratic choices. We
are faced with a policy dilemma
and we have two environments
that are very distasteful.”
The Arizona education department
is trying to get a
sense from its 500 districts
of what they want—federal
strings and flexibility, or NCLB
requirements. Ms. Phillips
said districts’ top concern is
the requirement that a school
that fails to hit academic goals
under the NCLB law must set
aside 15 percent of the school’s
Title I funds for tutoring.
Ms. Duvall of the state superintendents’
association indicated
that districts also appreciate
the new, single rating
system that defines accountability
in the state and has replaced
the NCLB requirements.
“That flexibility is very important,”
she said. “But you
also have to reach a point in
time where you ask how much
change can be tolerated.”
“
think the federal
department of
education needs
to up its game
in terms of how
this is all going
to work out
to improve
education.”
JOHN HUPPENTHAL
Arizona Superintendent of Public
Instruction
Student-Outcomes Issue
Likely to Loom Large
In Higher Ed. Law Fight
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
education reauthorization to the
House education committee.
The watch lists are “an example
of a good idea that provides so
much information to students
that it simply overwhelms them,”
the ACE says.
Still, the group agrees that bet-
ter tracking of student outcomes,
while controversial, is an idea
worthy of consideration during renewal
of the Higher Education Act.
Pell Explosion
The Pell Grant program—which
offers grants of up to $5,645 to
help the neediest students access
college—will likely be at the
center of a debate over whether
the federal government should
broaden its investment in the student-lending
program.
Demand for the grants has exploded
even as lawmakers have
sought to reduce domestic spending.
That’s led Congress to tighten
program eligibility and scrap the
year-round grants that allowed
students to make use of Pell aid
during the summer.
The ACE and student advocates
want Congress to reverse some
of those cost-savings measures.
And college advocates are also
hoping to let students know earlier
in their precollegiate careers
whether they’ll be eligible for Pell
Grants, by 7th or 8th grade, or
even sooner.
When it comes to teacher col-
leges, some higher education
groups remain wary of the pros-
pect of a federal mandate that
would require states to consider
the performance of recent graduates
as classroom teachers.
That’s an idea already in play
in Louisiana—and it could even
become part of federal regulation
through a set of long-awaited
rules governing teacher preparation
that the U.S. Department of
Education has been struggling
with for well over a year.
Colleges seeking the seal of
approval from the Council for
Accreditation of Educator Preparation
must also document graduates’
classroom performance
under the newly approved set of
standards from the national accrediting
group.
Training Educators
The idea has some support in
Congress, specifically in a House
bill to rewrite the No Child Left
Behind Act that was approved
this summer. It included a bipartisan
provision encouraging states
to let “high performing” teacherpreparation
programs wiggle out
of some federal regulations, as
long as they had high standards
for the students entering the programs
and ensured that teachers
were able to improve student
achievement before they entered
the classroom, and met other requirements.

Similar language was included in
the Senate education committee’s
bill to rewrite the NCLB law.
Some advocates are hoping Congress
will go even further when it
comes to holding teacher colleges
POSTSECONDARY AGENDA
Congress is beginning work on the Higher Education Act, which has big implications for college access,
college-preparatory programs, and teacher education. The House education committee recently solicited
ideas for a reauthorization, and the Obama administration has weighed in. Among the ideas under
consideration, and where they’re coming from:
COLLEGE ACCESS
• Link some federal financial aid to a college-rating system, which would take into account outcomes
like graduation rates, as well as affordability and accessibility. (Obama administration)
• Let 7th or 8th graders know that they may be eligible for Pell Grants, which help low-income
students cover tuition costs. (American Council on Education, along with 38 other education
organizations)
• Develop a data system to help colleges track outcomes—such as employment information—
and make that available to prospective students (Legislation by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.;
Mark Warner, D-Va.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.)
TEACHER PREPARATION
• Expand the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant program, which supports teacher colleges,
to include residency programs for principals. (American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education, legislation by Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.)
• Encourage states to provide technical assistance and other help to teacher-preparation
programs they deem to be low-performing. (American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education, legislation by Rep. Honda, and Sen. Reed)
• Allow “high-performing teacher-preparation programs” to opt out of burdensome paperwork, as long
as they set a high bar for entry, and ensure graduates exit only after they demonstrate that they can
move the needle on student achievement. (Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.; Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.;
and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; Reps. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Tom Petri, R-Wis.)
SOURCE: Education Week
accountable for student outcomes.
“HEA should struggle with
how do we improve our prep
programs so that teachers come
out with the skills they need on
day one,” said Kate Tromble, the
director of legislative affairs for
the Education Trust, an advocacy
group for poor and minority students.
Right now, the federal role
tends to focus on “inputs”—such
as whether a program offers the
Myers-Briggs personality test to
prospective teachers—not student
outcomes, she said.
When Congress debates HEA renewal
legislation, “there’s going
to be a fight about how do you include
‘value added,’” Ms. Tromble
said, referring to the practice of
trying to isolate a teacher’s impact
on student growth, as gauged by
test scores.
But the policy could be a tough
sell in academia.
“Our thinking is that it really is
the state role, primarily, to ensure
accountability for teacher preparation,”
said Jane West, the vice
president of policy, programs, and
professional issues for the American
Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education.
But she acknowledged that
“states have not been as vigilant
as they could be at looking carefully
at the program process. We
do think there is a role for the
federal government” in providing
incentives to bolster teacher-preparation
programs.
Ms. West is a fan of legisla-
tion, introduced earlier this year
by Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif.,
and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that
would put a federal focus on
the proliferation and support
of teacher-residency programs,
which allow prospective teachers
work full time in schools while
taking classes.

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Education Week - September 18, 2013

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