Education Week - November 4, 2015 - 15

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Key Spending Provision in House ESEA Bill's Cross Hairs
'Maintenance of effort'
a facet of law from start
By Andrew Ujifusa
Ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson
signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law in 1965, education funding advocates have relied on a highly technical provision they see as a safeguard for ensuring money
earmarked for the nation's most disadvantaged
students is used as originally intended.
As congressional lawmakers continue to negotiate a final bill for the latest reauthorization of the ESEA, those advocates now have
cause to be nervous.
What's known as the "maintenance of effort"
provision requires that districts spend in their
current fiscal year at least 90 percent of what
they spent in state and district funds in the
previous fiscal year, in order to get at least that

much money again under various federal programs, including Title I grant money for low-income students. Otherwise, their federal funding
for those programs is reduced proportionately.
But under the bill to reauthorize ESEA
approved by the House of Representatives
earlier this year, that maintenance-of-effort
requirement would be eliminated.
Advocates alarmed by that prospect argue
that besides its critical role in maintaining
the ESEA's original intent to protect the civil
rights of needy students, the maintenance-ofeffort provision also protects schools against
drastic state and local cuts to education aid,
particularly during tough economic times such
as the Great Recession. Removing it, they say,
is a solution in search of a problem.
However, people skeptical of maintenance of
effort say it unfairly creates an atmosphere of
distrust between the federal government and
state and local leaders, particularly at a time
when, skeptics believe, massive disinvestment in education by the states is unlikely.

They also believe maintenance of effort might
impede needed fundamental shifts in K-12 finance and policy.

Sending the Right Message
In addition to Title I aid, maintenance of effort applies to Title II grants to states to improve teacher quality, grants for rural education, and other programs. States and districts
can both apply for waivers from maintenanceof-effort penalties. (The ESEA provision being
discussed is separate from maintenance-of-effort requirements under the main federal special education statute.)
Lawmakers negotiating the future of maintenance of effort in the ESEA will have to
weigh it alongside other possible changes to
federal K-12 funding in both the House and
Senate bills, including potential changes to
Title I formulas for states and districts, and
whether to allow Title I money to follow students to public schools of their choosing.

As Pressure Builds to Rein in Testing,
Ed. Dept. Sets Path for States, Districts
By Denisa R. Superville
& Alyson Klein
With the testing debate showing
no signs of abating, the U.S. Department of Education's newly released
set of principles on the topic aims
to bolster states and districts in reducing the number of tests students
take, while simultaneously calling
for higher-quality assessments to be
administered in schools.
The principles-which are not
mandatory-also contain recommendations that students spend no more
than 2 percent of class time taking
tests, that no test be used solely for
educator evaluations, and that Congress scale back on testing as it reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
The rollout also came with the
Obama administration's admission
that it gets some of the blame for the
wide array of assessments now given
in the nation's schools.
"In too many schools, there is unnecessary testing and not enough clarity
of purpose applied to the task of assessing students, consuming too much
instructional time and creating undue
stress for educators and students," the
principles read in part. "The administration bears some of the responsibility for this, and we are committed to
being part of the solution."
The "Testing Action Plan" drew
praise from some for what was seen
as an overdue response to parents,
educators, and others, but skepticism
from those fearing it could muddle
an already complicated system.
Randi Weingarten, the president of
the American Federation of Teachers,
applauded the effort to curb testing.
"The fixation on high-stakes testing
hasn't moved the needle on student
achievement," she said in a statement.

"Testing should help inform instruction, not drive instruction."
The Boston-based National Center
for Fair and Open Testing said the
announcement "belatedly admits
that high-stakes exams are out of
control in U.S. public schools, but
does not offer meaningful action to
address that very real problem."
And AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said that while
testing is a key part of the educational process, there must be a separation between testing conducted for
educational purposes and testing for
accountability purposes.
"Responsible federal policy in this
space will look not only at the number of mandated assessments, but
also at the manner in which the related results are available, analyzed
and used," said Daniel Domenech,
AASA's executive director.

eight a year-between pre-K and
high school graduation. The survey
by the Washington-based Council
of the Great City Schools, which
represents 68 of the nation's largest school districts, also found that
there was no correlation between
the time students spent taking tests
and better performance on the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, also known as the nation's
report card.
The testing system, according to
Michael Casserly, the council's executive director, was "incoherent," "redundant," and "lacking a clear strategy."
(See Education Week, Oct. 28, 2015.)
Last week, President Barack
Obama met with teachers, federal,
and state education representatives
and officials from districts represented by the council at the White
House to discuss standardized testing. The president later posted a letter reiterating the administration's
Building Backlash
call for tests to be "high quality" and
Since the No Child Left Behind "worth taking," not take too much
Act, which called for annual test- time, and be just one tool that educaing in math and reading in grades tors use to measure how their stu3 through 8 and once in high school, dents and schools are doing.
the number of tests in schools has
continued to increase.
Quality, Purpose
The Obama administration,
The president's comments remeanwhile-which spent much of
its first six years in office arguably flected those made by U.S. Secretary
upping the ante on standardized of Education Arne Duncan and John
tests by calling for them to be a part B. King Jr., Duncan's senior advisor
of teacher evaluations-has instead who is acting as deputy secretary,
spent the past year urging states at a panel in Washington of federal,
and districts to make sure that tests state, and local officials focused on
are of high quality, and don't take up testing.
too much instructional time.
Duncan said the goal was to create
The administration's latest an- a system of high-quality assessments
nouncement coincided with the re- that would help drive instruction, aslease of a report on testing in urban sist teachers, and provide valuable
school systems, which found that feedback to students and parents
students in 66 big-city districts sur- about where their children were and
veyed took an average of 112 tests- what they needed to do to improve.

The Obama administration has defended
maintenance of effort in the past. For example,
the president's threat to veto the proposed Student Success Act of 2013-the House ESEA
rewrite that was similar in several ways to the
House reauthorization bill passed this year-
mentioned the removal of maintenance of effort
as a major problem with the 2013 bill.
The U.S. Department of Education does
grant waivers from maintenance of effort,
if there are events like a natural disaster or
a significant drop in a district's financial resources. The department reported it has received 788 such waiver requests since 2002,
with the plurality of those (43 percent) occurring between the 2008-09 and 2010-11 school
years, when budgets in many cases dropped
precipitously.
The department did not provide by Education Week's print deadline information on how
many of those requests were approved. But
Noelle Ellerson, an associate executive director
PAGE 17 >

CUTTING BACK
The U.S. Department of Education's "Testing
Action Plan" aims to chart a path toward fewer,
but more high-quality tests that take up less overall
class time for students and schools. Among the highlights:
* A request for $403 million in
fiscal 2016 federal funding
to help states implement
assessments that are aligned
with college-and-career-ready
standards and $25 million
to help states develop new,
innovative testing approaches.
* Guidance to states and
districts by January 2016 on
using assessments, along with
and federal funds to conduct
assessment audits.
* Department "office hours" for
states and districts seeking
technical expertise on the best
ways to reduce assessments
and meet legal requirements.

* Planned flexibility for states
that want to develop their own
assessments that may reduce
testing.
* Flexibility from the No Child
Left Behind Act requirement
that all 8th graders be tested
on the same statewide math
and English exams if those 8th
graders are taking advanced
high school level courses.
* Greater flexibility for states on
using standardized tests in
educator-evaluation systems
and measuring teachers'
impact on learning in evaluating
teacher-preparation programs.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education

In answering a question on the
proposed 2 percent cap on testing,
Duncan said that quality and purpose were more important.
"If you reduce testing to 1 percent,
and it isn't relevant ... it is not guiding instruction, that is a loss, that's a
failure, not a win," he said.
While the consensus at the panel
appeared to be that there were, in
fact, too many tests given in schools,
the focus was on designing better
and more appropriate assessment
systems and helping states and
school districts to do so.
Educators should not return to the
years when low-performing students
were hidden behind the "curtain" of
high-performing students, said Miami-Dade County schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho.
Thirty-nine states are working on
reducing testing redundancies, according to the Council of Chief State

School Officers, the group that represents top education officials in the
states. The Miami-Dade district has
scrapped 24 district assessments,
which led to an additional 260 minutes of classroom time, he said. State
efforts in Florida have led to districts
cutting hundreds of end-of-course
exams, he said.
In North Carolina, the state held
focus groups with parents, teachers, and students about the kinds of
assessments that would help them
most before revamping how it assesses its students, according to June
Atkinson, the North Carolina superintendent of public instruction.
At the end of the day, it comes down
to passing the "Goldilocks" test, Atkinson said, and designing a system
of assessments that were "not too
many, not too few-just right, all for
the benefit of our students' growth
and achievement in our nation."

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